Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Incidents/Archive 4

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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Environmental effects of basketballs

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Environmental effects of basketballs is about to be closed as delete. The author is in Louisiana State University/CHEM 4150 Environmental Chemistry, which doesn't appear to have an ambassador or much detail at all. Not sure if someone wanted to reach out to the prof/class. czar ⨹ 14:55, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Didn't see that there was a campus volunteer—pinging her @B.J.Carmichael czar ⨹ 14:58, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
The same user is also instructor at Education Program:Louisiana_State_University/BIOL_4125_Prokaryotic_Diversity_(Fall_2014). Stuartyeates (talk) 07:53, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
I am the Campus Ambassador working with the instructors for each of these courses at Louisiana State University and am currently in contact with the instructor for Louisiana State University/CHEM 4150 Environmental Chemistry. It would be very helpful to have feedback placed on the course pages so all students enrolled in the class can benefit from the collaborative process. Thank you for alerting me. B.J.Carmichael (talk) 17:58, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
Almost everything coming out of this class is mediocre, ill-conceived, or contrived. The content is glib, generic. The students are surely just following instructions - they are told to do this - but they are over their heads on sourcing, they don't know enough, and they come across as parochial. Instructors should not allow this kind of material to be forced onto WIkipedia. --Smokefoot (talk) 04:08, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Good Articles for Grades

Sleep hygiene is listed as a Good Article (Talk:Sleep hygiene/GA1); in this version reviewed, I see multiple issues, including term-paper/essay-like statements, uncited text and anecdotal conclusions, very old sources (MEDRS), and WP:LAYOUT issues (eg WP:MSH and more). There are also prose issues (sample only, "The research behind sleep hygiene is still in the process of development, ..."), that's helpful. There are more: this text in the lead stands out:

and prevent the negative consequences of sleep deprivation. Specific sleep hygiene recommendations have become more established and refined over time, but there is variable research support across recommendations. The benefits of practicing sleep hygiene recommendations vary by individual and some special populations have unique additional considerations. Consultation with sleep professionals can facilitate personal application of sleep hygiene recommendations.

Does good sleep hygiene really "prevent" sleep deprivation? For everyone in all cases? What does "there is variable research support across recommendations" mean? Etc.

Is there a lower GA standard for students? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:09, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

There's no difference in standard for GA - at least, there shouldn't be. Of course, each GA review is subject to the individual reviewer.
I don't think it's bad for teachers and professors to point to the good article requirements as a guideline for students to follow when writing articles. I do wish, however, that teachers and professors wouldn't push for good articles in return for points. As a result, there's a rise in the already large backlog of GA nominees of articles, many of which aren't ready for GA status. It can also take weeks for a GA nomination to be reviewed; if a student's article isn't reviewed in time before the end of the semester, it's unfair for that student. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 22:14, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
I don't disagree with profs giving extra credit for their students who stay the course and improve content (that's a good thing!!), but I have to wonder why this article jumped the queue at GA and got promoted so quickly, on such scanty review. What's going on? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:17, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Sandy, I'm sure that we all know that the answer to your question ought to be "no". It really comes down to the GA review process more than to the instructor's course page, because the instructor cannot control the review process; it's just a matter of the instructor making it clear that the process is not guaranteed (done) and can require a time commitment by the students beyond the end of the class (apparently not done, and that might be an issue here). I looked at the GA review and I'll ask the reviewer @Melody Lavender: whether the class project played any role in the review. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:15, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
I've just scanned this page (and now WP:ENB as well) for other comments by Melody Lavender. Perhaps an outside opinion from an excellent and thorough GA reviewer would help here: @Eric Corbett:. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:20, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @SandyGeorgia: Since it was clear I was the campus ambassador you could've brought this to me first. I was quite clear with this professor (as with all) that GA status is unrealistic and students will likely be long-gone before a reviewer shows up. That I haven't bullied the professor to remove the sentence from the course page is hardly a fair critique. As for that GA review, yes I agree it's pretty weak. Every GA review I've undergone has been a hard process run by editors who push their own favorite sections of MOS rather than the damn criteria. I've yet to have one success. I can only trust the GA reviewer knows what they're doing.
It's not as if I haven't been chasing these students down at every opportunity. You haven't read the angry e-mails I've written to professors to complain about their students. And this is the weak nonsense you spout? Get bent. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:23, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
@Chris troutman: I did bring it to you.[1] I brought it to you precisely because I've seen your good work and hard efforts, and I thought you would want to know about the review. I am not suggesting there is a problem here with you or the professor (I have seen and noted your good and hard work); the problem is nonetheless one that we need to deal with. It was not my intent to offend you or point fingers at you at all ... and now I'll wander off and look up the term "get bent", since it's new to me (but I like it!) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:27, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
Grades are not supposed to be assigned for mainspace edits according to previous conversations with our Wiki Ed folks, so this class would be in violation of that. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:24, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
oh my. Jytdog (talk) 22:27, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure what to make of that point I picked up in the conversation either, so oh my is about I can say too when thinking about what we should actually be doing about it. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:31, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
Where is the guideline that says that grades should not be given for mainspace edits? (I could easily have missed it.) How could that be enforced, given that instructors and not Wikipedia determine class grades? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:37, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
It was a comment I made on best practices. If an instructor designed a course where the grade depended on mainspace edits that stuck, I would make sure that we did everything we could to ensure that they changed that, because it's a recipe for disaster. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:46, 12 December 2014 (UTC) (That comment of mine was made in the context of students who were edit-warring to get content into an article because they thought they needed to have it in for a grade...when in fact the assignment was already graded and done. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:51, 12 December 2014 (UTC))
The comment for folks interested.[2] Guess I read it the wrong way then as at the time it seemed you were commenting on a much wider context. My bad then. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:18, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
It would be a horrible idea to make grades dependent on getting an article through, say, GA or FA, but extra credit for actually getting an article through something like GA or FA isn't a bad idea. (In case you didn't realise, the vast majority of extra credit is a scam. The mediocre students who need it don't do it, and the good students who do it don't need it. You might as well hand out gold stars.) It just doesn't strike me as a terribly feasible one, unless your main editing is done by mid-semester. Granted, if students started reviewing and passing one-another's GACs, I might re-think that. And to answer SandyGeorgia's question - yes, this doesn't seem like a good review, and no, I'd say GA reviews for student submissions should, if anything, be held to a higher standard (both because new editors tend to make more mistakes, and because extra credit is a bit of a finger on the scales. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:38, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
The problem here doesn't seem to be the course, rather the review, and it's troubling in the context of Melody Lavendar's other comments on these pages. She doesn't seem to have many actual article edits. (And now @Chris troutman: is mad at me for bringing it to his attention :( I am most sorry, Chris. My concern was not aimed at you. I thought you would want to know, that's all. I do appreciate the expansion of my vocabulary, though.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:40, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
Well, I guess I see now what has Chris troutman so upset. I have only now realized that right before I went to the course page, found that he was the online rep, and pinged him about the faulty GA, he had just congratulated the student. Well, my concern still wasn't aimed at Chris, so I hope he accepts my apologies for any misunderstanding. I wanted to know if he or I should clean up the article. So, now, I'm not touching it ... But, it also appears that Melody Lavendar has never before reviewed an article for GA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:22, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Using WP article status in grading is asking for trouble. Grades are the responsibility of the academic instructor, using appropriate academic criteria. It is unfair to the student to put their grade at the mercy of Wikipedia's erratic processes of article assessment, and it is a potential contamination of our already shaky article assessment to have them result in real-world consequences. It's a temptation to conflict of interest. If it hasn't happened yet, it's because we have usually been successful in persuading instructors not to do this. DGG ( talk ) 02:27, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Just FYI, I relisted the article being discussed here for community GAR: Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Sleep hygiene/1. Never did that before so I hope I didn't make mistakes. Jytdog (talk) 04:25, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
I've never listed a GAR before either (that I can recall, because Geometry guy used to do them for me-- he used to more or less "manage" the GA process), but Jytdog, I was wondering if you would mind changing the wording a bit? The student did "good" work (just not "Good Article"-level work), so "product of inexperienced student editor" seems unhelpful. The problem here (as amply demonstrated by comments on this page and in the post below) was the reviewer who accelerated the process and provided scanty review vis-a-vis WP:WIAGA, and the student (as with so much that happens in the Education Program) was just a victim of a bad process. Could you possibly rephrase ? The GA pages will be enshrined in ArticleHistory, so no need to single out the student. Thanks, best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:48, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I've not read most of this section. Sandy, the GA article criteria are what they are. They're met. This is not a featured article but a good article. That the two of us, as well as user:Jytdog have entirely, entirely different standards, is nothing new. I've criticized the outcome of your standards several times and you know that there were studies done that reflect my impression: the quality of medical articles here is not so good. Which is no surprise considering how this project functions. F. i. the articles lack content (because you delete instead of tag: slows down the process), and as a rule the text in medical articles doesn't flow well and lacks context. If you don't like the wording of the new GA, go fix it. I thought it was exceptionally, exceptionally well written. Of course there are several articles currently listed on WP:GAN that are written by students as well as by others. This was the best one and the most interesting one, and it didn't need much work. There are no exceptional claims or anything surprising, just a good standard summary of the knowledge on the topic. Trying to set your own standards on who should be allowed to review GAs is ridiculous, Sandy. The community rules say I'm allowed to and I'm good at it. Due to my long term work here in evaluating articles I was quickly able to detect the problems the solution of which would bring a marked improvement to the article. Most of the comments you're posting here about me are just out of line (and seem oddly obsessive), and from what I see, some of the stuff you've made up. I see no need to reply here further. There is a control mechanism for GA reviews. Everything is going according to a community installed plan and you're seeing this as an incident. Sandy, ths page is plastered by complaints from the Wikiproject Medicine. Why do you think that is? (rethorical question). Other projects are also affected by a wave of wonderful new edits and they're not having incidents.
On the issue of grading, I don't think the work the students do here should be graded at all. I think they should be doing regular Wikipedia work, posting one section, then have several rounds of reviewing each other's articles, inlcuding tagging, reverting, detecting copyvio, checking sources, discussing on talk page, and take a good article to GA. These review rounds should be installed in the regular process - currently I think there is only one round of reviews programmed into the template and it doesn't seem to be done much in praxi.--Melody Lavender 09:51, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

