Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive 7

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Medicine-specific advice in the training for educators

I've gone ahead and taken a first stab at building a module of topic-specific advice for the educators training. (We can similarly add these to the student trainings as well.) Take a look at the trainings starting here: Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Topic-specific modules.

The content for the medical editing module lives here:

• The challenges of editing medical topics
• Identifying reliable medical sources
• Working with the community

Please improve! We can add more pages if necessary, but I strongly recommend not letting any individual pages get much longer than these; the less information on each page, the more of what's there will sink in. --Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:43, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

@Sage Ross (WMF): This looks really good—thanks for adding this. I do still agree with User:Wadewitz that other topics can have real-life consequences, too, but I also understand the purpose of appealing to the professor's sense of real-world implications if something goes wrong in the medical field. Maybe I can work with WikiProject Med to create a more detailed handout about medical references that I can share with med profs when they are set on teaching with Wikipedia. Thanks, again! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:56, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Jami, if we could make discipline-specific brochures (like the general ones we have), I think we might go a long way to fixing some of these problems. I find that more professors read the brochures than anything I link them to onwiki. SandyGeorgia and Colin, would you be willing to work with us in writing one specifically for professors designing assignments around medical articles? The challenge is to write for non-Wikipedians and to make the brochures concise. Let me know if you'd like to work on this! Wadewitz (talk) 22:15, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh yeah, for sure. I absolutely agree that professors have typically been more engaged with the brochures—mostly because they were written with professors as the audience. I think we can definitely recreate this on a micro level. It would be interesting to put together guides for specific disciplines to highlight the more important policies particular to the topic (we know new users don't read all of the policies and guidelines and need to know the most important ones) as well as guidelines for referencing, notability, relevant WikiProjects (and more integration there in general), etc. I think it's a discussion that would be important to have not only with Wikipedians but also with professors in those disciplines who have already taught with Wikipedia (and whose students have made positive contributions). If we don't take them and their real obstacles/successes into account, then we just end up speculating from one side of things. Maybe we can create some drafts and then ping trusted profs in that field to see if the advice resonates with them. Similar to what LiAnna has done with the general guidelines, which I think worked well. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:56, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

thanks for pinging me, Sage posted this to WT:MED and I agreed to have a look when I'm not so exhausted and burnt out-- I could not be effective just now due to burnout, so give me a few days. I scrolled through it, and it looks like I can comment on the talk page of the second module, which I plan to do. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:49, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Great! Thanks! I look forward to it. Wadewitz (talk) 23:16, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Sage, thanks for doing this! I like the way it gives some concise and useful advice about med-related content, and I'll give some thought to further improvements soon. But I want to alert you that, on the opening page, the link about "my class works in other areas" just links to the same sequence about medicine, so that needs to be fixed. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:51, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 12:40, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I have a further thought. I very much like the way that the "Working with the community" content addresses, well, working with the community. To a large extent, it's a succinct pointer to how to avoid about 99.9% of the drama that ends up here on this noticeboard. In particular, the language on "please plan to monitor student edits regularly and closely, and be prepared to participate in talk page discussions yourself when students get in over their heads", as well as the advice to engage with experienced editors, is really something that goes for all subject areas, not just medical content. I'd strongly suggest having a corresponding page for the "works in other areas" track as well, and maybe this is something that should be featured prominently somewhere earlier in the training sequence. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:38, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm still struggling to see how some PowerPoint slides can prepare someone to run a class where the students are being asked to do something the professor hasn't. I don't really see a substitute for the prof or some delegate instructor being a Wikipedian. Where else in higher education does this occur, where the instructor hasn't done anything like the assignment themselves? While this is well intentioned, like much of the education program, I don't think reading about something for a few minutes (let alone a few hours) prepares someone for actually doing it. And that's on an individual scale. The consequences when they ask 100 students to do something are a huge amplifier. We all know newbies make mistakes because they have a big learning curve, so how does it work if one's instructor not only isn't further ahead of that curve than the students, but has no intention of stepping onto it. Colin°^Talk 16:11, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Agree there needs to be significant involvement from those with Wikipedia experience. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:41, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Colin and Doc James: The idea is not that these trainings will be a complete infusion of everything that students or professors should know, but rather an efficient way for them to learn enough to get started as effectively as possible. In my experience, the biggest motivation for most professors to get involved is their recognition of how far Wikipedia's coverage short falls in their areas of interest. With my volunteer hat on this weekend, I've been at the History of Science Society annual meeting talking with professional historians about Wikipedia in general, and Wikipedia assignments in particular. I've talked with a bunch of professors who are interested in having their students work on Wikipedia, and also several others who are already doing so in ways I didn't know about. In our history of science coverage (and I would say, in the humanities more broadly) there's so much room for improvement that it frankly doesn't take much involvement from experienced editors, as long as the professors are starting from a realization of just how crappy a lot of our coverage is in areas they know about and they get enough guidance to put together a sensible assignment. (In my role as a volunteer) I've been looking after a few courses lately, and even in cases where the student work falls short of our standards for good research and writing, it's not a big deal when they are dealing with articles that are woefully inadequate to begin with; they still leave them in better shape than when they started. Overall, my impression is that we're seeing a smaller proportion of classes have significant problems each semester (and I'm pretty sure that the improvements in the self-service trainings we have for both students and instructors are a big part of that) but medicine-related problems still come up consistently. There are probably other particular topic areas that would similarly be more likely to cause problems if/when we start to see classes in those areas. I want to make it easy to alleviate what problems we can through the trainings, with the recognition that they won't be a magic bullet, but they do have a pretty high impact when they get used.

Tryptofish, I agree that catch-all additional advice module for other topic areas would be good. I'll work on that soon. (And folks should feel free to put together other topic-specific modules in areas they care about, if there are particularities that would help professors and students do better or cause fewer problems.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Medicine has particular problems, but we also saw terrible classes editing psychology articles. I'm not sure the problems are just related to these domains. Surely 1st-years doing an "Introduction to quantum mechanics" could cause the same issues there. Actually, looking at Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) you see this isn't a medicine class at all. And perhaps that's the biggest problem of all. These students are learning about basic aspects of a science, and yet are writing articles about a disease or a symptom or other off-topic or far-wider-than-topic subjects. So not only is the prof not a Wikipedia, but also not a physician, let alone a neurologist. He's a scientist interested in neurons. I've seen this before with psychology classes editing neuroscience and medicine articles. I guess many of the students doing these "Introduction to" classes are medical students or wished they were. They certainly aren't writing about a subject the prof teaches. This is really bad. The more I look into this, the more fundamentals of teaching are just being broken here. WP:MED-topics may be active on this board but I think that is party a chance occurrence of interested editors and the promotion of academic psychology classes that occurred a while back. Can you imagine a class doing "Introduction to Latin American literature" class writing an article on South American football teams. Because that, really, is the level of overlap we're seeing here. Colin°^Talk 17:57, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Elsewhere, there has been discussion about the fact that it is difficult to get some instructors to care enough to read WP:ASSIGN. For that reason, I'm of the opinion that it's a good thing to have these very succinct PowerPoint slides to try to convey the gist, without the tl;dr. And the reason that I strongly recommend expanding the use of what's said at Working with the community is that the gist, in this case, goes right to where most of the problems that show up on this noticeboard come from. If it were just a matter of "it's not a big deal when they are dealing with articles that are woefully inadequate to begin with; they still leave them in better shape than when they started", as Sage said, I don't think editors would feel so strongly. The problem is either when halfway-decent or better pages are made worse, or when new pages show up that are worse than no page at all (and, yes, that's possible). Anything that can get more instructors to "work with the community", I'm all in favor of it. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:43, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

The real issue is primary source abuse

But I'm not sure if the slides adequately explain that issue. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Straying outside of the class topic

One of the frequent problems we see with students tackling medical topics is that they aren't actually medical students doing a medicine class. These are neuroscience students or psychology students. Neuroscience is about neurons and chemical pathways, really basic stuff. When writing about this stuff, rat research might be quite acceptable. It isn't acceptable for writing about epilepsy in humans say. Psychology is about the science of how we think/perceive/etc and not about autism say. These students are straying outside of their class into subjects the prof knows little or nothing about. He won't be familiar with the literature nor with the issues of what is clinically relevant information, for example. He won't be teaching them how to research medical literature and report on it in an encyclopaedic way. Someone focused on basic neuroscience may see nothing wrong with speculating on gene cures for epilepsy based on nothing more than the idea that "chemical x is involved in neurons firing" + "neurons fire too much in epilepsy" + "gene therapy can get stuff into the body". But it aint good enough for Wikipedia.

We need to revise guidance given to profs to say the students must absolutely stick to the class topic and not to exceed their knowledge at this point. Too many students are writing about advanced subjects that require knowledge one might expect at graduate level or after experience in the field. And they are writing about stuff they aren't ever going to learn in the class they are taking. Therefore they don't really understand their sources and aren't capable of explaining the subject properly to readers. IMO, this makes 1st year science/medicine undergraduates highly unlikely to be useful for adding any significant amount of material to WP. Colin°^Talk 10:37, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

New software features, design feedback requested

Mockup of course status displayed on Special:Contributions

As mentioned within a few threads earlier, we have some improvements to the course page extension in the pipeline. Namely (in addition to some minor bug fixes):

• Instructors will be able to assign articles to students (instead of only students being able to add articles for themselves, and no one else being able to make corrections or updates). This is coded, but not yet deployed.
• Instructors will be able to add students to their courses (instead of students enrolling themselves as the only way of updating the list of students). This is coded, but not yet deployed.
• Special:Contributions will show what courses a user is participating in. Coding is about to begin on this.

For the last item, I've mocked up how the information could appear on Special:Contributions.

What do you think? Suggestions for improving this design are most welcome.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Would it be possible to give instructors the ability to approve or disapprove a student's request to move a sandbox into article space? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:28, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: I don't think intervening in the normal aspects of editing will be part of the extension any time soon, although it's certainly worth thinking about what types of tools might help instructors guide student work on an article-by-article basis. In terms of moves into mainspace specifically, I anticipate that the Growth team will start addressing the article creation process in general before we get a chance to implement something like that within the education program extension.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Sage. Might you want to set a time to talk about the extension perhaps in the first week of December? Maybe we could discuss it for an hour. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:25, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how useful that would be. If you have specific ideas, discussion points, or things you'd like to know about the feasibility of, you can post them at the planning page on mediawiki.org.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation Executive Director job posting

The Wiki Education Foundation is now accepting applications for the post of Executive Director. Details of the job, and how to apply, can be found here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:40, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Restoring a course

I accidentally removed a course Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) and don't know how to restore it. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive257#Restoring a course. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:01, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Eeek! The restore links are not working. Undeletion of courses used to work, but it must have broken at some point due to either updates in the EducationProgram extension or something else in MediaWiki. I'll see what we can do about fixing it quickly. Thanks for flagging this, PrimeHunter.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 03:36, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

A patch is ready, and I'll try to get it reviewed and deployed quickly.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:32, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Unless somebody makes the same mistake as me, the only current need is a way to restore or recreate that specific page. I guess the contributors could live with somebody else creating the page with its latest content, if somebody has database access to the content. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:07, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

However, I don't know if removing a course page has other effects that are harder to restore. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:10, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Sage. Will that automatically restore my course, or do I or an Administrator have to do something? Steve M. Potter, PhD -- Georgia Inst. of Technology (talk) 16:14, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Steve, please do not recreate the page, which I believe will make it very hard to recover the previous contents. Once we get this patch deployed (which I hope we can get done today), then your course can be undeleted and it should retain all the previous content.

PrimeHunter: getting the patch out will be easier than trying to recreate it from the database, especially since the information on enrolled students is not currently reproducible without having each student enroll again. (We have a more complex patch that adds the ability to add users as students in a batch, without them needing to do it themselves, but that is awaiting code review.) With undeletion, that won't be necessary, because the student list will be restored as well.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:46, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

OK, I will not touch it. Good luck with the restoration! I did manage to save the page source (by saving a rendered page that was up in my browser from yesterday before it vanished). So if we need to rebuild it, that could be done. Steve M. Potter, PhD -- Georgia Inst. of Technology (talk) 17:16, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Steve, all the contents of your course page (aside from the table of students at the bottom) is still around on the various subpages. I think it's just list of students and their articles, and the course description.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks PrimeHunter and Sage. There was also a small section called "Article banners" and the Course Page template links and buttons at the top. I will continue not to mess with it, hoping it can be restored to its former state. Steve M. Potter, PhD -- Georgia Inst. of Technology (talk) 19:15, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

"responsibility for supporting"

I'm not sure what that phrase means, with regards to the WP:WEF, so I made that edit. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:30, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Rhododendrites

Name

Ryan McGrady (Rhododendrites)

Institution

North Carolina State University

Course title and description

Assignment plan

Number of students

Start and end dates

I've incorporated Wikipedia into several classes now and taught a course specifically about Wikipedia last semester, but am only now starting to use the Education Program tools. I don't have a specific assignment I'm trying to coordinate at the moment because the semester is just about over but hope someone could add instructor rights to my account so I can use them next semester and in the future.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  01:27, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Hi, Ryan! I've granted you the user rights—looks like your students did a lot of great work, including at least 2 Good Articles that I saw. I'd like to speak with you more about your assignment and any questions you've had in the past that I can try to help answer. It looks like a few students have had issues with choosing article topics that meet the notability requirements on Wikipedia, so I can provide some guides for them and tips on reaching out to editors in relevant WikiProjects to "approve" topic notability before they put all of that hard work into it. I'll shoot you an email in case you prefer to coordinate something there. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:32, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I thought only regional ambassadors granted instructors the user right. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:34, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Is this the spot where you emailed me to ask me to reply? Please let me know if you're referring to something else. The reason I never had the user rights was because some people do not want WMF employees to have them. Since I am no longer a WMF employee, work with a lot more professors than any other Ambassador, and need to help professors and Ambassadors create their Course Pages without having to go through another person, I was granted the coordinator user right. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:13, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Should the extension be discouraged from use?