We certainly agree that, like most content on Wikipedia, a good deal of Wikipedia's medical content is poor. (See Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/RFC on medical disclaimer.) That's not just a problem with medical content (red herring alert). And the overall status of content on Wikipedia is unrelated to the separate matter of GA standards. This red herring distracts from the matter at hand: that a reviewer who has no previous engagement (unless under a former account) with PR, GAC or FAC accelerated a GAN and promoted a GA when clear deficiencies relative to the criteria are apparent. Whatever you were aiming to do, the result was no favor to the student. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:17, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
That's just the kind of response that is typical for your project and causes these results: completely besides the point. At this point you'd have to state a tiny, tiny bit of realistic critique of an excellent article. This isn't happening and it will not happen in your next response (Surprise us!). You just have no facts to back up your statement. Personal attacks are not permitted around here, you know. Your argument for delisting the article is: you don't like the reviewer. (I'm not joking - any stalker: check the reason Jytdog gave for the delistment.) You have to be kidding. Deal with the text - can it possibly be so good that you can't find anything? Let's have a good laugh and show us how you can have an epic circular argument now, maybe rallye more support from Jytdog, he's good at that? Can't promise I'll join in. Next on list would be: making up more stuff. I'll try to explain (in nice terms) that what you're saying is quite insane. If you do what many here do, you'll then play dumb, insist on having an oh so fun edit war or digging more trenches. Seen this several times. Talking about insane: note the psychotic undertone in Sandy's statement (other editor cleaning up backlog must have a hidden agenda). What's next, Sandy? --Melody Lavender 11:48, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
@Melody Lavender: - as an admin who has no dog in this fight (and if anything is more frequently accused of being too in favor of the education program than anything else) please consider this a formal warning. You just made a post where you complained about good faith criticism of your GAR, pointed out that personal attacks are not allowed, and then accused another editor of being obsessive, insane, and psychotic. If you make another similar post, you will rapidly find your earlier statement that personal attacks are not allowed to be confirmed, but probably not in the way that you'd like. Kevin Gorman (talk) 12:06, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
@Kevin Gorman: there was no good faith criticism of my GAR, that's the point I made and I made it several times. They delisted the article because of the person doing the review, that is me. And that is not good faith, it's against the rules. Considering the formal warning: I understand that they are allowed to make disparaging comments about me and I may not retaliate. That's perfectly ridiculous, of course. But please, why not make this a general rule, put it in the Style manual. It's absurd. Sorry, I'm not going to respond on this page any more.--Melody Lavender 12:17, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
my description at the re-GAR was tacky, and discussed contributors not content. I've amended it. Apologies to all. Jytdog (talk) 13:01, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
(ec, and thanks to Jytdog for amending). Points of correction: They delisted the article because of the person doing the review ... First, I don't know who "they" refers to (I am not Jytdog). Second, Melody, you might not be familiar with the GA pages, but a person does not delist a GA, nor has it been delisted (see Wikipedia:Good articles/Natural sciences); a Good Article Reassessment (GAR) was initiated by Jytdog, and if improvements occur, the article might not be delisted at all. (Personally, considering that I've already done some of the cleanup, I would have waited to see if the student jumped in to fix more, but anyone is allowed to open a GAR at any time). Third, the GAR was initiated to evaluate whether the article meets GA standards; that it was initiated "because of the person doing the review" is not an AGF statement. SandyGeorgia (Talk)
Melody Lavender, I have nothing personal against you, and I'm pretty sure that we have not interacted in any significant way before. But in defense of SandyGeorgia and Jytdog, both of whom I've worked with a lot and respect a lot, and in agreement with Kevin Gorman, who said exactly the right thing to you, I want to say that when I saw your GA review, I came away concerned that you had given the student editor an easier time than many other GA reviewers would have done, and that it might have been because the editor was a student. When you said above that "Of course there are several articles currently listed on WP:GAN that are written by students as well as by others. This was the best one and the most interesting one, and it didn't need much work", it sounds like you might have been thinking about the editor being a student when you did the review. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:40, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Fully support DGG's statement. (Disclosure -- I'm employed at a college in an instructional capacity.) Professors get paid to assess student work; transferring part of that responsibility to Wikipedia volunteers is unprofessional, and I'd support English Wikipedia, with WMF assistance if necessary or appropriate, developing policies telling professors to knock it off. NE Ent 13:32, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I disagree philosophically but I'd like to point out that these students ARE NOT being graded on participation at GA or DYK. The professor encouraged them against my specific instruction. (I have a slide in my presentation that addresses it.) I congratulated the student in question and suggested to the professor how rare it is for a student article to be given GA status. Yes, I can see how Wikipedia doesn't want to be gamed by students and educators. However, if the assignment is writing or improving an article on Wikipedia, isn't our evaluation a good metric?
I agree with DGG that students shouldn't be held hostage to our process timelines. I've already commented on Melody Lavender's review but I agree with her (obviously) that informal GA standards are becoming inflated. This review is an issue for WikiProject Good Article so I'd let them handle it. Though I'm less experienced than many on this noticeboard, I was formally trained to review GA-nominees so I think I know what I'm talking about.
I think this is the last semester I'll be a campus ambassador, anyway. Unless and until I have more control over the professors and students I don't think it makes sense to be involved with. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:06, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
(I'm certainly not blaming Chris Troutman for anything.) "Extra points if yours gets in, though." is making part of the assessment Wikipedia's effort.NE Ent 21:14, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
I also think that DGG's point is a very good one. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:42, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I have to say that I disagree with DGG, NE Ent, and others. There may well be practical reasons why article status (and passing GA or similar) should not feed in to student grades, but I have no philosophical problems with it at all. Indeed, I think that, in principle at least, there are very good reasons why one might do this. It is certainly not "unprofessional" in the slightest.
But such discussions are perhaps better held elsewhere, and ideally in different circumstances. I've long been in favour of a "plagiarism" summit, but only as a first step towards thinking properly and reflexively about the relationship between Wikipedia and academia. An "assignment summit" might well be a logical second step.
Along similar lines, while I appreciate the work that Sage has put into it, I don't think that the Assignment Design Wizard solves many of the problems that are being raised here. And not merely because I'm against such attempts to come up with technical panaceas, nor even because I think it misses the key reasons as to why student assignments fail (which are generally to do with lack of interaction and/or professors' unwillingness to engage), but also because I think there should be more experimentation rather than less. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:07, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed with the philosophical point. After all, people give (extra)credit for doing things that are not under the control of the instructor all the time. Show up for this talk. Take part in this community outreach activity. Put in so many hours of volunteer time. Even "do a practicum" (not always - they can be more structured, but sometimes). Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 06:16, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
take part in, participate in, and so forth are not unreasonable, because they do not depend on the whim of the outside agency. Just as our articles are not qualified to be an authority for academic work, the way we apply our standards are not qualified to be reliable for academic credit. If a faculty memeber wishes to use our GA criteria for his own evaluation, that can make sense, but not if he merely looks at what we do here. DGG ( talk ) 08:02, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Again, I disagree. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:06, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps it's not such a big problem when there is a simple award of extra credit for the student getting to some, thoughtfully defined, step in the GA process, but the problem comes into existence when editors doing the GA review can affect the student's grade. I think that most instructors who actually think about it would not want student grades to depend, first, on people at Wikipedia rather than at the educational institution, and second, on whether the student happens to get a generous GA reviewer or a strict one. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:53, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Again, we can talk about this better perhaps in another place. But I have no real philosophical problem with judgements from outside the classroom feeding in to the classroom grade. On the contrary. And that may indeed mean being subject to some extent to vagaries of one kind or another, i.e., in this case, whether a reviewer is generous or strict.
To put this another way: I am against the view that sees the classroom as hermetically sealed from what happens outside of it. And as soon as you construct an assignment in which students directly edit a website such as Wikipedia, then you, too, are against that view. Or should be. Problems arise when (as Victoria has eloquently put it, above), you don't recognize that fact, and try to construct "walled gardens" within Wikipedia. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 20:03, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