Given the poor functionality and the bad bug that was recently discovered in the WP:Education program extension, should it be discouraged from use in the Spring 2014 semester? Or do the benefits outweigh the cons? A course I help with had its entire course page deleted (still), because of a bug. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:33, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Could you link me to information about (or explain, if easy enough) this bug? --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  13:49, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I guess it refers to #Restoring a course. The suggested patch gerrit:98475 still says Review in Progress. I don't have inside knowledge of the progress but I guess it will not be an issue for Spring 2014. User talk:Sage Ross (WMF)#Course deletion explains how I accidentally deleted the course due to an unclear deletion interface (at least that's my excuse). That should be solved by gerrit:98874 which is already merged but not yet deployed. Anyway, the deletion interface was only a problem when a user with the ability to delete a course was also enrolled in a course and tried to unenroll from the wrong page. That is probably a rare combination. I don't work with the exstension and don't know whether there are other serious issues. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:11, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

In testing, I found that the patch for making undeletion possible will not restore the course in a working condition, because of limitations in the database transaction code. (Basically, even after undeletion the activity feed is not going to work.) Because it won't restore a fully working course page, we told the code reviewers that getting that patch out is not an urgent issue. (The improved version of the interface message that tripped up PrimeHunter will deploy this week.) The duplicate course page I set up for that course will have to suffice for now. However, I do anticipate that we'll have functional, fully reversible deletion ready by the time courses are active next term. The current next steps for development are to implement Notifications (so students and instructors get pinged for posts on the course talk page) and then to audit and fix the database transactions. There are still some serious shortcomings in the extension that will take longer to address, but I would say that the benefits definitely outweigh the downsides at this point... especially once the new features awaiting code review get deployed, like having a message linking to the course page show up in Special:Contributions for all student editors.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:02, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

If bugs were the reason not to this extension, then I suppose we shouldn't be using MediaWiki to edit? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 07:46, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

@Sage Ross (WMF): If it's unknown when courses can be properly restored then wouldn't it be safer to make course deletions impossible until then, except maybe for a few people like developers? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:42, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

It's useful to be able to delete courses, some of which get set up by mistake or with the wrong name, etc. I'd be more inclined to limit deletion to admins and course coordinators (although that would not have prevented your deletion), but I'm pretty sure we'll be able to restore courses properly by the time the next wave of course pages becomes active.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: 119.160.118.230 (talk)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Name

Institution

Course title and description

Assignment plan

Number of students

Start and end dates

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --119.160.118.230 (talk) 10:50, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Oppose I don't think that we can grant course instructor right to IPs, and even if we can, we shouldn't be doing it. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:32, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Request for Course Instructor rights

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Name Brian Buma

Institution University of Alaska Southeast

Course title and description Natural Resource Management

Assignment plan Students will either improve or create pages associated with various forest certification programs (e.g. Sustainable Forestry Initiative as an already done example). There are several without pages entirely, or those that are lightly described in the context of their certification organization (Smithsonian Bird Friendly). I will have the students complete the intro to Wiki editing assignments suggested by the education program pages, and encourage them to revise existing pages over making new ones. At this point, I will let them follow their interests as to which certification they work on, as long as it doesn't already have a substantial page.

Number of students 8-10

Start and end dates January - May 2014

Notes: I ran a Wiki assignment last semester w/out using the Educational program (I wasn't aware of it), with mixed results, although the students all enjoyed it. I found out about the educational program through links to some of the students pages. Several made outstanding pages that have been incorporated into the community already (and some that were deleted). I want to take advantage of the Educational resources this time. I will organize the assignment through the class page, although that's as far as it will likely go this time. If all goes well, next fall (2014) I will setup a more formal program with another faculty member here who also uses Wikipedia in assignments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brian.wikiaccount (talk • contribs) 21:01, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

• Question. Brian, I can see just above that you weren't familiar with signing your post here, a very basic aspect of editing on Wikipedia. How willing are you to familiarize yourself with how things work here, before having your class project begin? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:18, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Oversight. I've been working around it the last few weeks, learning the more formal ways of doing things. At least I'm looking to use the actual Educational Program than just assigning things... anyway, the goal is working on it once this semester gets over with. But yes, more familiarization is always good. Brian.wikiaccount (talk) 05:50, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

That was a nasty comment--we all forget from time to time. Gandydancer (talk) 00:43, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

From Brian's 16 contributions, it looks like it wasn't an isolated problem; rather, it looks like Brian is very inexperienced on WP. So, the comment wasn't so unreasonable. -- Scray (talk) 01:22, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

[1] was Brian's best attempt to sign a post. See User talk:Brian.wikiaccount for how to do it. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:49, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

OK, I see...and then he actually never followed through. Sorry Trypto, you were right, and BTW,I was certainly surprised since I did not remember you as being such a crabby person! :) Gandydancer (talk) 04:42, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, the student didn't follow through... but that of course is something that should be dealt with in the assignment design somehow. One of the reasons for being here and looking at the educational resources. Brian.wikiaccount (talk) 05:52, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Brian (and Gandy), please see WP:ASSIGN to better understand where I'm coming from. I would want to see any instructor read and be familiar with that information page, as well as go through the training program provided by the Program, before the rights are given out. It's not about being picky, but about being able to make sure that students don't get into jams when they show up and start editing. There's a lot more complexity to Wikipedia than initially meets the eye (and, again not to be picky, but even "oversight" means something other than the dictionary definition here)! --Tryptofish (talk) 16:50, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Tryptofish, I thought that I made it clear that I made a mistake--that sort of language would certainly not be generally acceptable. At any rate, I am an experienced editor and well-aware of the problems that we are having with students, and I don't need a lesson about it. No more sermons, please. Brian, it seems to me that you are the one that has a problem with following through--I was not speaking of your students. Tryptofish was, IMO, correct to suggest that past behavior is a good indication of future behavior. Gandydancer (talk) 17:48, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Brian, as an experienced editor myself (and, I hope, not a particularly crabby one), I hope that you can see how things might go when students interact with experienced editors, and why it's important that they get appropriate guidance. As I said, WP:ASSIGN, and the training program. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:17, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I am surprised at the response, given I came in good faith in an attempt to improve the class and contributions. Past behavior as a good guide to future behavior- perhaps sometimes, but when somebody specifically makes an effort to improve, then no, it's not. Apparently the education program isn't what I thought it was. But thanks to you and others for references to WP:ASSIGN and other resources (I had seen those, and was working through the instructions - which include starting a course page via this process). Consider the request cancelled for now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brian.wikiaccount (talk • contribs) 22:09, December 10, 2013‎

Brian, I hope that your conclusion from this is neither to feel turned off from Wikipedia, nor to try to run your class "under the radar" (to use a term that has been applied in other contexts on this board). Really, if you do the, well, "homework", you'll not only find that the Education Program wants to help, but you'll be in a much better position not to have your students run into anything that will hamper their educational experience. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:07, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Request for course instructor right: Joe (talk)

Name

Joe Smith

Institution

New Mexico State University, Doña Ana Community College

Course title and description

L SC 255 Special Topics: Wikipedia: let's use it, edit it and write in it. Students will be second year community college. Most are working toward Associate of Applied Science Degree in Library Science.

This eight week course is about learning to use and edit Wikipedia. Students will create a Wikipedia account, make edits to articles already written and have the opportunity to write a paragraph or short article about a topic of their choice.

Suggested areas of focus will be entries about

• Las Cruces, New Mexico.
• Doña Ana County, New Mexico.
• New Mexico State University.
• Thomas Branigan Memorial Library.
• The surrounding communities such as Anthony, New Mexico and El Paso Texas.
• Translating an approved article to the Spanish version of Wikipedia.

Although there is no experienced editor, the course will work with

• WikiProject Cities
• WikiProject Universities
• WikiProject New Mexico and other similar projects.

Assignment plan

Getting Started Syllabus Enrolled in Google Enrolled in Wikipedia User Page Sandbox Overview Overview from a previous course about Internet resources Possible articles to consider

• Las Cruces, New Mexico.
• Doña Ana County, New Mexico.
• New Mexico State University.
• Thomas Branigan Memorial Library.
• The surrounding communities such as Anthony, New Mexico and El Paso Texas.
• Translating an approved article to the Spanish version of Wikipedia.
• Depending on a student's location, accept proposals related to other cities, counties, universities and libraries.

Write and Edit.

Provide and receive feedback.

Reflect about

• the course content
• personal learning
• value of feedback provided to others
• value of feedback received from others

Provide at least one recommendation to improve the course.

STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES (The following are from Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Learning goals)

• Develop writing skills
• Increase media and information fluency
• Improve critical thinking and research skills
• Foster collaboration and community of practice
• Develop technical and communication skills

COURSE COMPETENCIES

• With respect to writing, you will be able to:
  • Demonstrate writing skills for a diverse and general audience
  • Demonstrate the ability to write using a fact-based style
  • Demonstrate the ability to write and edit collaboratively with peers
• With respect to media and information fluency you will be able to
  • Demonstrate the ability to edit, expand or create Wikipedia articles
  • Demonstrate an understanding about the relationship between Wikipedia and other sources, such as news outlets, other encyclopedias, and academic research
  • Demonstrate awareness about the questions of authorship, legitimacy and reliability raised by different forms of digital publishing
• With respect to improving critical thinking and research skills you will be able to
  • Demonstrate the ability to research and fact-check content for articles
  • Demonstrate the ability to review available content to determine suitability
  • Demonstrate the ability to apply critical analysis to the content being considered for inclusion
• With respect to fostering collaboration and community of practice you will be able to
  • Demonstrate the ability to collaborate with other editors
  • Demonstrate the ability to negotiate with peers and editors to build consensus on content
  • Demonstrate the ability to engage with a community of editors working in a similar topic area
• With respect to developing technical and communication skills
  • Demonstrate the ability to engage with real-time editing and wiki software technology
  • Demonstrate the ability to get the intended message across to others through communicating on Wikipedia Article and User Talk pages

Number of students

Less than 20. There will probably be about 10 active students.

Start and end dates

January 20, 2013 through March 10, 2013.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Joe (talk) 01:43, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Student drafts at Articles for Creation.

I am a reviewer at Articles for Creation, I have just found a student draft that had been submitted to AfC for review, I removed the submission template and explained at the talk page of the program concerned why student drafts should never be sent to AfC. This issue should be made known to all current and future educational projects. AfC's systems and practices are simply not compatible with the requirements of the Educational Project. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:07, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I just added a statement to that effect at WP:ASSIGN. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:59, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Here is the place in the trainings that mentions AfC: Wikipedia:Training/core/Sandbox edits for new articles. Feel free to edit that; note that it currently does encourage the use of AfC without any expectation that it will actually get processed within the timeframe of the assignment.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:54, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I have been teaching with Wikipedia as a project for quite a while now, and we were encouraged and urged early on to use the AfC system. Furthermore, I'm doing exactly what I've done in the past. I even posted here about the backlog maybe a month ago or so. This is the first time I have ever heard that this was a problem. There is no explanation by the poster as to why AfC is incompatible with the project. Obviously something at AfC is not working if they are 2,000 articles behind. Previously, it's only been backlogged a couple of hundred. So is this temporary? Or is this the new normal? Who from Education is communicating with AfC? Crtew (talk) 16:40, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it seems to be the new normal; the backlog has been stretching longer for quite a while now, and it seems that many people are just plodding through until we can get a better software-based solution to new article creation. (That's something the Growth team will be working on somewhat soon.) For what it's worth, my impression has been that AfC can be useful for students trying to create new articles as long as no one is counting on it as a prerequisite to moving on. But I'm not a regular at AfC, and that impression may be out-of-date now.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:47, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Correct. We should never use AfC for determining grades and that should be done at the sandbox. As I remember from the past, that may be faulty, using AfC was a further quality control measure outside of the classroom and was meant for those courses where students don't edit/create articles in Wikipedia mainspace. Crtew (talk) 17:08, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

OP back - Yes the backlog has been at about four weeks for a long time and until we get the new Drafts namespace and are able to use it to design more streamlined processes, it looks to stay that way. Grading in Sandbox is IMHO the only sane way to do it - if a draft has received an acceptable grade, move it directly to mainspace, sending it to AFC when it has already been found to be an acceptable article is simply redundant - a waste of resources. Most students never return to WP after getting their work graded so there most likely won't actually be anyone willing to "own" the draft to take it through the AFC process, which could take several months if there are multiple problems that need fixing. (Providing multiple "decline reasons" in a single review is a high-priority workflow improvement that is just waiting for the Drafts namespace to be implemented.) I hope this helps clear up the questions. Just a BTW thought: Working at AFC could be a good "training experience" for online and campus ambassadors - when they're not actively involved with a class project. BTWx2: I don't see very much evidence of students engaging with relevant WikiProjects, imho this could be emphasized more. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:01, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Ctg4Rahat

Ctg4Rahat (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   As a campus Ambassador I think I can get enough chance for promoting Wikipedia editing culture to my university students and friends. I am an undergraduate student of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at my University. I have 2 years experience as a contributor in Bengali Language Wikipedia. As a campus ambassador, I would like to enjoy sharing my experience to develop more information in and Bangladesh related pages at Wikipedia.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   I'm from Chittagong, Bangladesh. At present, I'm a undergraduate student of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology, which has more then 2,000 students and a notable public university of Bangladesh.

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   I am studying in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology. I am working as a freelancer journalist on Science, Technology, Youth, Development and Education at Zero to Infinity, a science magazine of Bangladesh. I also engaged with open source software movement at Bangladesh. I have interest in Biography, Places, History, Politics, Culture, Institutions, Universities, Current Events & other topics related to Bangladesh.

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   In 2012, when i joined Wikipedia, I got the open window of learning & sharing of what I know. My activities involve addition of info in articles, vandalism fighting, bringing WP:NPOV tone by copy editing and removing WP:OR and searching for free image which I can upload to commons.

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   At my university, I've connection with 5 students club, which may help me to get more interaction for the establishment of a great community of wiki contributors.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr:@Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911:@DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: - Rahat | Message 13:19, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support Enthusiasm is a plus! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:09, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

A bit of good news

As what I hope is an antidote to the trend of students who disappear from Wikipedia after the class ends, I want to point out a student (from one of the classes that has been a subject of concern at ENI) who signed up at WikiProject Neuroscience with the intention of staying around. Please see User talk:Tryptofish#Thanks!, User talk:Fu Hung Shiu#Welcome, and Talk:Neuronal loss in temporal lobe epilepsy#Merge proposal. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:08, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Ryan McGrady and RM395

Name

Ryan McGrady

Institution

North Carolina State University

Course title and description

Assignment plan

Number of students

Start and end dates

I have instructor rights for my primary editing account, Rhododendrites. I'm not sure how much I should duplicate my original request. While Rhododendrites is the account I use for 95% of Wikipedia activity (including research and engagement with other educators), I want to keep actual course pages and day-to-day course administration separate. When I taught a course specifically about Wikipedia I created a separate teaching account which incorporated the course number, RM395. Well, I've incorporated Wikipedia into several other classes now, so decided to create this one, Ryan McGrady, as a centralized teaching account -- and only now starting to use the Education Program tools. I don't have a specific assignment I'm trying to coordinate at the moment because the semester is just about over but hope someone could add instructor rights to my account so I can use them next semester and in the future. I'm requesting Instructor rights for this account as well as RM395 -- but, realistically, the reason I'm requesting it for that account is more for a sense of legitimacy when I point people to that account page (I'm not sure if that's an acceptable reason for the request).

Sorry, I know that's probably confusing and/or unorthodox. Happy to provide additional information. (pings per instructions):

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman:

--Ryan McGrady (talk) 06:17, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

• Endorse alt of long-standing editor. Stuartyeates (talk) 08:03, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
• Endorse Appointed. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:16, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

From the Department of We Need This Like a Hole in the Head

[2]. And you thought WP:COPYVIO was bad! My head is reeling from the irony of where they tried to put it. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:53, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

• ... I don't even know what to say but rofl, rofl. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:18, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Relisting: Request for course instructor right: Joe (talk)

I'm relisting this request as it was archived without any response. Original is at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive7#Request for course instructor right: Joe (talk). I support. Joeatnmsu's editing history demonstrates competence in adding, removing and referencing article text and he has created a detailed instructive document here, which shows knowledge and ability to teach Wikipedia to a class. --Geniac (talk) 05:27, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

support--I agree with Geniac and support Joe's request. Rjensen (talk) 08:06, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: PrudhviBhogavalli

PrudhviBhogavalli

YOUR USERNAME HERE (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I like to socialize with people.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   Nothing.

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   Nothing

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   zero

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   Making this page more understandable.

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   I didnt start yet.

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   Never did it till now.

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   Idk

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   YOUR ANSWER

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    YOUR ANSWER

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

• Comment. This is the first edit from this account, so it seems to me to be WP:NOTNOW. Yes, I know this isn't an RfA. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:43, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Ironmanprof (talk)

Name

Joe Pellegrino

Institution

Georgia Southern University

Course title and description

Reading and Writing the Web
The web has given us many new ways to think about and perform reading and writing. In this class, we'll explore a variety of these methods, and use our search, research, and writing skills in the service of the online community, as we will individually and collectively create and edit articles for Wikipedia.

This is a one-credit course which fulfills the Global Citizenship requirement for all students.

A complete syllabus is available at [3].

Assignment plan

Students will be responsible for:
1. researching a topic they're interested in;
2. learning the Wikipedia guidelines for notability, verifiability, and neutrality;
3. writing an article which conforms to the Wikipedia guidelines.

Number of students

Somewhere between 15 and 20.

Start and end dates

January 13, 2014 to May May 2, 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Ironmanprof (talk) 00:50, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

• Oppose. No article creation or editing experience, so I'm not sure how it would be possible to teach doing so. --Geniac (talk) 04:11, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
• Support On one condition: Joe edits a bit and proves to us that he can become familiar with Wikipedia. There are still a few weeks until next term, and I think he can easily grasp a bit of this, especially since it is likely that his course already is centered around Wikipedia. @Ironmanprof:, would you be able to do this? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 05:07, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

  I agree. We have just over 2 weeks until the course begins. Plenty of time to demonstrate some ability in editing. --Geniac (talk) 04:26, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: dward2612

Dward2612

dward2612 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I want to be a Wikipedia Amabssador because I love Wikipedia! I use it a lot and I have edited some. I would really like to help out new people.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   I have never been involved in any Wikimedia projects. Sorry!:)

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   I edited a lot of articles, I have not made any real significant contributions, but I know how to edit.

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   I just became a host for Wikipedia tea house, where I answer questions that people have.

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   I think if you teach and mentor someone how to edit and give people a chance, they will be more active.

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   no

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   I edit at least once a week and read Wikipedia at least three times a week. I would be more than happy to mentor for a few hours a week

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   I would check in on what they are doing. I would also double check the work they do.

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   If I see problems, I will address and mentor them on it.

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    posting something without without the copyright's owners permission. It could also be not properly citing something.

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    I am very nice to people and am willing to help others

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.) I would like to see Dan as a ambassador. He was the one who introduced me to wikipedia. He is a great guy and helped me a lot. -Wowbillk- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wowbillk (talk • contribs) 22:02, 18 December 2013 (UTC) I also think that he would be a good ambassador too. He seems to have a passion for Wikipedia.Sobinish1232 (talk) 03:25, 19 December 2013 (UTC)Sobinish1232

Oppose based on the above endorsements. Stuartyeates (talk) 04:13, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Same, I smell socking. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:53, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Oppose looks like a fake from noschool with practically zero editing record. Rjensen (talk) 06:46, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

He/she asked for account creator and reviewer rights simply because he/she likes Wikipedia. Chris Troutman (talk) 06:53, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

• Note - The user has been blocked for socking. Can we archive? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 22:36, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Link to case for future reference. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:22, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: danw2016

danw2016 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I would like to be a campus ambassador because when some of my teachers talk about Wikipedia, they say not to use it because it is not reliable. Well, I use Wikipedia a lot and find it very useful and even more updated than a lot of other websites.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   I would hope to be a Campus Ambassador for Oakton Community College. There are two campuses and would not mind being a Campus Ambassador for both campuses.

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   I currently go to Oakton. I am working on my Liberal Arts Degree.

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   I have not ben actitive in any wikipedia projects.

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I compleated the Wikipedia Adventure program and have a good understanding of how Wikipedia works.

Also, Sorry if I posted this twice, I was not logged in before:)

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --75.146.126.129 (talk) 19:44, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Why is this nomination being added and removed numerous times? And are you related to User:Dward2612? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:40, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Hi User:OhanaUnited, Sorry if my application gave you trouble, I forgot to log in the first time, so I deleted my first application. Than, I saw that my application was missing some stuff, so I removed it to make changes. I wanted it to be good:) Also, I don't think I am related to dward2612. Why, who is he/she? Merry ChristmasDanw2016 (talk) 00:05, 25 December 2013 (UTC)danw2016

• Note - The user has been blocked for socking. Can we archive? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 22:36, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Link to case for future reference. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:22, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Unmanaged or poorly managed student activities.

Please see Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#Need someone or a group to help about 20 editors, it seems that they need some structured guidance. Thanks Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:11, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

There is already an incident discussion at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Incidents/Archive 2#Group of New/Newish Editors Creating/Editing pages about companies, amongst other places linked there. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:43, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:26, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

trying out interactive section in the student training

I just enabled a little interactive guided tour in the middle of the student training. Something interactive is one specific thing a lot of student editors have suggested in their feedback, but this is also a test to see if guided tours can work well for this sort of thing more generally. It's all programmed via wiki pages, and isn't that hard to work with, so there's potential to do other interactive things through tours for instructors and student editors. Any ideas for situations related to educational projects where this sort of tour would be able to help avoid common problems?--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if something like this could be an exercise in understanding plagiarism and copyright violation. Perhaps an example of a paragraph from a source, and then several versions of possible content, reflecting varying degrees of paraphrasing. It could be presented like a quiz, where the student could then see whether their own answer of what is, or is not, OK matches with what we say. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:11, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: EricEnfermero

EricEnfermero

EricEnfermero (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I have learned so much in the process of article creation, expansion and copyediting. I am excited about the possibility of helping college students to integrate such learning experiences into their studies. I work in a teaching role at my real-life job and it's something that just feels natural to me.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   I've been registered here since December 2011 and started contributing regularly four months later. I have over 10,000 edits here and have contributed to Commons, Spanish Wikipedia, Simple Wikipedia and Wikidata.

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   Elmer Ernest Southard is one of my favorites. I created it when I was fairly new and I've expanded it as I gained experience. I copyedited Major League Baseball and reorganized much of the content to prepare for a GA nomination, resulting in a Million Award. Of my major article contributions, that one is probably the most viewed. All of my promoted content is listed on my user page. I have no Featured Articles, but I plan to take the Southard article there after some expansion.

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   I work with a lot of sports content and those articles are commonly edited by unregistered or new users. In fact, I just finished a GA review on LeSean McCoy, where a brand new editor added a large amount of detail to the article and nominated it for GA. The writing did not reach the "clear and concise" standard, but I think that the nominator will continue to contribute.

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   I think that one of the keys to editor retention lies in the civility of our community. I know that there have been noticeboard discussions about how to handle civility policy violations by very prolific editors. I think that the WP response to this issue will affect the perceptions of new users. Barnstars and other forms of recognition are very nice things to do, but the key is that new editors should feel like this is a collaborative and civil place to be.

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   No blocks, bans or arbitration. I try to be as easygoing as the situation permits, and I recently had my first significantly stressful Wikipedia interaction at Bill Greiner. In this edit, I left an edit summary that was offensive to another editor, suggesting that the article sounded like it came from a relative. I also removed a few non-encyclopedic sentences and four references due to citation overkill. The other editor felt like I should have discussed the edit first, and she said that I was taking a "slash and burn" approach. A third editor took out some non-encyclopedic content around the same time that I did, so she may have felt like she was being ganged up on. Though she was not brand new, I think that this article was her most major contribution so far. The ensuing exchange is still reflected on my talk page under the heading Bill Greiner. Those were not my finest moments on Wikipedia. I should have taken one more deep breath before a couple of those user talk page comments. I didn't see a problem with my substantial edit to the article at the time, but the exchange helped me to remember that people are proud of the work they do and that I need to at least think twice before making big changes without discussion. I think that I ended up coming to an understanding with the editor and we've had some good interactions since this issue.

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   I edit at least daily. I will certainly be available for at least two hours per week. I have a mobile account for when I absolutely must edit or check in from my iPhone, but my mobile account's watchlist is much smaller.

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   I have at least a little bit of experience checking for copyright issues through reviewing at AFC, GA and DYK submissions. I usually take unique passages in an article and copy-paste them into a Google search to look for similar hits. I have identified several copyvio issues at AFC and the G13 backlog with this method.

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   I would remove the content causing the violation, then provide an objective explanation of WP policy on copyright.

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    To me, a copyright violation occurs when a user publishes something to Wikipedia that is the same or almost the same as the content found in another source. I know that copyright violations can result not only from certain words or images, but also from a closely copied sentence structure.

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    I'm a relatively quiet guy, even in real life, and much of my work here has been in fairly specialized areas. Just know that I love editing Wikipedia though, and I'm really excited about the opportunity to work with students who are being introduced to the project. Thank you guys for your time!

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

Another request for help

Hello all. You may remember that, with your fantastic help and help from ambassadors, I set up a wikipedia course page last year for a Research Methods course (visible here): [[4]]. Only I have done a stupid thing, and somehow the whole course has been deleted, when I only wanted to roll over the course to 2014. Can anyone help me out please? have I lost all the formatting and structure I put into the previous course by trying foolishly to quickly update the course to a current one? Yours apologetically, --DrJennyCee (talk) 19:18, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, it looks to me like the restore features of the education extension are still not working properly. Hopefully User:Sage_Ross_(WMF) can fix it for you. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:44, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
  • That's odd. I went ahead and renamed the old title back to its original title, and then created the page at its correct location. Unfortunately, two edits in, the page said that it was "deleted" and prompted me here to restore it. It won't actually let me restore it, although I actually was able to see it. So, it does exist, but for some reason it isn't showing up, as it also did say that the course was completed, even though it was set to start today. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 05:07, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
    • Hello both - I'm so enormously grateful for your efforts. I fear it may be my fault as I tried to roll over the Spring 2013 course by changing the dates to Spring 2014 - clearly the wrong thing to do. This seems to have caused all manner of problems, including the deletion of the course and it apparently being unrestorable. I'm really hoping User:Sage_Ross_(WMF) may be able to come to the rescue, as otherwise it means I'll have to input all the information that was on there manually. I did save a webarchive file of the front page at least, so I have something to go from. I'll write to User:Sage_Ross_(WMF) now. Thanks again, so very much! --DrJennyCee (talk) 08:15, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
      • Hi DrJennyCee. I copied the info from your previous course into the new one. It should work now. I simply guessed at the end date, so you may want to adjust that. What happened was not your fault; the course pages are extremely buggy when it comes to changing the title. (Some fixes in this area are awaiting code review, and some others are on the agenda to fix soon. We're going to disable moving these pages altogether, as it's more trouble than it's worth.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 11:09, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
        • Hello User:Sage_Ross_(WMF). Thank you so very much! I really do appreciate it - and am so grateful that I don't have to retype, code and format the page! Now to recruit my students and (I hope) to ask for some willing volunteers from the Wikipedia community… All warmest wishes and thanks again, --DrJennyCee (talk) 12:29, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Course Instructor Rights

I would like to create a course page for my students this semester. I plan to use Wikipedia in my adolescent development course and will have students either updating existing pages and/or adding new pages related to the course topic. I have taken the educator training. Please let me know what steps I need to complete next in order to have instructor rights. Thank you. Jml4bw (talk) 19:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)jml4bw

My apologies- I realized I took an older version of the training; the updated version included more information about a course page, so I have submitted a new thread with more detailed information. Jml4bw (talk) 20:05, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Jml4bw (talk)

Name

Joanna Williams

Institution

University of Virginia

Course title and description

Adolescent development, a seminar-style course for graduate students (masters and doctoral-level). The course covers contemporary theories and research on adolescent development in the biological, cognitive, and socio-emotional domains with an emphasis on ecological and developmental systems models. I plan to integrate Wikipedia by having students either add to an existing stub or otherwise under-developed page or write a new entry.

Assignment plan

I plan to integrate Wikipedia by having students either add to an existing stub or otherwise under-developed page or write a new entry. The assignment will take place over 14 weeks, beginning with basic editing skills and working up to researching and writing new entries. I want students to develop skills in fact-based writing for a general audience and to understand how to research and cite this kind of writing.

Number of students

About 7 students

Start and end dates

Course begins January 14, 2014; I will introduce the project the week of Jan 21 and it will continue through the end of the course on April 29, 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Jml4bw (talk) 20:03, 7 January 2014 (UTC) Return to the Course pages module.

• Support No concerns here. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:06, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Kevin. Are you able to provide the course instructor rights for me, or do I need approval from an ambassador in my region? @Kevin Gorman: --Jml4bw (talk) 01:22, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I can do that for you. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:21, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Kevin. Please let me know if you need any additional information.--Jml4bw (talk) 19:59, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Cebarnes406 (talk)

Name

Craig Barnes

Institution

University of Tennessee

Course title and description

Senior Seminar for Chemistry Undergraduate Students Students will make a presentation in class about a topic of their choosing (prior approval required) - not necessarily same as Wiki project Students, working in groups, will also create new Wiki page or revise existing page on some topic related to chemistry

Assignment plan

Groups of students will create or revise existing pages on Wikipedia. All initial work will be done in Sandbox mode.