GA in the Assignment Design Wizard

On this topic, here's how we handle the topic of Good Articles within the Assignment Design Wizard: Wikipedia:Education program/Assignment Design Wizard#Good Article process. If the instructor indicates that the are potentially interested in GA, that information will show up in the form of a category on their assignment plan, so we can keep track of, and follow up with, courses that might do GA nominations.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:52, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

That reads reasonably to me. In this case, the student was done a disservice (as was the Education Program and the Wikipedia). Now that I've done my homework, Melody Lavender has negligible article space contributions, has never been active at GA, and has not been active on this board until yesterday. In spite of a significant backlog at GAN, this GA was nominated and passed within four days. And it should not be a GA. So now a student who did good work ends up subjected to fallout of a faulty review. I would like to hear from Melody Lavender as to what she was thinking. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:58, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Another student in same course needs assistance

I'm working with another student in this same course, and based on the two now, it appears to be a well-run course, with good output and responsive students (that is, prof or online ambassadors doing something right). I put in a request at the Help Desk, but it has gotten no answer ... could someone wander by User talk:Gemayelc and see the query about the problem with her/his sig, and educate both of us? I can't figure out why her sig isn't working, and since s/he's hard at work, responding on talk, at least we should get the sig sorted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:51, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

 Done SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:53, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Update

Re my earlier comment on "good output and responsive students", on further review, it looks like my initial sample size was too small to make that claim. Both Leslierrn and Gemayelc have done work that will stick, and some of the other students from that course are responsive on talk, but everything else I've seen from this course so far has made me again want to walk away from wikipedia because of the magnitude of the problem with student editing in the bio/neuro/psych realm where I edit-- it's just not possible for the number of editors we have in here to keep up with this amount of term papers dropped into main space requiring huge amounts of cleanup. And that's only one course (never mind the probs now with the Barnard Course and the other NeuroJoe course). So, let's look at the problems:

Education Program:University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)/Psychology 220A (Fall, 2014)

  1. The first two articles I saw needed work, but were not that bad at all ... in fact, not out of the realm of what any new editor would do (sleep hygiene and Joseph Jastrow). The rest I've looked at were dismal. See Appeal to emotion (this version, the worst of the bunch); Moonriddengirl, could you please check in there re overquoting? See other samples as I saw them: Symptoms of victimization, Cognitive specialization, and others.
  2. The prof, Benkarney is completely absent, and not apparently knowledgable on Wikipedia. [3]
  3. Term papers have been dropped from sandbox into articles, and with the exception of the two mentioned above, largely should not be in article space at all. Again, reinforcing the idea that student sandboxes should not be added to mainspace without first consulting relevant Wikiprojects.
  4. There is too much wrong here for the campus ambassadors and staff (Chris troutman and Ian (Wiki Ed) to clean up.
  5. The course encouraged DYK and GA, so we've got noms of sub-par articles in those places (that is, contributing to the problem of students overwhelming content review processes).
  6. And finally, what is really discouraging is that the course page is still not filled in (there are many students whose articles aren't even listed-- how much more is there ?), and the course page says the course will extend through March 2015 !!!!! Yikes. Time to semi-retire again.

So, in exasperation (I'm ready to quit editing again-- this is demoralizing, demotivating, and overwhelming), I tried something new ... posting to all of the students at once, on one page. See talk. Other than giving up ... I dunno. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:58, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

As I was posting this, I see Ian was busy! [4] Thank you, Ian ... much appreciated. Could we get the prof to fill in the course page? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:02, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
I just want to say that I read what Sandy posted at the UCLA program talk page, and I think that it is a model of tactful, constructive, and thorough advice to student editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:47, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
It's nice of you to say that, since I was tearing my hair out in weary discouragement as I was typing ... :( :( Oh, and by the way, the course page is wrong; Leslierrn just told me that the course ends today (not March 2015), so I wonder if any of the students will return to take up the suggestions I spent so much time working on. At the time I wrote all that, I thought they would be sticking around until March 2015. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:52, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
I very much meant it. We can only do what we can do, so if the students are gone, so be it. I wish you (and your hair) all the best. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:00, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: You probably should go to semi-retirement and here's why: this program opens the door to editing that seems to set you on edge. I'm not happy with how this semester has gone, I offer no excuses for the editing, and I feel badly for failing to prevent these problems. I will say that the fact students were unaware of MEDRS is entirely my fault. I briefly covered it not anticipating their articles would raise attention. (Past psychology courses didn't raise these issues.) I will say that editor intervention with these students is perhaps making the situation more difficult. I'd've preferred other editors simply letting me know and deferring to me to fix it.

I don't have the leverage over the professors and students that I would need in order to slam the brakes on this activity. I'd like to think that I'm as active as any other campus ambassador if not more. If my poor showing bothers you then I don't think you can realistically expect better. Certainly I think the entire Education Program needs overhauled as every semester will cause heartburn. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:18, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Chris, I can fully appreciate how difficult it can be, to be an ambassador, and I can understand that you would dislike being criticized. And I think you are correct that the problems are too deeply rooted to expect things to get better with another ambassador. But please don't tell another editor to retire. That only escalates the situation. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:26, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
I think you've done the best that can be done for any course associated with the EP; I cannot say the issues here are any worse than any other course, so I hope you don't feel singled out! I'm not saying yours is a poor showing at all.

What had me so discouraged last night was the idea that this would go on through March 15, with many as yet unidentified articles. That made it feel like an impossible task. I am curious, though, that you seem to be saying you'd rather not have the help of other editors. From my seat, that works, too! On some of the worst of the worst articles (referring to more than this course), it's so much easier just to go through all of them at term-end and revert, remove, fix when all is done and we can see if there's anything salvageable. I dug in on this course because the course page specifically says the course runs all year (through March 15), which I found really unsettling ... and thought we might try to bring them all on board in one place.