Number of students

25

Start and end dates

January 1, 2014 May 31, 2014 @OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Cebarnes406 (talk) 21:48, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support Let me know though if you need the rights now, and I can give them to you. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:06, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module. Kevin:

Yes, I need rights now. My class starts this week. nb: you will note that I put in another instructor rights request today (below in this forum) - sorry about that. I am still learning how to navigate wiki (and getting lost frequently - but learning).

Cebarnes406 (talk) 14:07, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Right granted. DES ^(talk) 16:04, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Update from Wiki Education Foundation 8 January 2014

I announced last month that the Wiki Education Foundation was posting a job opening for the Executive Director position. Applications have now closed, and we hope to be able to announce a decision in the next couple of weeks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:39, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Mike Christie, thank you for the update; considering there seemed to be some ... ummm ... disarray here, I've been wondering what to do about summarizing last term's incidents at WP:ENI. The serious problems documented from several courses need to be summarized, and hopefully someone will approach those professors to discuss changing course design before this term starts. I'm concerned that we're out of time, and it's unclear who will be taking on that role. I would be glad to summarize the problems by course, but am not sure who is on the job. I fear that after a month of no student bombardment where regular editors could actually get some work done on other articles, more of the same is about to descend next term, since there has been no wrap up, summary, followup or redesign that I'm aware of for the problematic courses (like Georgia IT as well as several others) from last term. What's next? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:00, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think there's been any major change, either in resources, or in ideas on how to solve the problems that have been raised here, since the last discussion. I hope to post a request for input on ideas for grants that the WEF could try to raise funds for -- for example Doc James suggested the WEF fund the development of automated tools to detect plagiarism. I'll try to have a page up to gather those ideas by this weekend. Perhaps someone will have an idea for ways the WEF's resources can be used to solve some of these issues.

In the meantime, if there are specific problems with course, and they can't be resolved on-wiki, the best person to contact is still Jami Mathewson, who is in touch or can get in touch with all of the professors and who can help try to resolve any issues. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:10, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I did speak to some professors at the end of last term about ways to avoid these problems (if they had them). So far, I actually haven't had confirmation that any of the classes that had problems will be teaching with Wikipedia this semester. If I do get that information for them, I will push for some of those changes again. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:51, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, then I will summarize over at WP:ENI what the issues were and with which courses. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:58, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for Instructor Right

Hi Wiki Admin:

I'm user cebarnes406. I am a faculty member at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Chemistry Department. I would like to integrate Wiki into my senior seminar course (C406) for the Spring semester 2014.

In reading the various course and instructor training pages, I believe the first thing I need to do is request instructor rights. Then I can add my institution to the institutions list. Then I can create my course under my institution.

Hope all this makes sense. Look forward to hearing from you.

Cebarnes406 (talk) 13:59, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I have added the institution, as can be see on Education Program:University of Tennessee, Knoxville. You will need to add the course and other details. DES ^(talk) 15:10, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I have also granted the instructor right, as Kevin supported the application above, to avoid loss of time. DES ^(talk) 16:04, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

A model for development of articles about a university

I wonder if in the future it would be possible to have a persistent Wikimedia community at each of various universities. It would be nice!

Another Believer is doing a photo and article drive for Portland State University, as described at Wikipedia:Meetup/Portland/Picture_PSU. I think this is a great model and would be useful for other universities as well as other Wikimedia projects, like Wiki Loves Monuments. It requests pictures of buildings on a campus, development of university articles, and maintenance of the categories containing all this content. It is especially useful for demonstrating what is left to be done.

If ever there were groups of Wikimedians at a university, adaptations of this model for any other university would be a great rallying forum for local Wikimedian contributions. I think this is a cool project! Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:58, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words, BlueRasberry. This is turning out to be a very fun and productive campaign, and we are only a third into the month! I hope to do similar campaigns for Reed College, University of Portland, etc. --Another Believer _(Talk) 20:00, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Requesting permission to start a course

Physiology of Disease Course

Name Susan Weiner

Institution Roosevelt University

Course title and description This is a graduate level course in the Mechanisms of Disease. I would like to have my students write wiki articles for diseases that are currently undocumented or underdocumented on wikipedia. The end goal is that at least some of these pages will be added to wikipedia proper to improve access to lay people who are looking for information on these conditions.

Assignment plan Groups of students will create or revise existing pages on Wikipedia. I would like to set up course pages for drafts during the semester.

Number of students 22

Start and end dates January 2014-May 2014 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sweiner02 (talk • contribs) 16:28, January 8, 2014‎

Editing content on medical topics is particularly problematic for student projects, and I think that you need to commit to a considerable amount of preparation, yourself, about how Wikipedia works, before you should consider involving students. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

These are graduate students, and the course is heavily focused around understanding diseases. This is the major final project of the course, and will involve preparation and editing. Of course, nothing will go on wikipedia proper unless it meets standards. --Sweiner02

Thanks, I appreciate that. At this point, it is clear to me that you, yourself, are new to Wikipedia – welcome! Understandably, it looks to me like you are still learning things like signing talk page posts, indenting talk page comments, and formatting section headers (you also made some typos, such as "starta" [5]). That's OK, but in order to meet standards, you are going to have to know what those standards are. Let me please point you to reading this: WP:ASSIGN (just click on the blue link). That's a place to start. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:21, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I've done a lot of work on private wikis, but very little on wikipedia, so I am new to the rules surrounding it. I apologize for the typo, I was setting this up during a meeting. I will happily do my research, although I also will expect my students to do a lot of it. Sweiner02 (talk) 17:36, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

What do I need to do at this point to get permissions to start a course? Sweiner02 (talk) 14:44, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Training/For educators. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: DESiegel

DESiegel

DESiegel (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I would like to encourage and assist students workign on Wikipedia. I have enjoyed instructional and mentoring activities in other aspects of my life. I think I have some flair for teaching and tutoring.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   I Have been an editor since 2005, and an admin since 2006. I have been a regular at the Help desk, a new page patroller, and an AfC reveiwer. I mostly make small edits and help on referencing/expansion of stubs and new articles.

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   Very recently I did significant work on High School of Art and Design, and copyedited Edith Rosenbaum. I did a rather involved AfC reveiw of Steven A. Williams. In 2012 I did rescue sourcing on The Narrative (band) (now The Narrative. I have done a fair amount on APL (programming language) over the years. I did some fairly extensive work on Vocabulary of ancient Roman religion, Alien and Sedition Acts, Prior restraint, Military science fiction and a large merge (long since reverted) of the various Aubry-Maturin novels of Patric O'Brien into a single long article. I had a DYK on Super Ball and one for Isabel Ashdown.

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   I am, as I said above, a help desk regular, and a fairly frequent WP:AfC reviewer, who does more collaboration than some reviewers. I frequently welcome new editors, and have informally mentored several. I would also draw attention to User talk:DESiegel/Archive 8#Oh, hey...

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   Responding promptly to their concerns in a helpful way; encouraging NPPs and admins on CSD patrol to respect WP:BITE; engaging with new editors with focused individual support rather than simply pointing them at a mass of policies.

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   I have never been blocked or banned. I have made statements or given evidence in a few arbitration cases, not generally as a primary party. I mentored User:Maoririder extensively but unsuccessfully, his behavior was later taken to arbitration and I provided evidence of his actions. I was a party on the Qiun Zhijun arbcom case in 2007, and made a statement in the Badlydrawnjeff case that same year. I was a party to the "BLP_deletions" ArbCom case in 2010. I made a statement at the currently open "Kafziel" ArbCom case.

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   I would expect to log in and edit at least three times per week, usually more often. I have been spending considerably more than 5 hours per week on Wikipedia in recent months.

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   I would check work for the usual signs, discordant tones, style, and references, and use Google tests. And the most common case of all is cut&paste from a cited source, so i would look through the sources. I have an excellent memory for text, and would be likely to spot copying under such circumstances. I would also explain the copyright policies in advance.

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   I would explain to the student both US law (which i am fairly knowledgeable on for a non-lawyer) and Wikipedia policy (which goes beyond the law) and the requirements of attribution and originality. I would encourage the student to create new text, possibly using the copyrighted work as a source, if appropriate.

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    Copyright is the right of an author or copyright owner to control reproduction or use of a copyrighted work. Copyright infringement (the proper term) consists of using a copyrighted work, or a significant portion of it, without proper permission. It may also consist of making or using a derivative work, such as a translation or paraphrase, of a copyrighted work. On Wikipedia simple permission to use a copyrighted work is not enough, the work must be formally released under a free license, so that any re-user of Wikipedia may also use it. Only if a use complies with the rather strict conditions for use of a non-free work can it be used under a Fair use claim.

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    I did a fair amount of work for Distributed Proofreaders (who feed Project Gutenberg) and learned copyright issues rather extensively there. I have done a good deal of work on the ISFDB, some of which involved mentoring new users.

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

support impressive credentials that demonstrate a deep interest in Wikipedia. Rjensen (talk) 21:27, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Seems obvious enough to me; userright granted. Glad to have you aboard, please let us know if you have any questions. Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:13, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I will go through the online ambassador training. What is the next step after that? How does an ambassador (online volunteer) get assigned to a class or classes? DES ^(talk) 14:42, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I think assignment is generally either ad-hoc or done through Jami. If you have interest in helping with a class about the US prison system or environmental justice, lemme know though, and then I can just hijack you for one of mine :) Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:36, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I have some interest in and knowledge of environmental issues generally, having been the webmaster of a local anti-fracking group, and a director of a local open space group. I have no particular knowledge about prison issues. But I would enjoy helping a class on almost any subject. Thank you. DES ^(talk) 22:33, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: MrScorch6200

MrScorch6200

MrScorch6200 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I want to be able to help new Wikipedians learn the ways of the 'pedia while doing it all in a new environment for me.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   I am a new page patroller, DR/N assistant, on the Guild of Copy Editors and am a rollbacker and a reviewer on the English Wikipedia. I am most involved in content disputes and discussions.

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   King of the Hill, North Shore Medical Center, Bigfat

   Thesurvivor2299.com Note: I created; deleted (redirected) per a second nomination after an undeletion

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   I occasionally welcome I.P./new editors and assist when needed.

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   New users need more motivation. Most are single purpose accounts. If we can show new users that Wikipedia has a great environment and they can contribute to the sixth most visited site, they can become active contributors.

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   I have not had anything major; I have an occasional edit skirmish (not exactly an edit war) just like any other editor. I have never been blocked, reported, etc.

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   I check and edit Wikipedia everyday and have every page that I have ever edited on my watchlist. I try to reply to discussions and inquiries within six hours. I will be able to assist regularly as a mentor.

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   I would check their edits with the sources provided and other major sources that can be easily accessed via a simple Google search.

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   First, I would immediately remove the copyrighted content. I would then talk directly with the student regarding the issue then with the course instructor. Afterwards, I would work out a resolution depending on the situation.

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    A copyright violation is plagiarizing any text, image, audio, etc,. from a non-free source. Some close paraphrasing is also likely to constitute as a copyright violation.

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    I am calm, able to work things out with editors, and overall very civil. I enforce all policies no matter my stance on a situation.

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

Neuro class looking for support from Ambassador

Hi, all! The professor of this neurobiology course is looking for an Ambassador to work with her students. User:Yunshui has agreed to offer some limited support on account of a busy schedule. I believe she also asked User:Biosthmors, who is too busy right now, as well. User:MMBiology has taught a Wikipedia assignment in the past and has found Ambassadors extremely helpful for the students. Is anyone available/interested in signing on to this course? Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:47, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Not me, but I've left a note at WT:NEURO. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:07, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

My knowledge of Neurobiology is limited to a freshman-level college course quite a few years ago, and what I have picked up by reading on the Scientific American level. But my general science knowledge is fair, and my Wikipedia-specific knowledge is pretty good. I'm willing to offer to help if that suits. DES ^(talk) 21:42, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! If you need any subject-specific advice, please feel free to ask me, or at WT:NEURO. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:51, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Nnkapoor (talk)

Name

Nathan Kapoor

Institution

University of Oklahoma

Course title and description

The title of the course is Cold War Science. It is a topical upper division history course. This particular section will trace the scientific, military, and political ramifications of nuclear warfare from World War II until the present. In order to provide an alternative to a traditional paper, improve upon student familiarity with the digital humanities, and enhance Wikipedia content on Cold War Science this course offers students the option of editing an article rather composing a paper. We will be working with Kirwanfan and Ragesos who have worked with previous University of Oklahoma courses to create Wikipedia pages.

Assignment plan

Students will choose articles relevant to the course, rather than a research paper topic. The students will follow the 12 Week training guideline provided by Wikipedia.

Number of students

Potentially forty-one students, but as it is only an option, many students may choose the traditional paper.

Start and end dates

January 13 until May 15

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Nnkapoor (talk) 16:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC) Return to the Course pages module.

• Granted, due to immediate need for rights. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:37, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

upcoming course page improvements

Several noticeable improvements to the EducationProgram extension (in addition to some small bug fixes) will go live on or around 2014-01-23. (I've mentioned some of these things before, but they spent a while awaiting code review, which is now done, so these will deploy to test2.wikipedia.org this week, and to Wikipedia next week.)

Notifications

All participants in a course (students, instructors, volunteers) will receive Notifications whenever their course talk page is edited. Thus, editors can use course talk pages to send messages they want the whole class to be aware of, and the class participants are likely to see them.

Special:Contributions student notice

For users enrolled as students in courses that are active, a notice will appear at the top of Special:Contributions noting which course(s) they are enrolled in. This will make it easy for users who come across the work of student editors to find out that they are part of a course and identify other class participants.

Adding articles

Course instructors and volunteers will be able to assign articles to student editors, instead of all articles needing to be added by the student editors themselves.

Adding students

Instructors and volunteers will be able to add users as students in courses, instead of all student editors needing to enroll for themselves. This makes it easier to maintain complete lists of students, and also makes the extension more suitable for tracking participation in edit-a-thons, workshops and other collaborative projects beyond the Wikipedia Education Program.

If you have feedback about these new features, or other questions or ideas related to course pages, please let me know. Development on the extension is starting to pick up speed, and we plan on tackling some of the headaches around how editing course pages works over the next month or so. If you'd like to get periodic technical updates related to the education program on your talk page, I've set up a subscription page: meta:Wikipedia Education Program/technical updates.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. From the perspective of editors at this noticeboard, the feature about the contributions notice is going to be especially useful, as will the notifications. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:21, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

That sounds great Sage. Thanks. By the way, did that bug that led to the deleted GT course page (whose class I was assisting with) ever get sorted out? Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:10, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

The bug that led to it gets sorted with this new batch of code: there will be more explicit, warning-styled messages to prevent accidental deletions. The bug that prevents undeletion will also be fixed. But deletion will still break a course in a way that will make it unable after undeletion, until the underlying database transaction problems get fixed. That's being worked on now.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 21:15, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Requesting OA help for Developmental Biology class

It is a small class of 15-16 students working in pairs to edit pages related to Devo. Course page is here [6]. The course is modeled after a very successful course in Signal Transduction [7] last year in which User:Biosthmors played an instrumental role. I strong-armed him to be an OA for my course this semester, but he is very much busier, so I would be very grateful to have some backup from someone experienced in editing WP and preferably also with WP:Medicine or WP:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology. Biolprof (talk) 00:09, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Plagiarism - my experiment in prevention

I know this has been a problem in many classes, so I inserted the following sentence in the assignment for students' first contribution (assuming they will be adding to an existing article):

• Review the previous content of your article for any indications of plagiarism. Rewrite or remove any inappropriate text. If you remove it, explain why on the Talk page.

I'm hoping that this will increase awareness in that they will first be tasked with looking for plagiarism committed by someone anonymous to them. They are also tasked with looking for too close paraphrasing in their peer-reviews. I'll know how well it works at the end of the term. Biolprof (talk) 00:18, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Smart idea. What kind of training are you giving your students for identifying and weeding out plagiarism, or are they expected to figure it out on their own? czar ♔ 01:35, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm having them read this handout on Understanding and avoiding plagiarism, followed by class discussion. I've thought about having them use some class time to look for plagiarism in any of a number of articles related to the course topic. I'm open to any other suggestions or examples. Biolprof (talk) 04:49, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Looks good. I'd be concerned for that activity if the students were searching articles blindly for copyvios and ending up empty-handed. I'd suggest having them run snippets of text from either previous classes' articles or articles already tagged as copyvios through Google and Google Books and copyvio checkers and whatnot so they can see the difference between paraphrase, close paraphrase, and direct copy. Please do keep us apprised of how the experiment goes czar ♔ 03:12, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Voxcanis (talk)

Name

Peter Barker

Institution

University of Oklahoma

Course title and description

HSCI 3463 Cold War Science: the course presents the history of offensive and defensive strategic weapons systems from 1945 to the present, examining the political and technological context in which they developed, and their connections to nuclear power and space exploration. Students are in their third and fourth years at the university. They will be offered the opportunity to write or edit a Wikipedia entry as an alternative to conventional research essay assignments. I will be getting advice from kirwanfan (Univ of Oklahama) and ragesoss (Wikipedia).

Assignment plan

Wikipedia assignment #1: The information available online about Cold War Science is problematic at best. For this paper alternative you may write a Wikipedia article on a topic covered in or connected to class material, or edit an existing Wikipedia article. The assignment is in two parts, To receive credit equivalent to Research Essay #1 you are expected to: (1) establish a Wikipedia account at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Main+Page&type=signup (2) join the course at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:University_of_Oklahoma/HSCI_3463:_Cold_War_Science_%28Spring_2014%29 (3) complete tutorials for weeks (1) - (5) at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:University_of_Oklahoma/HSCI_3463:_Cold_War_Science_(Spring_2014) (4) select a topic and begin to identify sources you will use in your article/edit, as part of the work for the week (5) tutorial. (5) Submit an annotated bibliography of at least six books or journal articles, with a one paragraph explanation of how you will use each source in your article/edit. Submit this as an email attachment or active link to both Instructors by the deadline for Research Essay#1. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Voxcanis (talk • contribs) 20:36, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

•  Done (shortly).--ragesoss (talk) 21:02, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Term update

I don't know where all it is referenced/located/used, but could the year and term be updated to "2014 Q1" on course pages, etc, as necessary? --Geniac (talk) 02:03, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I just updated the term in the default text. (It's MediaWiki:Course description.)--ragesoss (talk) 02:06, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions for WEF grants requested

I've posted a section at the WEF talk page requesting ideas for what the WEF should fund. I've added a few items that I've heard discussed at various times over the past year, but I would really like to get input from the regulars at this board. Thanks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:38, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I have long suggested what I've called a "plagiarism summit." By the way, I'm not entirely sure why you need new money for these proposals. What is the WEF doing with the money it already has? And how much money has it spent to date? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:40, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The existing funds are almost entirely earmarked for the salaries of the Program Manager and Executive Director, and will run out (most likely) some time in the second quarter of this year. Can you point me to where you've given more details about the "plagiarism summit" idea? I recall talking to you about it but have no memory of the details. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:54, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

One of the places I've mentioned the plagiarism summit is here. I do still wonder how much money the WEF has spent over the past few years (or how much the WMF has spent on it), and to what result. It seems almost entirely to have gone on administration and self-organization. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:27, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Re the funds: the only money the WEF has spent has come from the grant, and other than Jami's salary the only expenses I can think of are for incorporation/filing fees, and for odds and ends like a conference call service. I don't know how much the WMF spent, but yes, that would be all in the organizational category, since it largely predates the formal existence of the WEF. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:18, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

On this, I've left some follow-up questions over on Meta regarding the WEF's request to extend the WMF grant beyond its expiry at the end of the next month. User:Pjthepiano doesn't seem too active, either on Meta or here on WP. Perhaps someone else from the board could step up and respond? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 09:45, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Drafts at AfC that seem to be part of an educational project

I have come across two drafts submitted to Articles for Creation about oil spills/tanker wrecks - Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Kirki Oil-Tanker Spill and Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Mega Borg Oil Spill - a note at the bottom of the latter draft includes information about the university and course involved. What is really concerning about these drafts is that they were submitted by IP editors, thus obviously no "system" has been set up for this project, or these two submitters have failed to join the project if it does already exist. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:01, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying us. I haven't heard of this class participating and couldn't find any relevant information without usernames (or from googling). If I come across the professor of the course or another editor who does use a username and seems affiliated, I'll try to dig deeper in order to contact the professor. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:41, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Although we usually think of Template:Welcome student as something used only for registered accounts, it occurs to me that it might be useful to simply put it on the submitted draft pages. It's not simply a welcome, but also a pointer to how to get properly into the "system". --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: MrScorch6200

MrScorch6200

MrScorch6200 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I want to be able to help new Wikipedians learn the ways of the 'pedia while doing it all in a new environment for me.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   I am a new page patroller, DR/N assistant, on the Guild of Copy Editors and am a rollbacker and a reviewer on the English Wikipedia. I am most involved in content disputes and discussions.

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   King of the Hill, North Shore Medical Center, Bigfat

   Thesurvivor2299.com Note: I created; deleted (redirected) per a second nomination after an undeletion

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   I occasionally welcome I.P./new editors and assist when needed.

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   New users need more motivation. Most are single purpose accounts. If we can show new users that Wikipedia has a great environment and they can contribute to the sixth most visited site, they can become active contributors.

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   I have not had anything major; I have an occasional edit skirmish (not exactly an edit war) just like any other editor. I have never been blocked, reported, etc.

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   I check and edit Wikipedia everyday and have every page that I have ever edited on my watchlist. I try to reply to discussions and inquiries within six hours. I will be able to assist regularly as a mentor.

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   I would check their edits with the sources provided and other major sources that can be easily accessed via a simple Google search.

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   First, I would immediately remove the copyrighted content. I would then talk directly with the student regarding the issue then with the course instructor. Afterwards, I would work out a resolution depending on the situation.

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    A copyright violation is plagiarizing any text, image, audio, etc,. from a non-free source. Some close paraphrasing is also likely to constitute as a copyright violation.

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    I am calm, able to work things out with editors, and overall very civil. I enforce all policies no matter my stance on a situation.

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

• I support this user. This user just helped me on the dispute resolution noticeboard and I looked him up and read about him. He is an able moderator and says the right things, and seems likely to continue his good habits. He is a new user with limited editing experience, but what he has he has picked up in quite a hurry and with a lot of devotion. If he does not burn himself out I expect everything to be fine with him. MrScorch6200, you live in New Jersey, right? If possible, do you think that you could come to the national Wikipedia conference in NYC at the end of May? Among other things we will have education program trainings. It is not publicly announced yet and the site is not turned on entirely, but details are at http://wikiconferenceusa.org/ Scholarship applications will be taken in about a week. If you want to engage more deeply then it might be useful if you could meet some others in person. Thanks for your interest. Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:46, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bluerasberry, thanks for the endorsement and kind words. I do live in NJ but I do not plan to attend the Wikipedia Conference this year. Regards, --MrScorch6200 (t c) 02:58, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Scratch that. I may attend. --MrScorch6200 (t c) 22:41, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Zelbinian (talk)

Name

Dustin L. Hodge

Institution

University of Michigan

Course title and description

SI 110 - Introduction to Information. The course wikipedia page already exists here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Education_Program:University_of_Michigan/SI_110:_Introduction_to_Information_%28Winter_2014%29&action=purge

Assignment plan

See above - I'm just trying to register as an additional instructor for that course.

Number of students

240

Start and end dates

Starts this week and ends early March.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Zelbinian (talk) 01:35, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Granted. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: DrX (talk)

Name

Ximena Gallardo C.

Institution

LaGuardia Community College-CUNY

Course title and description

Course Title: The Research Paper
Student level: Second-year undergraduates
Course Objectives: To familiarize students with the research process, including collecting, evaluating, using and documenting sources as well as drafting, revising, critiquing, and editing different types of research writing. Working on Wikipedia, then, fits perfectly with the objectives of the course. Specifically, students will work on becoming experts on Octavia Butler's novel Kindred and collaborate to create a better entry as per the Wikiproject novels guidelines. Mozucat has expressed interest in being our Wikipedia Ambassador on campus.

Assignment plan

Following the sample syllabus provided by the Wikipedia Education Program, I will set up several learning milestones, beginning with Wikipedia essentials, creating user accounts, and practicing making minor edits while students collect, read, annotate, and evaluate the numerous sources related to Butler's Kindred. Once we have established a pool of reliable sources, students will draft the different sections of an encyclopedic article in their sandboxes following the Wikiproject novels guidelines and collaborate to create a unified, coherent, well-written, and well-documented entry. This work, in turn, will later lead to individual thesis-based research papers on Kindred.

What do I expect to accomplish (beyond the course objectives, media literacy, critical thinking, collaboration, citation, etc.):

• For students to learn hands-on the difference between encyclopedic writing and thesis-based writing.
• For students to learn how to edit Wikipedia properly and, perhaps, become interested in becoming Wikipedia editors.
• For students to practice collaborating with others.
  

Number of students

28

Start and end dates

March 4-June 13, 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --DrX (talk) 15:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

• Hi, Doctorxgc! This sounds like a great assignment. I have granted you the course instructor user right so you can begin to create your Course Page (I added your college so you can add the page from this link. I would like to speak with you, though, to make sure you have figured out your assignment, answer questions that have come up, and share helpful materials with you. Please be on the lookout for an email from me so we can set up a time to chat about your assignment! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:02, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Kshehari (talk)

Name

Khaled Al-Shehari

Institution

Durham University

Course title and description

The course title is "MA in Arabic-English Translation and Interpreting". It teaches postgraduates theory and methods of translation and train them to translate and interpret different types of texts (including literary, marketing, legal, etc.) between English and Arabic.

Assignment plan

Students will be set assignments to work on in teams to translate articles from Wikipedia from English into Arabic, and then to have them published on the Arabic version of Wikipedia, after being checked and edited by peer students and finally checked, edited and approved by instructors.

Number of students

13 students

Start and end dates

The course started in October 2013 and will end in September 2014. The current assignment started on 20 January and due by March 2014.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Kshehari (talk) 14:25, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

• Comment. This looks like no problem from the perspective of the English Wikipedia, as students would not actually be changing any content here. Perhaps the request should really be at the Arabic Wikipedia? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:52, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Based on the description it looks like all the activity will be on the Arabic Wikipedia. However, the tools like the extension and the online training are more active and developed on the English Wikipedia. It would only make sense to have a course page here for an English interface for the course page and trainings, it seems. Alternatively/additionally, we could create a space on the Arab World Education Program area on the Arabic Wikipedia (the current layout/structure is geographic by country but could be adapted). The education extension was recently enabled on the Arabic Wikipedia and is not yet in use. Tflanagan (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

@Kshehari: I went ahead and granted you the instructor user right here on the English Wikipedia in case you do want to create a page here for your students to use as a resource. You may also want to have them make their first edits here in English in order to get a feel for editing (and doing so in their first language). Please do shoot me a message if you decide to create one here and want some support in setting it up. @Tflanagan (WMF): Do you possibly have any Ambassadors who you think would be interested in supporting these students (and who is available)? Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:37, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

@Jami (Wiki Ed): I went to Arab World Education Program area on the Arabic Wikipedia but I couldn't find any way to request to create a course there. Is there anyway to do it? --Kshehari (talk) 12:52, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

@Kshehari: Tighe will have to help out with that if he has the chance! Otherwise, you're welcome to create your Course Page here and just include the information that your students will be editing on Arabic Wikipedia! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:31, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

@Jami (Wiki Ed): Thanks Jami. I would rather create the project page on English Wikipedia, since the whole course is taught in English. Of course, translations will be published on Arabic Wikipedia. I also would like to link my current project to another similar project working into Spanish. What do you think, Maria @Mcptrad:? I am still confused. Is the project page different from the course page? Where to start creating the project page. Students already chosen their articles to translate. We would like to start soon. --Kshehari (talk) 17:39, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Kandeya (talk)

Name

Padma C.

Institution

University of Michigan

I'm part of a multi-instructor team that needs instructor access to the following course site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:University_of_Michigan/SI_110:_Introduction_to_Information_(Winter_2014)

Please let me know if you have any questions.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Kandeya (talk) 04:22, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

• Hi @Kandeya: - could you get @Cleeder: to stop by and confirm that you're part of their instructional team? Sorry for the caution, but as there's some potential for damage inherent in granting you the rights if you turn out to be a random malicious person, I'd rather be safe than sorry. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:33, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
• Ah, I just granted them the rights, as I didn't see this before I posted here. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:35, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
• I left a note on @Cleeder:'s talk page: I'll leave a link to this request as well. You can go ahead and revert my rights until then.
• Hi, Yes, @Kandeya: is an instructor for this course. There are a couple others. Is there a good way to confirm who they are? Cleeder (talk) 05:01, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Just posting their usernames here is fine. The reason I am being cautious is because there currently is not a working restore function for course pages, and restoring or even reverting edits to coursepages currently takes the direct intervention of a WMF employee. It'd suck for someone to accidentally nuke your whole course. Kevin Gorman (talk) 06:01, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm one of them Zelbinian (talk) 02:46, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Two more: Csenteio and mainvils. That's it. Thanks! Cleeder (talk) 07:15, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Jdmathewson (talk)

Name

JD Mathewson

Institution

Hood College (Frederick, MD)

Course title and description

PSCI 305: American Foreign Policy. The course is an examination of how the foreign policy process works in theory and practice, who the main actors are and what types of interests and values shape foreign policy decisions.