Not to worry, Trypto; I'm not likely to take such a comment personally.

A lesson learned this term (hopefully Wiki Ed staff) is that much agida can be avoided by getting the course pages completed early on! We still don't know all the articles the UCLA course has tackled. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:32, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Here are all the article that have been edited by users enrolled in that course:

--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:27, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

That's helpful, because we find uncited additions,[5] but not all of those are the articles the students chose as their topics. For instance, caffeine-induced sleep disorder was only edited by Leslierrn to link the sleep hygiene article. Could we get the prof to fill out the course page? (This is a general question, not a specific one-- accountability.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:36, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Student article from 2012 at AfD

I know it's pretty much irrelevant, but there is an article from this course at AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mask and identity - no comment on the actual article. The author hasn't substantially edited since 2012; the instructor (User:Debaser42) is however still active. From his talk page, it seems like there were a lot of concerns about that particular course. Just a heads up. ansh666 07:31, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Update from Wiki Ed, 16 December

See Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard#Update_from_Wiki_Ed.2C_16_December. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:19, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Women in psychology - "class project"

A new editor psycschool (talk · contribs) has created Women in psychology, which is a series of mini-biographies of 12 prominent women psychologists, all of whom have existing WP articles. It's preceded by a single-sentence intro. It's got too much info to be appropriate as a "list", is well done of its sort - lots of refs - but just doesn't seem to be the right way to go about things. The editor says "My university had a class project for wiki editing and this was my project." I've asked him/her for details of uni and course.

S/he's put a lot of effort into an unnecessary duplication: rather sad, and indicative of poor guidance from her instructor. I've asked them to point their instructor to WP:School and university projects. It's been moved from sandbox to draft by @Ahecht: , and then from draft to mainspace by @Jami430:. The editor went through the student training programme in September, added themself to the Women in Psychology Wikiproject, then created this 20,200 bytes article on 17th November.

I wonder whether anyone recognises this course? PamD 20:11, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's this course: Education Program:University of North Dakota/Educational Psychology (PSYC 313) (Fall 2014). I think it has the makings of a decent list, but it's not an article. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:06, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
It would be helpful if someone supporting the course did a quick run through of the article talk pages to see whether or not students have done as they were told to and added the course banner - I've now done so for this one, and pointed out to the editor that they seem to have ignored the instruction on the course page. Another editor turned the "article" into a redirect to the category: I've reverted that, but it's not right yet - and he/she's gone to the Teahouse saying I've been "rude". PamD 23:54, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Here's a good example of concerns about Wiki Ed staff making things harder on "the rest of us". Jami430 aka Jami (Wiki Ed), what were you thinking when you moved this draft to mainspace, first, with an MSH error in the title (Women in Psychology vs Women in psychology), and second, moving it as an article rather than a List ? And third, the article doesn't even use reliable sources. The sources include about.com (any yahoo can write for them) and a Wiki, among other dubious sources, and including uncited text. (If I had the time or cared, I'd go through and deal also with the POV in the article.) If this article had appeared at AFC, it would not have been moved to mainspace; what good does it do us to advocate for students to use sandboxes, if Wiki Ed Staff doesn't have the basic knowledge to know when to move things out of sandbox or draft space? Why is Wiki Ed staff moving inferior articles to mainspace?

By the way, that same course was responsible for the mess at equine therapy.

And, not surprisingly, another absent professor, Virginia.clinton. Here again, we have a professor trying to guide students in editing Wikipedia who has never ever edited a wikipedia article herself, and only took a quick tour of Wikipedia. This is not a sustainable way for Wiki Ed to operate; why do you all grant instructor rights to profs who know nothing of Wikipedia?

PamD, I saw where you were called "rude" and regret that you ended up on the receiving end of an absent prof and a misguided move to mainspace. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:55, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

You're right that it needed more fleshing out to get it beyond list-worthy, and that was something I was hoping to spend time on later this week, in my volunteer editing. I like the idea of a 'women in psych' article but agree it needs a lot more information. I wanted to preserve some of it as a stub to give a chance to expand that later, but it does fit better as a list. Thanks for moving it. Jami430 (talk) 16:17, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
The sourcing in that article is kinda dubious throughout, Jami ... some of it needs to be looked at more closely, but since you plan to work on it, I will unwatch. Anyone can write for about.com, and I wonder about the reliability of some of the sources I didn't flag-- some could bear closer looking in to. That kind of article is typical of courses that come to Wikipedia with a POV; by what measure do we make statements about "prominence" of women psychologists ? By secondary source, unbiased sources-- not putting up a list from feministvoices.com and then claiming "prominence" based on uncited reasoning. Ugh, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:12, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
The structural problem with the "article" was that it was in no way a survey of the role of women in psychology, just a package of 12 mini-biographies of women who already had individual articles, so any new material about them would have been much more useful if added to those 12 articles. I was sorry to see this student wasting their time creating a parallel set of 12 redundant mini-biographies. A sad waste of effort. PamD 23:21, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Posted to RSN: [6] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:56, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Education Program:California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo/ES 350 %28Fall 2014%29

This is another problematic class. I see that User:Jami (Wiki Ed) is involved with this, as she just flagged Aimé Césaire as one of the articles they are editing. But the students are long gone, and never added the requisite template. It's useless to chase after them, so I simply had to delete most of what they'd done. It's unclear what other articles they are editing. The ones that are declared as part of the course are pretty poor: this one, for instance, which is totally unsourced. But as there seems to have been little or no supervision (unsurprising as the instructor has never edited an article in her life and yet was given user rights nonetheless; and the online volunteers don't seem to have done anything), and now that the course is over, there's nothing to be done except go around, delete and clear up. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:31, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Could we not do a better job at trying to NOT give instructor rights to folks who have never edited Wikipedia? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:37, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
User:Jbmurray I started to add articles to that course last night, but it was past midnight and I simply got too tired. :) I can add more in if that's helpful. As LiAnna mentioned on the noticeboard the other day, if we have granted user rights to an instructor, we will take full responsibility for that class and helping clean up any content issues. Thank you for flagging some of the work here. I will get the team to look through and see what we should prioritize right now. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:40, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
Jami (Wiki Ed), thanks for this, and I sympathize. But honestly it's not your job to be adding articles a month after the course has finished. And it's a pain for everyone concerned to be cleaning up once the students have gone.
There are three online ambassadors listed for that course: yourself, User:Lixxx235, and User:Ian (Wiki Ed). I'd have thought that a more effective use of your time would be a) to remind students at the time (i.e. early November) that they were supposed to have indicated with a template which articles they were editing and/or b) to notice that the instructor was doing nothing on Wiki (User:Jlehrcalpoly hasn't edited since September) and tell him/her that this wouldn't do.
But in short, this is another course that exhibits all the failings that User:SandyGeorgia routinely lists for student projects: no interaction, material dumped, students not around to clean up. I know these are not medical articles, which generate more sense of urgency, but it is a study in mediocrity none the less. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:00, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
To clarify, I added myself on last night because it's the only way to add an article if you aren't the enrolled student yourself (the Education Program Extension has some clear downsides, but it's what we have). I agree it's not the ideal process (and as LiAnna posted on Tuesday, we're working on how to change that for next term). But I'm adding articles for the term that just wrapped up because of community requests to make sure student articles are listed on course pages. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:19, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I didn't know (or think to check) that you'd only just added yourself. And it's definitely great that you're adding the articles. The issue, however, is how to avoid these situations in the future. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:31, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

And let me just add how things looked to me, as a case study in how things could go better. I happen to have Aimé Césaire on my watchlist, so when I saw that Jami (Wiki Ed) added it as part of a student assignment I thought "Yay! This is an article that's not very good, but it's about to be improved." I investigated a bit further to see how I could help out... But it's then that I noticed that the assignment was long over. I then wondered what on earth the student(s) had added, and found that it was a single edit of a month ago which, upon still further inspection, had added little or nothing to the article and consisted of material that mostly should be deleted. So I'm left with a general sense of an opportunity missed. What could have been a chance to improve an important article actually ended up making it worse and wasting my time. Net negative when there could have been a significant net positive. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:43, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

It was an odd class - they made talk page contributions to articles, and I was waiting for them to start editing. But except for a handful of students, it never happened...which may be something of a relief, since the class mushroomed from 19 students (a manageable size) to 67. Anyway, I went through their contributions, removed some problematic text (usual thing - close paraphrase or copyvio, inadequate sources) and I'm left with two articles that need a closer look: Isosorbide dinitrate/hydralazine and Leticia Avilés. The former was expanded using a book, so I can't check for copyvio or close paraphrase. It may not be MEDRS compliant, but neither is what was there before. The latter needs a closer look - the article doesn't make a strong assertion of notability, but the only independent source calls her "One of the nation's foremost experts on spiders". I can't, in good faith, send it to AFD - so I'll take a look at it later and see if I can salvage it. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:39, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
Maybe Sasata could fix up the Spider Lady. Or, at least he would know who could ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:15, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Copyvio checks needed

Note that half of the student grade in this course is their Wikipedia work, prof is not identified on the course page, and they are assessing their own articles (rather than waiting for independent assesssment). Also, students are identified by full real name on the course page (making copyvio reports a serious matter).