Most of the students will be juniors and seniors (with some sophomores). The Wikipedia component of the course will be teaching media literacy in terms of foreign policy, research skills, and concise writing.

Assignment plan

My students will start out by contributing some comments to an existing Wikipedia article's talk page before moving on to their own research. They will suggest a number of articles they would like to improve that need improving. Their first edits will be small edits, 1-2 sentences. After compiling research on the topic, they will develop a draft of the improved article in the sandbox and post their proposed edits on the talk page. Once I have approved them, they will move their drafts out of the sandbox and into the live space. At this point, students will peer-review and -edit some of their classmates articles. The final goal will be getting an article on the "Did you know" page. At the end of the course, they will submit reflection papers on their experiences.

We will be discussing students progress in class on a daily basis. We will not have any class presentations.

Number of students

15

Start and end dates

January 27

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Jdmathewson (talk) 23:04, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Granted. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:30, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Per WP:INSTRUCTORS, Jdmathewson, the DYK process is strongly discouraged (note to Kevin Rutherford, just in case). I'm curious if there is a quantity metric for the sandbox material. Is there? Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 00:14, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

It's discouraged, but that does not mean that people aren't encouraged to go that way if they are feeling motivated. If that's the goal of the class, then it wouldn't hurt to have an article or two in this realm, but the discouragement is to prevent hundreds of potential articles showing up on the page, many of varying qualities. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 00:39, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I think it's fine so long as they walk through the requirements in depth and commit to submitting articles that seem to meet those standards rather than all articles or if Professor Mathewson (that sounds weird to say :)) or a volunteer reviews the work before the students submit. We don't want to recommend it for every class by any means, but I think it's ok for a few students to do so. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 03:37, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

DYK isn't just discouraged for reasons of quality. Honestly, plenty of cruddy articles get through DYK on a near-daily basis as it is. As far as I know probably the biggest concern regarding DYK in the past has been that DYKing classes usually result in a lot of articles showing up near deadlines from people who are not subject to the quid pro quo reviewing requirement yet, which results in both a big backlog for DYK (because their reviewing capacity for non-QPQ submissions isn't terribly high,) and potential concerns over student grades being held up by a community process that won't complete on their grading timetable. I think it's okay if individual students want to go for DYK for them to do so, but as a class-wide requirement (or even strong suggestion) is problematic unless students are also required to review DYK's. (And, since people often object to students reviewing each others DYKs, even with a reviewing requirement it's still potentially problematic.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:16, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I've been talking to the professor via email, and he never intended to require or even recommend to the whole class to submit DYKs. He wants to suggest the students whose work stands out and meets the requirements submit as a way of acknowledging their hard work rather than as a means to grade it. It sounds like it will be just a few articles, especially with the rather limiting 5-day turnaround. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:05, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply--I'm still figuring out the proper way to respond to other people on my talk pages. I should have been more clear. Like Jami said, I don't intend for all students to submit DYK articles. I am encouraging students to make articles of DYK quality with the incentive that, if it's good enough, I would instruct them to submit it. If none of them look good enough, I won't be asking them to. I certainly won't be suggesting that they should initiate the process on their own. This is what I meant by "goal." Thank you all for your input. JD Mathewson (talk), Adjunct Professor, Hood College 21:18, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

P.S. It certainly will not figure into their grades. JD Mathewson (talk), Adjunct Professor, Hood College 21:20, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Cristian Opazo

Cristian Opazo (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I became a Campus Ambassador in 2011 but became inactive in 2013 because of a new job. Now I would like to be reactivated.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   New York University

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   Experimental physics, computer science, instructional design

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   In the past I've served as campus ambassador for several courses, among them:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:United_States_Education_Program/Courses/Conceptualization_of_Latin_and_Latino%28a%29_America_%28Katherine_Hite%29

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:United_States_Education_Program/Courses/Advanced_Organic_Chemistry_%28Sarjit_Kaur%29

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I'll be working with this course this Spring 2014 semester:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:New_York_University/Copyright,_Commerce,_and_Culture_%28Spring_2014%29

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Cristian Opazo (talk) 21:31, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Granted, looking forward to your course at NYU.--Pharos (talk) 04:58, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

@Cristian Opazo: Cristian, glad to have you back in the program working with this class! Just wanted to also send you this link so you can create a CA profile and appear on this list of CAs! Glad to have you back—always feel free to reach out with any questions or if you need anything. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:32, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Suz.ydv123

Suz.ydv123 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I have always been searching in Wikipedia for information about everything which were required. It is always helpful to me so I want to make everyone know about Wikipedia.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   PSNA College of Engineering and technology(Anna University)

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   I am pursuing computer science and engineering at psna college of engineering and technology in 3rd year.

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Suz.ydv123 (talk) 00:52, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Online Ambassador application: MrScorch6200

MrScorch6200

MrScorch6200 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I want to be able to help new Wikipedians learn the ways of the 'pedia while doing it all in a new environment for me.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   I am a new page patroller, DR/N assistant, on the Guild of Copy Editors and am a rollbacker and a reviewer on the English Wikipedia. I am most involved in content disputes and discussions.

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   King of the Hill, North Shore Medical Center, Bigfat

   Thesurvivor2299.com Note: I created; deleted (redirected) per a second nomination after an undeletion

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   I occasionally welcome I.P./new editors and assist when needed.

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   New users need more motivation. Most are single purpose accounts. If we can show new users that Wikipedia has a great environment and they can contribute to the sixth most visited site, they can become active contributors.

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   I have not had anything major; I have an occasional edit skirmish (not exactly an edit war) just like any other editor. I have never been blocked, reported, etc.

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   I check and edit Wikipedia everyday and have every page that I have ever edited on my watchlist. I try to reply to discussions and inquiries within six hours. I will be able to assist regularly as a mentor.

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   I would check their edits with the sources provided and other major sources that can be easily accessed via a simple Google search.

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   First, I would immediately remove the copyrighted content. I would then talk directly with the student regarding the issue then with the course instructor. Afterwards, I would work out a resolution depending on the situation.

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    A copyright violation is plagiarizing any text, image, audio, etc,. from a non-free source. Some close paraphrasing is also likely to constitute as a copyright violation.

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    I am calm, able to work things out with editors, and overall very civil. I enforce all policies no matter my stance on a situation.

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

• I support this user. This user just helped me on the dispute resolution noticeboard and I looked him up and read about him. He is an able moderator and says the right things, and seems likely to continue his good habits. He is a new user with limited editing experience, but what he has he has picked up in quite a hurry and with a lot of devotion. If he does not burn himself out I expect everything to be fine with him. MrScorch6200, you live in New Jersey, right? If possible, do you think that you could come to the national Wikipedia conference in NYC at the end of May? Among other things we will have education program trainings. It is not publicly announced yet and the site is not turned on entirely, but details are at http://wikiconferenceusa.org/ Scholarship applications will be taken in about a week. If you want to engage more deeply then it might be useful if you could meet some others in person. Thanks for your interest. Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:46, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bluerasberry, thanks for the endorsement and kind words. I do live in NJ but I do not plan to attend the Wikipedia Conference this year. Regards, --MrScorch6200 (t c) 02:58, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Scratch that. I may attend. --MrScorch6200 (t c) 22:41, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: User:Deloebrenti

Name

Kathleen D.

Institution

College of William and Mary

Course title and description

Course Title: Pink Noise: Women making electronic music
Student level: Undergraduate
Course Objectives: This interdisciplinary course explores the hands-on creation of electronic music through the lens of feminist critical frameworks, activism, and collective action. We will explore the work, struggles, triumphs, and techniques of pioneering composers including Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue, Ruth Anderson, and Annea Lockwood as well as examine contemporary innovators such as Maria Chavez, Andrea Polli, and Kaffe Matthews. Techniques and topics include Composing with Texts; Activist Sound; Live Sampling and Delay; Turntablism; Soundscape Composition; the Occult Voice; and Meditative Synthesis. Students will compose electronic music individually and collaboratively in small groups. No prior knowledge of music theory, composition, instrumental technique, or sound software is necessary.

Assignment plan

Following the sample syllabus provided by the Wikipedia Education Program, I will create a series of semester long assignments examining entries of women electronic music composers on wikipedia and identifying areas for improvement of notable biographic entries on the site. Students will be guided through training, examining articles and understanding the five pillars, and considering their course material in the context of a tertiary source rather than the comparative analytical lens they are accustomed to.

What do I expect to accomplish (beyond the course objectives, media literacy, critical thinking, collaboration, citation, etc.):

• think critically about information sources and how they function
• gain public writing skills for a specific audience
• examine how resources like Wikipedia present information by and for historically underrepresented communities.

Number of students

8

Start and end dates

February 26-April 30, 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --DrX (talk) 15:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

@Deloebrenti: Hi, Kathleen. I granted you the user right, so you should be able to create your Course Page from [bottom of this page]. Your assignment sounds like it will bring some really interesting content to Wikipedia. Be on the lookout for an email from me with some useful resources for you and your students! Thanks! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:26, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I thought it was only regional ambassadors that granted the course instructor right. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 00:16, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Anyone with the rights can do it. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 00:41, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

But wasn't it a former WMF practice that interpreted the former RfC as needing community members to grant this right? I've seen it stated on this board that Wiki Ed (WP:WEF) is not a part of the Wikipedia community. Has the WEF developed a new interpretation of the RfC? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:32, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Not that I am aware of, but do we necessarily always have to follow the rules? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 14:54, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps Jami (Wiki Ed) could clarify. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:38, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Whatever technicalities there are around the status of WEF as an organization (I haven't followed that closely enough, perhaps), Jami herself is most certainly a part of this community, and I think it's pretty obvious that she can and should be trusted with the course coordinator tools (which is why she was given them).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 02:54, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Although WMF employees frequently choose not to exercise any userrights they may have on ENWP (or other 'production wikis',) Jami is no longer a WMF employee - she works for the WEF. She's also a long-time participant in the education program, and her user account has (quite intentionally) been granted the necessary userrights to grant course instructor rights. Additionally, barring an RfC stating otherwise (which I don't believe has happened, although I could've missed it,) not only could anyone with the course coordinator userright rightfully grant course instructor rights to people, any administrator could as well. (For that matter, barring community consensus that says otherwise, admins are also able to give the course coordinator user rights out as they see fit.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:07, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

new features are live

I apologize for misstating that the new features would be available a week ago; the weekly deployment schedule was put on hold during a Wikimedia "architecture summit" last week. Anyhow, the new features are now live, so you can contact an entire class via Notifications by posting on the talk page, instructors and volunteers can add students to courses and add articles to students, and Special:Contributions will show if a user is enrolled as a student in a current class.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

related bugs

In related news, if you edit one of the course page wizard subpages for a course, you're likely to get a MediaWiki error (because the system is trying to send a Notification for the corresponding non-existent course page). The edits will still save, though. We'll try to get that fixed quickly.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:17, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

There's also a bug with Special:Contributions, if you are enrolled as both a student and an online volunteer. Likewise, we'll try to fix that quickly.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 22:46, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Fabulous -- thanks Sage! -Pete (talk) 22:02, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

@Sage Ross (WMF): Just checking to see if you have an estimated time that the error message bug will get fixed. I've received a lot of concerns about it, but most people do realize that their changes are saving. Just wanted to follow up so I can let them know. Thanks so much! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:02, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Jami: We have the patches, and we're hoping to deploy them this afternoon.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 18:13, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Sage! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:14, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Sage - am I correct in assuming that this is the same bug that currently seems to be preventing new classes from being created? I hadn't created one of mine until today because students aren't going to progress to actually editing Wikipedia until this week, but just got thrown a weird Mediawiki error upon trying to create it (and unfortunately, even though edits do go through with the error, creating a new course didn't stick.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:06, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Kevin, both bugs should be fixed now. The bug you encountered was because when you create a course talk subpage through the wizard template, the system was trying to send a Notification to people in the corresponding course subpage (which does not exist). That should not prevent the create of course pages, though. If you are still having trouble, please let me know.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 22:14, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Sage - it's still throwing an error for me - [088bf6cc] 2014-02-03 22:15:16: Fatal exception of type MWException. Since it looks like the course isn't saving at all, this is a potentially serious issue for anyone who hasn't created their course pages yet. (I can make do without one for as long as needed - I've tracked classes via other means before, but it'd be convenient to have one for this course.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:18, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Kevin, what course are you trying to create? I was just able to create one without a problem. Also, please email me all the error info that shows up, and more detail about exactly what you did on which pages.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

That was sadly, the error message in it's absolute entirety. I was trying to create a course page titled "Ethnic Studies 21ac: A Comparative Survey of Racial and Ethnic Groups in the U.S." for the Spring 2014 term. I literally didn't get off the first page; it has been consistently erroring out for me as soon as I hit the submit button on the first "Adding course" page you see once you select an institution/course name/term. The error has been consistent except for the timestamp and the memory location it's referencing. It's a bit odd that it's working fine for you and not for me - perhaps there's some sort of conflict between being +sysop and +coursecoordinator that means that having both rights at once messes up? I'll strip off my coursecoordinator right temporarily and see if that helps anything. (Need to run to give some edu presentations shortly, but I'll be back later on tonight.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:45, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Stripping my coursecoordinator right temporarily still had the same error show up when I tried to create the course. I'll poke around more later tonight. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:51, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I was able to create it without a problem. Education Program:University of California, Berkeley/Ethnic Studies 21ac: A Comparative Survey of Racial and Ethnic Groups in the U.S. (Spring 2014). That's quite the page title! Anyhow, I'll look into it more.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 22:57, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I was actually able to get the error when I pasted in the title you have here, which seems to contain multiple spaces after the colon (or some non-standard space character).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 22:57, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Heh, that didn't occur to me to check, and probably should've, sorry about that. Thank you for figuring out what it was. I copy/pasted the course title straight from UCB's course management system, which is called Telebears - because it's literally the telephone dial-in course registration system Berkeley has used for ages with an ugly poorly functional web UI put on top of it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:00, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

No, it's good! You've discovered a bug that we never discovered until now. (I'm guessing it's been in the extension since the beginning.) It turns out that what you pasted included a space and a tab. Tabs are not allowed in course titles, but there was nothing to check for them.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 02:50, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Suggested improvements to "Courses" page

How the "courses" page currently looks

Hi all, I'd like to draw your attention to some suggestions I just made for improving the "Courses" page layout. The basic idea is I'm suggesting the existing view (see the image to the right) with something like the table below. Click the link above for my more detailed explanation.

Thoughts? -Pete (talk) 22:12, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

View change	What page or article	When	Who did it	What they did Section edited Edit summary
( diff | hist )	Craig Newmark	9:30am	Peteforsyth	Career +photo
( diff | hist )	Trets	8:30am	Litjade	Population and history for clarity
( diff | hist )	Trets	8:10am	Litjade	Cultural encounters and traditions added sister city exchange
( diff | hist )	Trets	7:50am	Litjade	Cultural encounters and traditions general improvements
etc.
( about diffs | about article history )		about permalinks	about user pages	about edit summaries

• The change is better. Thanks User:Peteforsyth. I hardly know what to say. The current version should be revised and this proposed version seems better. I see no fault with the proposed changes, and a lot of fault with the existing version. ≤I think many people here would like to see many things revised. It seems to me that the proposed changes are not just layout changes, but also would need to have MediaWiki integrate to do automatic tracking and reporting of student activities, which is beyond what people on this board typically imagine. LT910001 and I have been talking lately about software support for helping WikiProjects, and when I see this proposal, I can imagine some overlap in how a class should be tracked and how a WikiProject might want to track certain articles and users. We put our thoughts at meta:Grants:IdeaLab/WikiProject management suite. If these changes are to be implemented, I would want to participate in talks about them and also talks about how tracking could be done in WikiProjects for users who want to be tracked in this way. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:12, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Pete and Bluerasberry! This good stuff, and I'll be sure to circle back to it when we get to the point of working on the activity feed. We're in the process of settling on a roadmap for moving the related technology forward. To sum up briefly, the plan is to begin working with the Growth product development team to make more general systems that will replace what the extension does. None of this is set in stone, but the order that we tackle that in will basically be:

1. Signup (a system for signing up newcomers through 'campaigns', which will be relevant for courses as well as edit-a-thons, and other types of contribution campaigns)
2. Onboarding (a system for walking newcomers through the steps they need to go through to get started, which may vary based on what campaign they signed up through)
3. Tracking and communication (this is the big bucket that will eventually be a replacement for course pages and the course activity feeds)

The upshot is that it may be quite a while before we see any significant improvements to the activity feed. Then again, maybe not. We'll see. --Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: Tanuyeiro

YOUR USERNAME HERE

Tanuyeiro (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I'm a volunteer from Ecuador, and I'm helping 2 Universities from Ecuador to start using Wikipedia as teaching tool.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   I'm leading a group of volunteers from Ecuador

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   I'm involved in Wikiproyecto Ecuador (Spanish Project)

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   I've been pointing out the differences between Visual Editor and the old one to new comers on Spanish Wikipedia

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   As far that we are making easier for them with the new visual editor, we should get a mentorship project to shape new users.

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   No, I have never been block or reported

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   Yes

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   Teaching them the proper guidelines and laws of copyright and after that making sure their edits are not in any kind of violation.

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   Remove the content where the infringement is occurring, talk to the student explaining or refreshing the basics of copyright laws.

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    When you use, copy, derivatives, reproduce, distribute or similar paraphrasing of works that you are not the holder or have no authorize permission to do it.

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    As a volunteer on Ecuadorian soil, where I'm helping gathering a group of Wikipedians to promote edits on the Spanish Wikipedia, I believe we as Ecuadorians can learn so much from this Education Program.

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

• Support This user promotes the concept of open access, has participated in Wikipedia:School of Open course, has visited the WP:TEAHOUSE, and although is a new user has visited the places that the Wikipedia community wishes for new users to visit. This user seems like the kind of person which would be good for the education program. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:18, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
• Comment Sounds like a great person for getting an education program going in Ecuador! I think if this editor is planning to work with classes and other editors on ESWP, it may be helpful for their program if s/he can work with a class or two here to help prepare and familiarize with tools, resources, and best practices. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:04, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Why is old data being used to draw novel conclusions?

In this recent blog post, a 2012 link is being used to tell us that 2013 contributions are high-quality. How is this not fanciful? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:17, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

We conducted quality studies for the 2010-11 academic year, and then again for the spring 2012, and both studies showed similar results in terms of student quality. We have not reason to believe that the quality has diminished at all, since our support for students has been consistent. Such quality studies take an incredible amount of volunteer time to evaluate articles by hand, and I do not think it is a good use of volunteer time to continue replicating the quality study when what we've done has shown consistently that student editors in the United States and Canada program improve articles. That being said, if you would like to organize another research quality study to see if there has been a change in article quality, the metric is here and more information on the research design is here. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 19:38, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Understood, though beware: the caption to the graphic is very misleading. It's simply not true that "students have added 55 million bytes of high-quality content to the English Wikipedia." As the article itself makes clear. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:43, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Jon, do I understand right that the problem is in conflating "total edits" with "high quality edits"? i.e., the number is accurate, but that describing all of them as "high quality" is problematic? Maybe proposed specific replacement text would help? -Pete (talk) 23:38, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. How about: "students have added 55 million bytes of content to the English Wikipedia, much of it high-quality." --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 01:00, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, Jbmurray. I've updated the caption on the blog with your suggestion. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 16:16, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Grand. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:30, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Request for instructor right (Jane Lehr)

Hello, I am teaching ES/WGS 350: Gender, Race, Science & Technology at Cal Poly and am requesting instructor right.

For their 3rd Wikipedia assignment in the quarter, students have the option to move from comparative analysis of Wikipedia Pages of scientists/engineers from over- and under-represented groups (assignment 1) and writing a draft contribution in word processing software (an edit or talk page contribution) (assignment 2) to, now, making their Wikipedia edit and/or contributing to a Talk Page. (The other option for assignment 3 is to create a proposal for an edit-a-thon at Cal Poly, and evaluate the likely success of that event in our community.)

• • • This is the first assignment that asks students to contribute which is why I am only requesting instructor right now. ***

Course description: This course explores the complex relationships between gender, race, science, and technology in historical and contemporary contexts. This examination highlights the role of ethical, social, cultural, political, and economic factors in determining historical and contemporary meanings of scientific and technical practice, as well as knowledge and beliefs about gender, race, class, and sexuality. The course also asks students to engage with reform efforts that seek to create more socially responsible scientific and technical knowledge production and decision-making practices.

Instructor name: Jane Lehr Institution: California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo Term: Winter 2014 Class Size: 36

What other information do you require?

Thanks! Jane

@Jlehrcalpoly: I granted you the user right and started this course page for you. Please add any other relevant information (deadlines, grading rubric, etc.) and ask your students to enroll on the page via the button on the top left. I will be in touch with you via email with other relevant information and so we can discuss your assignment further. Thanks for reaching out to us here! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:12, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Adding an instructor to an existing course

Hello! - I'd like to add User:BeanieJonesH as an instructor on my course Interaction, Experience and Engagement. Could you please give this user instructor rights? Many thanks. --ToniSant (talk) 14:45, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

ToniSant:  Done --Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! --ToniSant (talk) 10:11, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Student editor asking for help at the Teahouse

Please see Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#How do I add a course code?. A student editor seems to have become lost and wandered in there looking for help. The Teahouse regulars are not very familiar with the ways of Education programs, so I hope someone here can help the student editor find what they're looking for. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:09, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation February 12 2014 update

Frank Schulenburg has been named as the Executive Director of the Wiki Education Foundation. Here is the press release giving more details. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:19, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:21, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Request for Instructor Right (Michele Petracca)

Hi, I'm teaching Psyc/Bios 212: Behavioral Neuroscience, and Psyc 180: Psychology of Sleep and Dreaming at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Both of my classes have assignments that involve editing Wikipedia articles and contributing to Talk Pages.

Psyc/Bios 212 will be eventually writing a full article from a stub. Course description: This course explores the biological foundations of behavior. Student learn neuronal structure and function, the anatomy and physiology of the brain, sensory and motor systems, brain plasticity and repair, sleep, and other special topics. A fair amount of time is also devoted to discussing the research methods and techniques used to investigate topics in behavioral neuroscence. Instructor Name: Michele Petracca Institution: Nebraska Wesleyan University (Lincoln, NE) Term: Spring 2014 Class size: 17

Psyc 180 will make small contributions and copyedit. Course description: The objective of this course is to cover the psychological and biological aspects of sleep and dreaming. We will discuss a number of topics such as states of consciousness, memory, biological rhythms, development, and disorders related to sleep. In addition, students will gain experience in research methods related to sleep studies. Instructor Name: Michele Petracca Institution: Nebraska Wesleyan University (Lincoln, NE) Term: Spring 2014 Class size: 27

I can give you additional information about the assignments if needed. I have both classes signed up through the American Psychological Science Wikipedia Initiative Project Portal.

Mpetracca (talk) 05:33, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

• Granted, and welcome to the project! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:45, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
• I've left a brief note at WT:WikiProject Neuroscience. Students may find that editors there will be interested in the pages where they work, and these editors are likely to have helpful advice. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
• Thank you both. Mpetracca (talk) 05:02, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Request for instructor right (Paula Aucott)

Paula Aucott is helping me run my Applied Human Geography course at the University of Portsmouth, which now has this course page:

As Paula is doing most of the administration of students and their assigned places, I need her added as an additional instructor. She is User:Paula_vob

Humphrey.Southall (talk) 10:47, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: BIOL3946

Name

Madeleine Beekman

Institution

The University of Sydney

Course title and description

Animal Behaviour. Third year undergraduate course with approximately 70 students. As part of the course students will either edit or create a new Wikipedia page on a topic relevant to the course.

Assignment plan

Students will select a topic relevant to the course and first search if there is an existing Wiki page on that topic. If there is, they will judge if the content is of sufficient quality. If the student feels the quality can be improved, s/he will edit the page. If there is no existing Wiki page, the student will create a new page. Students will peer review each others' work but the final product will be uploaded.

Number of students

Although there will be about 70 students in total, this assignment is only available to Advanced students. Advanced students can select from different assignments, of which this will be one. We expect about 5-10 students to be involved in editing/creating Wiki entries.

Start and end dates

March 3 2014 until June 3 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Madeleine.beekman (talk) 01:24, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Looks good to me, I added your rights. Good luck with this course Madeleine, if you need any help feel free to drop us a message Kayz911 (talk) 17:35, 17 February 2014 (UTC) Return to the Course pages module.

Accidental deletion of course page

Hello all. A course I am involved with, led by User:AminMDMA, had its course page accidentally deleted. Amin posted on my talk page, and I am posting here. I see that when I go to the talk page of the course page, that it still exists. When I go to the course page, it prompts me that I can undelete it, but I get the following error: A database query error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software.

• Function: ORMRow::insert
• Error: 1062 Duplicate entry '313' for key 'PRIMARY' (10.64.32.22)

What can we do/what is being done about this?

Amin/Dr. Azzam, I suggest putting the course page, if you'd like to work on it, at User:AminMDMA/Spring 2014 (working there would create a user sub-page, which is allowed and encouraged, if it helps you on Wikipedia for Wikipedia purposes). Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:03, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Biosthmors. The course page was moved to Education Program:University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)/Expanding WikiProject Medicine (April 2014) when the title was changed by User:AminMDMA diff. The talk page should be moved as well (and all the subpages that are used by the wizard). I didn't realize that this error could occur (as we recently made some other changes to prevent similar errors, which I think uncovered this one.) Pretty soon we're going to remove the option of changing the title of courses altogether, as it causes nothing but trouble.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:31, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

I also found that the course talk pages can no longer be moved -- not sure why that is -- but anyhow, I've copied over the talk pages to their appropriate locations so the course should be in working order now. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks again for reporting the problem.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:44, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Request for instructor right (Natalie Baird)

Hello

I am teaching LAWS322: International Human Rights Law at the University of Canterbury and am requesting instructor right.

Third year law students will be asked to contribute to an existing page (or, rarely, write a new article) on a human rights topic. Students are likely to focus on topics on a New Zealand human rights issue (topics, case law, people, institutions), small Pacific Islands (Fiji, Samoa, Tonga) or some aspect of the international human rights system.

Instructor name: Natalie Baird Institution: School of Law, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand Semester One 2014 (24 Feb - 30 June 2014) Class Size: approx 35

What other information do you require?

Many thanks.

Natalie — Preceding unsigned comment added by Humanrights4nz (talk • contribs) 22:49, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Outreach materials

Where can I find the collection of available outreach materials for the US Wikipedia Education Program? Can someone confirm that this category is up-to-date?

Commons:Category:Wikipedia Education Program handouts in English

I just received a request for a one-page description for a professor to submit to their department chair when they need to request permission to run an instance of the education program. I am going to offer the program booklets and see if that satisfies, but I thought that I would share that I was asked for this kind of document.

Also, does anyone have a slideshow for giving presentation of the Wikipedia education program? 3-5 slides for a 5-minute presentation would be what I would want, but I can adapt something for myself whatever may already exist.

Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:42, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that category is up to date. Thanks for posting. You can request some printed copies of any of the brochures, if that's helpful. I know of a few old and out-of-date slideshows that cover that, but none that I would recommend for building yours today. Probably the "Instructor Basics" brochure and the Education Program One Pager are the best starting points building a short presentation.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

course pages technical update

We've started working on "editor campaigns", a system that we expect will eventually be able to replace our current Education Program extension (and be useful for many other purposes as well). The early work with that project will focus on a system for signup up new editors for editing campaigns (such as courses, but also edit-a-thons, Wiki Loves Monuments, etc.). Because of that, progress will be slow on the current course page system. However, we have several improvements that should be available within the next few weeks.

Anyone can edit the main text of course pages

As part of the effort to make course pages behave more like regular wiki pages, we've enabled editing of course pages by anyone. Users who currently have the right to edit courses will have access to all the fields (so that they can change the start/end dates, and change the enrollment token). Users who currently cannot edit courses will be able to edit only the "page text" portion. This change should take effect on 2014-02-27.

Simplified course editing interface

We've considerably simplified the interface for editing course pages, removing the options to rename courses. Changing the title of a course would also move the course page, creating confusion and leading to a number of bugs. Several other parts of the course editing interface were not very useful, so we've removed them to make it easier on newcomers. This change should take effect on 2014-02-27.