Working through the Wikipedia:Education program/Tasks, I found this on the first source I checked

Source: [7]

  • younger workers perform within-nest tasks such as brood care, whereas older females perform higher risk tasks such as nest defense and foraging

Article:

  • While younger workers perform within-nest tasks such as brood care, older females perform riskier tasks such as nest defense and foraging.

Source:

  • accelerates the onset of guarding behavior, an age-correlated task, and increases the number of foraging females; and we demonstrate that JH titers correlate with both ovarian development of queens and task differentiation in workers

Article:

  • accelerate the onset of guarding behavior, an age-correlated worker task, but also increases the number of foraging females. Thus, the juvenile hormone levels correlate with both the ovarian development of queens and task differentiation in workers

More

Copyvio concerns are also raised on course talk.

So, a closer look at this course work is warranted (that article text suggests more of same will be found) It would also be helpful if they would add PMIDs or DOIs on their sources, making them easier to find. And they should not be assessing their own articles.[8]

Could someone please G12- speedy delete Polistes canadensis? It is not a valuable use of editor time to chase down other copyvio when one is found on the first source checked.

Doc James could the copyvio bot go through all of the articles from this course? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:55, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

More from Strassmann University St Louis course

Source:

  • Ecologically, P. versicolor is similar to temperate-zone species such as Polistes fuscatus or Polistes dominulus rather than other tropical species such as Polistes canadensis because although seasonal conditions are not drastic in terms of temperature, in southeast Brazil, there is a pronounced dry season

Article:

  • Ecologically, the yellow paper wasp lives in conditions similar to those of other temperate zone species, such as Polistes fascatus (a derivate Fuscopolistes) and Polistes canadensis (also in the Aphanilopterus subgenus). While the seasonal conditions are not drastic in terms of temperature, these species do share a pronounced dry season.

Source:

  • females ... the differences found here were exclusively size-related

Article:

  • The differences between females are exclusively size-related

Source:

  • In aggregations, new queens are indisputably the larger females among the females compositing an aggregation. After new nests are founded, the first emerged females are the smallest individuals.

Article:

  • Within an aggregation of yellow paper wasps, the queens are the indisputably the largest females and newly emerged females are the smallest.

Source:

  • colony size varies from seven (foundress associations) to nearly 100 females (mature colonies).

Article:

  • Colony size can vary from seven females (foundress associations) to nearly 100 females (mature colonies).

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:39, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: the listed instructors for that course are: @Abenaa07: and @Verniercass:, I retrieved this from the course information summary box (search the page for "Instructors"). — xaosflux Talk 00:04, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
I'm striking out on that search, Xaosflux? I see Verniercass as a TA, and her userpage says someone else is the instructor? User:Verniercass. Someone needs to know they shouldn't be assessing their own articles, and we need copyvio checking. Here are the sum total of article contribs to Wikipedia for Verniercass, and here are the article contribs for Abenaa07 (possible COI edits). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:30, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
They are listed on Education Program:Washington University in St. Louis/Behavioral Ecology (Fall 2014) -- now this only means they are set up that way on enwiki, can't be sure one of them is really the instructor (It does look like Verniercass is a TA). That course also has a WikiEd volunteer, @Ian (Wiki Ed): and an on-campus volunteer as well @Rulew: — xaosflux Talk 00:44, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Ack, I finally found that box (why is it near the bottom of the page, instead of top like other courses? I don't know why my ctrl-f search didn't find it). Is it unreasonable to think this program could be more successful with online volunteers and instructors who are active and experienced editors? Shouldn't the instructors have been checking for copyvio before grading (which is presumably already done by now)? 00:53, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
The course professor is @Agelaia:. User:Verniercass(Talk)

We seem to have everyone on board now. This class worked on dozens of articles; will the prof and TAs be checking all of the articles for plagiarism and copyvio? Also, could you please request that students add PubMed identifiers (PMIDs) or DOIs to citations, as that makes it easier to locate sources ? Also, who is the St. Louis University IP who has been doing assessments? Assessments should be independent, and two articles with copyvio were assessed as B-class. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:38, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I have all the references the students used and all the contributions. I will work through all the articles in the next few weeks, simply fixing things. I wrote many of the research articles and know the field well. The students were told exactly what plagiarism is, in the syllabus and on the Wikipedia assignment.
Here is what the syllabus says:
Plagiarism occurs when someone takes the ideas, words, or sentences of another and passes it off as their own. It can be avoided by never using the exact or general structure of someone else, and by citing references when another’s ideas are used. Be vigilant and avoid plagiarism, and point it out if you see it in a paper draft. We will talk more about this later. It will not be allowed in any form.
Here is what the Wikipedia assignments say:
Can I copy information that I find from another source? No, that would be plagiarism. You can neither copy content entirely, nor just change the words around while keeping the general structure and ideas of another person. If you do this, the penalty will be severe, in accord with Wash U rules. If you detect plagiarism in any work already up on Wikipedia, or by a classmate, let the honor council for your section know, or you can tell me or a TA.
Other students and the teaching assistants have worked through all the articles several times already. Agelaia (talk) 01:56, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
If you are saying the other students and TAs evaluated the articles for plagiarism and copyvio, it is apparent that they did not.

Anyway, this is getting more and more awkward, since Joan E. Strassmann was taken mostly verbatim from University sources, and additionally had self-cited (rather than third-party sources) claims. Wikipedia can't copy from UStL without permission (via OTRS, for example) from them, so I've reduced that article to a stub and will let someone else rewrite it.

I regret having found these issues because I was testing the Education Program's new Wikipedia:Education program/Tasks, and I hope someone else will take over and clean up these problems. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:16, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Unless you put quotes around it, it is attempting to pass it off as your own even if references.
Here is our policy around quotes Wikipedia:Non-free_content Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:04, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Verniercass, Agelaia, please become familiar with the information contained in the helpful posts here from Choess and Moonriddengirl. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:06, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

The problems propogated by this program just get deeper and deeper. Here we have a course TA (Verniercass, who now has all of five edits to wikipedia article space) evidencing a lack of understanding of numerous Wikipedia basic practices, guidelines, and policies, including but not limited to COI, external jumps in text, citations that do not verify text, incorrect footnote placement relative to punctuation, incomplete citations, puffery sourced to self, uncited information and incorrect formatting on children, and more.[9] Could someone without a COI and knowledgeable of Wiki editing please go clean up the article Joan Strassmann? If that is editing from the TA in this course, how can we expect more from the students, and who can we expect to clean up all the articles? (And again, including PMIDs or DOIs on journal articles would be helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:07, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Hold on, am I getting this right. This professor's TA is writing her Wikipedia article, and is also participating in the Education Program?! --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:38, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, and possibly more. But the bigger concern is a lack of understanding of plagiarism, copyvio, et al, and who will clean up those articles ?? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:40, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
And this is another instructor with essentially no edits to Wikipedia articles. Indeed, the article she has edited most is the one on her husband. When we have instructors and TAs who clearly do not know the basics of Wikipedia policies, no wonder there's trouble. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:45, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I'd been meaning to check this class out later as they appear to editing mostly entomology articles, but I didn't realize the problems were this bad. A part of assignment descriptions that bothered me was also this[10]:

What if other Wikipedians have taken down or totally changed my entry? Look at why they did this. If it is because there were serious problems with it, fix them. If it is because the others felt the material did not fit, and you disagree, argue with them. Get help from others in the class to participate. Do your best to keep your material up there, even if modified. Try to understand what is going on. Ask us. You can also work on modifying and expanding what others have put up. I do not think this will be a big problem if you have worked on an animal for which there is little information and done it properly.

That's some very blatant canvassing there. The general argue with them bit isn't helpful at all, but following with get others to help and keep it the material up there as best they can is not advice that should be given to new editors. I'm going to go through many of the articles and review them for general cleanup since the class is done, but I probably won't get around to pressing things like copyright issues very soon. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:49, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Echoing the obvious statement that "Get help from others in the class to participate" is very much inappropriate. Additionally, the overall tone of 'try to get the content to stay there' is really very unhelpful - I'd wager that this led to much more harm than good. I don't know much about the education program but am becoming interested; are these assignment descriptions vetted by experienced Wikipedians or is it left entirely to the course instructor? Sam Walton (talk) 18:57, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

And the other long-standing problem promoted by the Education Program is the COI in inherent in paid-editing-for-a-grade (the grading rubric for this particular course is too highly weighted to Wiki Work), whereby they may be advancing the prof's research agenda, since many of these articles highly cite Prof and her spouse.

The potential for COI is too high here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:04, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

A third instance

A third here, from this source. This editor has numerous other edits, so perhaps a CCI is needed. Of concern is that the issues here extend beyond the articles listed on the course page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:13, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

User-space contributions for possible informal and/or unregistered class project back in 2008?

Hi all,
I'm on CSD patrol this pleasant summer evening AEST, and in the morning UTC, and I've come across the contributions of WeepingBritney (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) They are all in user-space. They are all up for [[WP:U5] deletion. I can't identify the class project or the class's professor. There seems to me to be some value in WeepingBritney's contributions. Should they be deleted?
I would appreciate your thoughts about this. (PS: I incorrectly identified WB's contributions as recent, and sent them a message. I'm kind of bad with dates, and numbers in general. I'm not going to link "Dyscalculia" again, as it already links to far too many of my comments instead of the article itself.)
Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 09:46, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I would decline a CSD on these; however they are very stale and if the editor is gone placing all of Special:PrefixIndex/User:WeepingBritney up for MfD would likely result in removal. — xaosflux Talk 16:47, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Race, feminism, representation issues

Just noting that there was a potentially problematic course page brought up at AN. Here is the link Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#University_class. Cheers, NativeForeigner Talk 04:18, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Course needing attention

Education Program:University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill/PSYC500 - Developmental Psychopathology (Fall 2014) is an example of a course that caused significantly more work than benefit this term. The good news is they at least have a course page, and some of their work is confined to sandbox; the bad news is this course has hit numerous articles with content that isn't salvageable. Could someone from Wiki Ed contact the prof, Eyoungstrom, and help get them better versed in WP:MEDRS, WP:MEDMOS, encyclopedic writing and tone, and work on adding content in the right place? They seem to have no knowledge of MEDRS or any basics of writing medical content on Wikipedia. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:15, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Imperialism

Could someone please take a look at Imperialism? I'm assuming that when a large number of new accounts all start to edit the same article (without clear vandalism/socking), the most likely explanation is that it's a class. Talk page discussion here. Thanks, Sunrise (talk) 20:19, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

I looked, and it's got to be either a class, or a remarkable case of meatpuppetry. One thing to keep in mind, where you left "@Account name" messages, is that the notification system here seems awfully buggy, so there is no guarantee the editors will see your message. What works the best would be if you go to the talk page of every putative student account, and leave Template:Welcome student there. Once you've done that, you can take note of WP:NOTTA for your own information, and the WikiEd staff should see the discussion here and follow up. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:53, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
@Sunrise and Tryptofish: Thanks for the heads up and for trying to engage the students. I believe I've tracked down the course and its instructor. If I'm correct, it's a relatively short-term assignment that ends next week. It's not a Wiki Ed supported course, but I'm reaching out now to see if we can change that for next term (or for the rest of this term, if possible). If there's anything else to report, I'll post it here. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:48, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry everyone, I'm the instructor and didn't know about Wiki Ed. I'll get on board with it for next term if I try again. Doesn't seem to make sense for this term since the assignment is short and nearly over. Many apologies for the mess! I'll try to help clean it up. --Sara.koopman (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 21:50, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

@Sara.koopman: Thanks for posting here and for addressing the concerns raised. I sent an email to you moments before seeing you replied here. Please feel free to leave a message for me either on my talk page or by email if you'd like to know more about the kind of support Wiki Ed can provide for next term, as well as some tools that may be useful even though this term is almost over. Our Content Experts, for example, are knowledgeable and experienced Wikipedians who can provide feedback to your students about their edits. There's a good overview at the For Instructors section of our website. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:21, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Gold cluster

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Student editing Gold cluster to get a good grade Nil Einne (talk) 13:09, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I left a message at User talk:Michael Liao Sax. I don't know what class it is, but I'll be trying to connect with the instructor. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:27, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
@Choor monster, PamD, Nil Einne, Smokefoot, and Ian (Wiki Ed): Just to follow this up... I did a little detective work and located the instructor of the class, who I just spoke to on the phone. He was very happy to find out there are resources available for course assignments and will be working with WikiEdu next time he teaches this class. The professor knows a bit about Wikipedia and explained that he is careful with what he OKs students to add to Wikipedia and works with them closely before doing so. But we talked about how he could get more involved with their editing on-wiki, too. In general I think there's actually some real potential for good contributions coming from this class. Thanks for working to fix the issues here an bringing it to broader attention. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:05, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi Ryan - a huge thank-you for doing this outreach. A big problem is with content - the students are adding information that is too specialized. They do not understand encyclopedic tone and generality of our content. So if we see this instructor get involved, I will emphasize secondary sources, minimizing minutia, and avoidance of a textbook-y approaches (explaining things). According to Chemical Abstracts Service, 2998 reports, patents, and publications exist on gold clusters as of today. But again, thanks. --Smokefoot (talk) 22:38, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

New course with 55 students, not integrated to Project Education

Please see User_talk:Doc_James#Class_page. Jytdog (talk) 13:19, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

@Jytdog: Thanks. I've responded there. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:26, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
thanks! it never stops for you guys. Jytdog (talk) 18:32, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Pre-Botzinger complex, Marquette University Neurobiology course article

@Ryan (Wiki Ed) and Ian (Wiki Ed):: There is trouble here. Some editors noticed that two articles Pre-Botzinger Complex and Pre-Botzinger complex existed, the former containing new student work. Two days ago a merger was proposed, and yesterday the merger was "boldly" carried out, thereby wiping out the student work. Obviously this will cause fear, uncertainty, and doubt, not to mention confusion. Looie496 (talk) 14:49, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this @Looie496:. I saw this yesterday and it should be fine (though I will drop the instructor a note, just in case). While one member of the group moved their sandbox into mainspace, another (correctly) merged the sandbox content into the main article. The bold merge was actually the correct thing to do. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:27, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
@Looie496, 6487heffroa, 2456ambrosa, BiologyGF, MMBiology, and Natg 19: Thanks for the heads up. I'm also pinging the students working on the article, their professor, and the editor who redirected it.
Here's what it looks like happened:
  • Pre-Botzinger complex (lowercase c) existed as a stub first.
  • Pre-Botzinger Complex (capital C) was developed in a student's sandbox and moved to the article space on 3/31.
  • A student also copied the content into the lowercase c article. The result is two pages which are identical except that the lowercase c article already had a stub with sources which is now the lead. No harm in redirecting.
  • @6487heffroa, 2456ambrosa, and BiologyGF: It looks like a major to-do list item for you is to figure out what to do with the content that was already there, including all those references (I don't know how good they are, but there are more references in the lead than in the rest of the article -- and some sections of the article don't cite any sources at all). The lead should just summarize the rest of the article.
@MMBiology: If you look for individual contributions through this point, you can see them at the history for the capital C article.
((edit conflict) I see Ian already explained part of this :) ) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:38, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Segmentation in Human Nervous System

This new article has the appearance of an educational assignment, but no information about what course it goes with. The topic is valid, but the article is just a collection of random facts, worse than useless to a reader. It would probably be as easy to start from scratch as to turn this article into something useful. Looie496 (talk) 14:56, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

@Looie496: Thanks again. Out of curiosity, what about this one signals it being a class assignment? I haven't had time to take a close look at the style of writing, but it looks just like an article created in the sandbox first? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:40, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
It looks like an educational assignment because it looks like an editor trying to write about a topic that they don't understand, and throwing together a bunch of random facts to give a pretense of understanding. A person who had even a basic understanding of nervous system segmentation would write a very different article. Looie496 (talk) 16:00, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Looking at their talk page, it appears to be their second try at this; their original attempt was deleted. I need to switch accounts to see what was in the deleted article, but I'm guessing it's the same as what's here. Anyway, I think it best to userfy the article, so I moved it to User:Origins3F03100/Segmentation in Human Nervous System and left them a note about it. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:45, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

problematic class assignments at Virginia Tech

There is a Physiological Psychology class at Virginia Tech, taught by Dr. Harrison, in which the students have been given an assignment of adding references to a Wikipedia article, but the class is not registered with the Education Program as far as I can tell, and the students were not given adequate instructions. User:Psyeconhokie16 is one of the students; she made edits to the anxiety article that were reverted by another editor. Would somebody from the Education Program like to handle this? Looie496 (talk) 17:56, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

@Looie496: Thanks for the heads up. Reached out to the professor, who has expressed interest in working with WikiEdu in the past. I've set up a tentative (empty) course page here: Education Program:Virginia Tech/Physiological Psychology (Spring 2015) and invited the professor to add some information. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:04, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Great! Do you suppose you could also give some advice to the student I mentioned? (She responds to messages on her talk page.) Looie496 (talk) 20:33, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
@Looie496: Let's ping Ian (Wiki Ed) to see if he'll have time to do so. However, especially this time of year, as student editing gets more intense, while we try to help as many people as we can, we do have to prioritize classes which are Wiki Ed supported classes. Meanwhile, however, I've communicated the issues to the instructor, linked to the relevant guidelines, and provided additional information in an effort to get her to the point where we can commit support.
To explain further, since it might not be so clear, supported classes are the ones which went through the process of creating a course page, have provided information about the class, have students enroll, and, most importantly, have provided assurances that their assignment incorporates certain best practices for assignment design (things like mandatory student training, links to brochures, work in sandboxes, clear milestones, and so on -- things built into the Assignment Design Wizard to make these processes as unobtrusive as possible). Since we're already over 1900 students in those supported classes, and many classes at schools on quarter systems have not yet signed up, we have to prioritize. Meanwhile, just as student editors shouldn't receive undue negative treatment by virtue of being a student editor, they don't get special treatment either, so issues can also be taken to other noticeboards if necessary. (This is more a general explanation -- I don't expect anyone sees a need to escalate the current example). --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:33, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Another one to track down

As is typical for this time of year, they are everywhere, and very time-consuming. Would Wiki Ed staff be interested in trying to track down this one? [11] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:45, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

 Done @SandyGeorgia: emailing now. Will update here if/when I get a response. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:17, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Above my pay scale

Education Program:Denison University/Development of Children with Special Needs (Spring 2015)

Could someone please sort this? I don't do images, and this is above my pay scale.

Skinner's Pigeon uploaded File:Gray matter loss in pediatric schizophrenia.JPG as "own work" from http://www.abnormalchildpsychology.org . That website seems to belong to or be associated with a professor who teaches psychology at Denison University. Article edits by students from Skinner's Pigeon's course (at Denison University) are extensively citing a book by that same professor (without page numbers, by the way).[12] This looks like a multiple COI situation; should Skinner's Pigeon be declaring a COI on his user page, and should the students be citing his work? Or should the students be declaring a COI per citing their prof's own work? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:12, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes. I have concerns with this. Students should be using higher quality references such as review articles. We should be using major medical textbooks rather than a profs abnormal psyc book. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:09, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
I'm confused - why should we use medical textbooks rather than psych textbooks for child development articles? (Note that this is not a comment on the potential COI issue.) Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:22, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
As the image appears to have issues (website doesn't state a licence, therefore is assumed copyrighted), I've nominated it for deletion. Mdann52 (talk) 18:31, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Mdann52, the editor has uploaded other images. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:19, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
@Doc James and SandyGeorgia: Addressing the COI matter in particular (putting aside the image and the extent to which they may be relying on the textbook): Would a satisfactory approach be for the prof to disclose the COI on behalf of himself and the class's participants (listed at the course page) on the talk pages for the articles the students work on? Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:49, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for weighing in, Ryan. The general problem with using a broad overview textbook is that, because of the time required to bring to print, it is unlikely to include the latest or most detailed on a particular topic. The specific problem that can come to the table in cases like this one is a potential COI where students are promoting their prof's work (I am not saying that is the aim here, just that it is something seen very frequently with student editing, albeit not always readily apparent). It seems that at minimum, both students and prof (and course page?) should have COI disclaimers, and the students might be instructed to avoid using their prof's book, or to suggest it on talk, because ... In every case I've checked, there are good secondary recent journal reviews available, most often even free full text. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:10, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Ryan (Wiki Ed) SandyGeorgia I think there is no certain best practice here. Definitely I think student pages should link to the course page, but I am not as sure as Sandy that student pages also need to talk about COI. In my opinion, it would be enough for student pages to link to the course page, then the course page talk about the COI. My proposal would be this:
  • Post on the course page "Information shared in this course includes content from Book X, written by the instructor of this course"
  • Post on the professor's user page "This person is the instructor in (link to course page). Information shared in this course includes content from Book X, written by me."
  • Post on every student's page "This person is a participant in (link to course page)."
For the future, if someone started the conversation, I might support a proposal about having Wiki Ed people (or any staff) post important information like this to userpages routinely, because making connections between students and the course should happen as soon as possible. Ideally if the software existed some of the connections could be automatically posted when anyone enrolled in a class as student or professor.
Ian (Wiki Ed) - I have not seen this textbook, but some textbooks rely on the authority of an author, and some are backed by institutional review. As always with health claims, information should come from sources which meet WP:MEDRS. Some psych books meet this, some do not, and it should be apparent at a glance which ones do. Any psych textbook is fine for talking about aspects of psychology which are not health claims. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:15, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Bluerasberry - but these are psychology topics. Which is why I am puzzled by the assertion that a medical text is preferable for psychology topics to a psychology text. Even an excellent textbook is rather less good when writing about topics outside the field of expertise of its primary authors and reviewers. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:55, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Ian (Wiki Ed) Biology is life science, and there are lots of things to say about life science and even health science which are not health claims. Information about biology or even health science which is not making health claims can be shared without MEDRS sources. Similarly, in psychology only a part of the field addresses health issues, and most of psychology describes something else. Whenever making a health claim, MEDRS applies no matter the field - cooking, architecture, politics, sports, fashion, whatever. Whenever talking about anything unrelated to health, like most of psychology, MEDRS sources are not required. Many people do not discriminate at all between the information they consume, and treat health information as casually as they would anything else. On Wikipedia there is a line around health claims. The standards at WikiProject Medicine are not high; they just put a minimal floor saying that below a certain point no one should use worse sourcing. It is the least that anyone can do to try to prioritize health claims from sources related to the field of medicine. It is actually rather uncommon for papers in psychology to make health claims, even though it is common for new users on Wikipedia to invent their own health claims not in the original source and try to argue that the paper cited supports their new claim. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:24, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Another problem with this course's edits (see sandboxes as well) is the usual (mis) understanding about wikilinks and encyclopedic writing, and adding unnecessary content in the wrong places. For example, this course is trying to rewrite schizophrenia at pediatric schizophrenia. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:37, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

See scary sample at User:StephAntone/sandbox.
And their use of decades-old sources, sample at User:Mollieevans23/sandbox. (Anorexia nervosa has been hit hard this term, and from what looks like about three different courses.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:11, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
  • comment - I work at WP:COIN a lot. going back to the original post at the top, i think that students citing an instructor's textbook is very troubling and there should be something about this in instructor guidelines. here are the issues:
  • per WP:SELFCITE (part of the section on Writing about yourself and your work in the WP:COI guideline), editors are generally advised not to cite their own work. See also the last bullet in WP:EXPERT
  • COI issues at schools around professors assigning students to buy and use their own books/works is a well known topic (see here, for example from the AUP); having students edit WP using the textbook adds an additional level of COI, per the bullet above
  • to the extent that students depend on their edits for their grade (which happens a lot as we have discussed before), they already have a COI. adding the risks around offending or brown-nosing your teacher by citing his or her work, just adds yet more COI pressure on top of that.

so... in my view, there should be strong advice to instructors to not allow their students to cite the instructor's work. Just take that whole bundle of issues out of the picture. that is my perspective. Jytdog (talk) 14:32, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

@Eryk (Wiki Ed): Can you think of somewhere in one or more of the materials for instructors where it might make sense to bring up some quick best practices regarding classroom-specific COI issues in general? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:56, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
@Ryan (Wiki Ed): Certainly! Seems to me the consensus is that while WP:COI does the job, we'd like more eyes to review that information before they get going? I think there's a cozy place in the instructor training for a summary and link. Ryan, would you like to draft something up and post it here for review first? Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:11, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Anorexia nervosa

It looks as if potentially three different classes are editing AN. Could someone please have a look at Sisipherr and Talk:Anorexia nervosa? It is taking a lot of work to keep up with it all ... perhaps someone on staff can get these courses to register and read/understand MEDRS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:47, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Just reposting my reply to the emails I received: My small medical research and ethics class attempted to read the MEDRS guide and figure out how to add citations to Wikipedia, but there were clearly some issues. We do some work on Wikiversity, but will not be doing further work on Wikipedia. I didn't register a formal class page because a handful of students were doing a very brief exercise on one day. I admit that we had trouble understanding parts of the citation guide, but I was very distressed by the extreme hostility directed toward my students when they made mistakes. My students say that they received confrontational, shaming, and mean-spirited messages from editors when they attempted to act in good faith, and I'm that worried none of these students will work up the nerve to try again. I'm sorry for the trouble we caused. In the future, we will avoid participating in Wikipedia. Sisipherr (talk) 18:22, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Sisipherr, those are curious statements, since as far as I can tell, there are no messages directed at your students (that is, those presumed to be your students) on their talk pages, and this is the only message I am aware of. Could you please provide any diffs to back these interpretations of "hostility"? You might also observe that, had you registered a course, they might have had a different experience. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:30, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
For example, this one. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:39, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
One of the research groups that contacted me this morning was very upset about some messages or emails they received (I need to speak with them further to clarify where they received these). I am also trying my very best to work in good faith and navigate what is to me a very confusing interface in which it can be quite difficult to find assistance. I'm very sorry that I angered you and created more work. I'm very willing to take the blame for their bad experience. I had not encountered the call to "register a course" before, despite having looked through the Project Education page recommended to me Sisipherr (talk) 18:50, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Sisipherr: First, I don't know why you assume you have "angered me" or that any blame taking is needed (this is how it goes in here :) Second, this characterization of "hostility" exemplies one of the reasons I don't use email for these kinds of situations (all of my correspondence is visible to all, so misinterpretations can be avoided). Third, I seriously understand the confusing policies, guidelines, etc in here ... and hope you realize that if you had approached an article talk page (as in the example above), the experience could have been very different for your students. When six or eight accounts hit an article all at once, with no introduction, it can be hard to tell if that is student editing, sockpuppetry, meatpuppetry, or off-Wiki recruiting! Had your class introduced itself, someone could have explained MEDRS ... and that ultimately is why I posted here. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:56, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
I do want to clarify that I asked them to discuss any citations they were unsure of on the talk page first, but it looks like a few people skipped around that. I just sent an email to the research team reminding them to do so if they attempt any live-article edits in the future. For additional future reference, can you/anyone let me know how to register a course? I think I'm misunderstanding what that means. Sisipherr (talk) 18:59, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Sisipherr Someone who "works here" should come along shortly to help you with that part ... I don't understand that part myself, since the software isn't the usual for Wikipedia (and that is also why I posted here requesting help ... Wiki Ed has paid staff). By the way, they should also provide you some handouts or info on sourcing, but Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-30/Dispatches may also help! There are scores and scores of free full text secondary reviews available on PubMed ... pls ask your students to use PMIDs :) I'm glad you're sticking with it ... and please post any questions to my talk page if needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:04, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

@Sisipherr: Hi, I'm Ryan, classroom program manager with the Wiki Education Foundation. For the time being I'm just going to address the question of what it means to have a course page and what kind of support is available. I've left a message with that information on your user talk page. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 03:44, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

@Sisipherr:, it is commendable that your students are attempting to add citations where they are sorely needed (this is the most valuable kind of student work!!!!), but they are still adding primary sources as of today: sample. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:38, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. We discussed the issue, but like a lot of classroom issues, sometimes things can take a couple of runs through. Oddly, that was added a few days after the exercise was over, so she may just be testing the waters on her own time, but I'll check in. Sisipherr (talk) 01:04, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
It might be nice if the addition of peer-reviewed articles (even though primary sources, and therefore not the best option) were accepted as a temporary improvement, compared to having unsourced statements. I think we are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:10, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
I disagree, as it sends the wrong message to future (student too) editors, who use an WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS logic to add more of same. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:41, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
That's possible, I suppose. Of course, the converse is even more true: not reverting the addition of medium-quality sources would send the message to future editors that websites and 40-year-old articles weren't the only possible sources (and you and I both know, to our sorrow, that both of those were present in that article only a few days ago). Maybe a belief in eventualism is why the WP:BURDEN requires the initial editor only to supply a source that s/he believes, in good-faith, to be reliable, rather than permitting you to blank reliable sources that don't meet your especially high standards. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:48, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
I'm sorry you're having such a bad day. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:11, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Non-existent course

Is anyone able to track down and fix the red-linked course here? [13] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:27, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

User:SandyGeorgia: I fixed the link. 'DePaul' was miscapitalized.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:48, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Another

Is anyone at Wiki Ed able to track down this one? [14] And Anorexia nervosa may now have five courses working on it ... I invite anyone to view the talk page to see how I am spending my time (mostly letting them know how to sign entries, trying to figure out course/prof, and teaching them to avoid copyvio). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:23, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Could someone on Wiki Ed staff perhaps suggest another approach? [15] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:52, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
in re: anxiety, there are two Dr. Harrisons at VT in the psych department (and their website isn't clear enough for me to disambiguate them) so I've asked the student for a bit of help. ;) Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:02, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Could someone at Wiki Ed attempt to contact User:Lkswan about registering a course? There appears to be a course deadline approaching, and while talk page interaction was coming along just fine, all of a sudden ... the rush to get edits in, everywhere. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:25, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

  • Hi SandyGeorgia. I've sent an email to Lkswan asking if they or any of their colleagues are running a course this semester. I don't think I could tell from the contributions of the students I've identified if Lkswan is running the course (I don't believe anyone mentioned them by name and UF is a big place). Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:37, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks, Adam ... I saw the name somewhere in the rash of edits last night, and then couldn't relocate it when I went looking for where I saw it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:44, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I just got in contact with the professor, so it's the right one. Thanks for the heads up. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:00, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia and Adam (Wiki Ed): For context, Swan's class is also the one from this thread here. He's planning to work with us next term and expressed interest in learning more this summer. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:49, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

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