Additional Notifications

Two students participating in the Facebook Open Academy mentorship program are currently working on additional Notifications for course pages. For the first of these, users will be notified whenever someone else adds them to a course.

Once again, if you have feedback about these new features, or other questions or ideas related to course pages, please let me know!--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Subscribe for talk page delivery of future Wikipedia Education Program technical updates.

Online Ambassador application: Hym411

{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}}

Hym411

Hym411 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I was asked for help by Piotrus in Wikimedia-kr Mailing list, and I am willing to help him.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   Current sysop in Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and Korean Wikinews. I have more than 30,000 global edits.

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   I usually contributes in Commons, Korean Wikinews, and Korean Wikipedia, so I have no DYK or GAs yet, but I am planning to work on them.

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   I am helping them via OTRS (since this momth), regularly responding Help desk (on ko.wiki too), and on English Wikipedia, welcoming some users.

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   We should make them think that "Wikipedia is not hard thing!"

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   Clean block log, no ban, no involvement in arbcom.

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   I can edit Wikipedia 3 hrs per day (at least), and I will spend more than 1 hr every day.

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   We have good friends like Google for both images and texts, and Tineye for images. I will search them.

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   I'll remove copyvio immediately, and request revdel (if text), or speedy deletion request (if image on enwiki), or I will directly delete it (images on Commons), and I will notify them with kind and mannered words.

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    Stealing others' properties. Copyright is intellectual property of the copyright owner, and copyvio is therefore stealing.

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    I think no more.

—Revi_Discussion 16:06, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

• endorse. Experienced, clueful user.--ragesoss (talk) 16:10, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
• endorse. Confirm that I asked this user for help; he would also be the first Wikipedia OA in Korea (hopefully the first of many). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:02, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

 Done--ragesoss (talk) 15:22, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

False notification

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T63488

I see a notification from an hour ago that says User:RegOH edited Education Program talk:Saint Louis University/BIOL 460: Developmental Biology (Spring 2014) when they did not. I suppose this is some sort of bug? Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:53, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: That's odd. What exactly does the notification say?--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

"The course talk page of BIOL 460: Developmental Biology (Spring 2014) was edited by RegOH. 2 hours ago" Links appear on the notification to the course talk page and to RegOH's user page. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 23:04, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Not sure what's going on. I'll file a bug and keep an eye out. If anyone else experiences something similar, please let me know.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:49, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

I received the same notification. Presumably it went to instructors and ambassadors for the course? Biolprof (talk) 20:53, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

User:Biolprof: The course talk notifications are designed to send a Notification to everyone participating in the class (students, volunteers, instructors) whenever something gets posted to the course talk page. So it probably went out to the students as well. We can't figure out what would have triggered it, though. RegOH made an edit to the talk page of Werner syndrome at around the time of Biosthmors' Notification, but we can't think of how that could have triggered it. If RegOH has any additional info about what they were doing around the time of that edit (especially, anything involving the course talk page) that would be helpful.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:28, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

@Biosthmors and Biolprof: What is the url of the "view changes" link for that notification? That might help us track down the cause.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:16, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

There is no view changes link in the notification, the only to links were to either "User:RegOH" or "Education Program talk:Saint Louis University/BIOL 460: Developmental Biology (Spring 2014)". Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:30, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

The complete and current text is "The course talk page of BIOL 460: Developmental Biology (Spring 2014) was edited by RegOH. 5 days ago". Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:32, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

I spoke to RegOH and she has no ideas about this. Other students in the class did not get the notification. Biolprof (talk) 15:22, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. I'm stumped, but please let me know if anyone else notices similar false notifications.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:26, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

idea: showing who is supporting each course

We currently have courses supported by Wiki Education Foundation in the US and Canada, some UK courses supported by Wikimedia UK, some courses that are working on their own and using course pages, and in the future we may see other education programs elsewhere supporting courses. I think it would be good to show which organization (if any) is supporting which course, when they get linked here or at the /Incidents board. I made a template for doing that, like so: Education Program:Example University/Example Course (2014 Q1) . If users of this board think that's useful, I will try to set up a bot to automatically update links (here and at WP:ENI) to show that info.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:28, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Could WikiProjects accept oversight of classes and request that problems be addressed to their board? Is it correct that this is just a template on the link, and you have not proposed to signal the overseeing organization on the course page? Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:32, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Anything is possible. The template I threw together as a start just looks up a specific subpage of the linked course (if it exists) and transcludes content from there. That would flexible enough that whoever is supporting courses could decide what it says for their courses. I think some changes to the course page template itself — maybe an infobox showing who is supporting the course — would also be useful (and easy to implement).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:44, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I like the idea of the information being there. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:34, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia NYC folks have been unofficially supporting local classes too, and it would be great if we could have some acknowledgment of that as well, while of course keeping the place of Wiki Education Foundation as the primary supporter of the US and Canada program.--Pharos (talk) 01:02, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I've put together a bot script for this, and posted a request for bot approval: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/RagesossBot.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:22, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

The bot as been a approved for a trial, so I'll be trying it out this week. At the moment, there aren't actually any links to course pages, so it won't do anything yet.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:36, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

The bot is bored because we haven't had any links to course pages here or at ENI. So, just to humor it: Education Program:Example University/Example Course (2014 Q1). --Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

The bot has gained sentience? Crap. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:52, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Clausthal (talk)

Name

de:Lantus

Institution

LEM – lb:Lycée Ermesinde

Course title and description

How you become a Wikipedian. First steps to enrich your skills to media competence.

Assignment plan

First of all: Supporting the tiny luxembourg community with new authors. All of them are perfect in speaking german an french too. Don't know yet, if it will be more translation or new stuff. The leck of luxembourg articles ist very big. Even the current members of the Government have not yet all its own articles! A lot of places and institutions too!

Number of students

It will be several classes; in toto up to 400 students and their teachers as multipliers

Start and end dates

at the latest summer 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: Clausthal (talk) 16:46, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm a bit wary about giving rights to someone who doesn't seem to be working as a professor. If you're planning to work as a Campus Ambassador, then by all means, I will give you the rights, but until then, I don't see a reason to give it to you. That being said, if you can provide concrete class names and whatnot, as well as involve professors who have usernames that can be listed here, then that would also help. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 16:58, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I have worked for 25 years as a freelance trainer in the IT field with groups of an average of 6 to 30 people. I can not quite understand where you have doubts, yet I'm trying to use this tool as adjuvant for the project. I am a member of the Swiss Chapter and have announced this training at the German Chapter, because there is no Luxembourg Chapter and the training will be held in German. In mid-January, I had a two-hour prologue with a hundred teachers of this school. Clausthal (talk) 18:30, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

GastelEtzwane, do you know this person? I am always happy to support the Swiss chapter. It is just a matter of process that we ask why people want the tools because a lot of people have jumped into the education program knowing nothing about Wikipedia, making a work burden for volunteers to fix. I hope that you appreciate that we mean well by having this process in place. You seemed like a new user for English Wikipedia and I did not recognize that you had Wikipedia experience before you described it. If you have any questions about English Wikipedia or the education program then I could help you if you get the tools, but first, we need two people to sign on for you. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:21, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Hello, the short answer is no, I may not know this person. The long answer is that I might know him in person, but I do not recognise off hand either one of his user names (User:Clausthal or de:Benutzer:Lantus). He is a German speaking editor, and I almost never contribute on the German Wikipedia, and I have few contacts with the German speaking editors. I am still a relatively new board member, and I am getting to know the other Swiss wikipedians. This is something we are working on in Switzerland, and it is also one of my personal priorities: increasing contacts and networking among our three major national language communities.

I will forward your message to the board, and other board members will be able to vouch for him. Best regards. GastelEtzwane (talk) 07:53, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Hi,

concerning the name confusion of this user check out the user page User:Clausthal. It explains that the original, SUL user User:Lantus has been occupied in en:wp, so he can't use it here.

About Lantus / Clausthal: Well known Wikipedia volunteer both in Germany and Switzerland. He is originally german where I meet him several times as one of the forces behind the regular Saarland meet-ups. Now he is living in Switzerland, became a member of Wikimedia CH and is a regular visitor at the Zürich meet-ups and WMCH activities in the german-speaking part of Switzerland. So he is very well-known also to the swiss community that participates in real-life meetings and projects and our community manager.

Concerning workshops: Lantus has been doing workshops for several years now especially in schools (not universities - so asking to be a professior doesn't seem suitable for me in this context) and we are aware due to his reports that he has started to become active in Luxembourg. He is doing these projects without formal or financial support by the chapter but the schools invited him and hopefully reimburse for his travel. --Manuel Schneider^(bla) (+/-) 08:21, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

In addition, here is the photo of my lesson I hold in Luxembourg in front of about 100 Luxembourg teachers. Some of them avoid Wikipedia because it is written by non-academical people. It is my opportunity to change this false image. Clausthal (talk) 08:50, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

• Ktr101 Kevin, I think this person should have tools. To what extent are your expectations satisfied? Are you comfortable seconding this and granting the userrights? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:40, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I was actually just looking at this when you messaged me, and I see no reason not to, as I was just wary that they wanted to use the rights to conduct a quasi-course with a bunch of instructors, without fully realizing how much work it could take. I'll go ahead and grant them the rights now. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:43, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Question about new course pages

Hello (probably Sage). I am curious if the new course pages allow for categorization. I would hope all would be placed in a category such as Category:Course pages by default, for example. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:52, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I expect that categories will work on the eventual replacement system (mw:Editor campaigns) that supplant our current course pages. (If we find an easy way to make them work with the current system in the meantime, we'll do so, although that's not a high priority.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Kin 412

Does anyone know who this class is? [8] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:56, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Likely this class again [9] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:28, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Rmalouf (talk)

Name

Rob Malouf

Institution

San Diego State University

Course title and description

Ling 523: Morphology. Graduate linguistics class on word structure.

Assignment plan

My plan is to have students create or significantly revise entries on terms and concepts related to theoretical morphology. I expect to more or less follow the recommended syllabus.

Number of students

approx. 10-15

Start and end dates

September-December 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Rmalouf (talk) 17:30, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

I posted a link to the instructor tutorial on this person's page and suggested that they engage it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:34, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

• Support This instructor has begun contributing to Wikipedia so that his advice to students will be more informed. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:34, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Regional identity

I made two changes to the landing page at WP:WEP. One is that I added a link to this noticeboard because I wanted this to be a general forum to discuss anything related to the education program if someone does not know where else to go. I think that it already is serving this purpose.

Another is that I removed the text "U.S. and Canada" and replaced it with "All welcome!" I did this because this board and the entire project already have a history of serving and not excluding participants without discriminating by country, and because the Wikipedia community in general does not discriminate by country.

I know that there is an independent non-profit organization based in the United States which has some organizational mission to emphasize the United States and Canada, but I feel like the Wikipedia community's standing position is that resources hosted on Wikipedia and volunteer communities are by default to be offered to everyone, and then if any group is to be discouraged then this should happen with community input.

I made this change because I am inviting people in England to participate. From my perspective, they share the same English Wikipedia that I use and I want them to feel comfortable at this board. If the non-profit needs to focus its efforts on the United States and Canada then I would ask that this preferably happen in ways that do not deter people wandering around Wikipedia from seeking help here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:48, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not sure why we need to keep the fancy formatting. And is it even accurate to imply that the WEF represents Wikipedia? The old RfC was acrimonious, so why would "wp:the community" grant this privilege? I'm under the impression that the education program is whatever Wikipedians say it is. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:09, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

I think it would be good to include other countries (we've included Mexico in this for years), and we could probably even expand it more if needed, as I know that there is interest with Piotrus in Korea for doing something there as well. Hopefully with the new non-profit, we'll be able to expand to around the world in no time. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 05:50, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes all countries are welcome. Many of us have done outreach in a few different ones. National boundaries are not the most useful IMO Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:58, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Projects for younger pupils - a new wiki has just opened

Hi there,

After it has existed for several years in other languages, now open Vikidia in English :-). See Vikidia in English opens today, let’s build a children wiki encyclopedia! and the wiki itself: http://en.vikidia.org

We write in it that: "Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by schools. They will gain some digital media literacy by learning about the functioning of a resource they will use extensively a few years later, namely Wikipedia. Although the goal is still the “knowledge resource” benefit of such a project: school projects are welcome provided they consider the rules and content objectives of the wiki."

I guess that this page mainly focus on Wikipedia-editing in higher education. However, I believe that you shouldn't wait to be 18 or 20 to be offered active learning methods... and that the "wikis in the classroom" experiences and possibilities not only fit to higher education students but for younger pupils provided there is a place where they can integrate their work. That's how such a wiki could ebhance the scope for wikis projects. You may also read this post, originally written by a retired teacher that was involved in the Freinet movement and insist on the need for a living documentary resource that fit well to children. I hope that this message will give you some ideas, fell free to join us and.or to spread the massage ! Astirmays (talk) 22:20, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

LiAnna Davis and WEF update

Hi. It's just been announced via email that LiAnna is to be employed by the WEF. Nothing here, however. Perhaps it's time (indeed, well overdue) for a bit of an update as to what the WEF has been up to over the past few months. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 22:13, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm curious as well. I used to receive emails by merit of being a regional ambassador from Jami with her WMF email address, but I don't think I've had much (any?) contact in months. Should I be receiving some sort of emails? Perhaps User:Mike Christie knows something. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:57, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, thanks a lot for your interest.

• LiAnna: Currently, LiAnna is not an employee of the Wiki Education Foundation. In general, we'll report our hirings in our monthly reports.
• WEF status update: We are planning to publish monthly reports at the beginning of each new month (within the first 7–10 days). Our first monthly report (covering February 2014) will be shared publicly in a few days from now.
• Emails from Jami: I'll notify Jami of this discussion and ask her to check whether you should have received any information.

Thanks again, --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 02:29, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, someone tell Rod Dunican he's wrong![10] --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:14, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure how Rod is wrong. He said LiAnna would be with the WMF until the 14th, so I would imagine Frank is right that LiAnna is not a WEF employee as of March 5th, FWIW. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:30, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I guess that's the conclusion we have to piece together. Still, one would have hoped for a bit more openness, rather than the strangely evasive answer that Frank's given us. It's hardly promising: as many of us have repeatedly said, the WEF has been uncommunicative and opaque for a long time now, and has a history of not answering questions in multiple forums. Here for instance are more questions Frank chose to evade recently. One would hope for better. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 20:12, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Bios, I have also been in the same boat up here, but we've had enough traffic up here that I am not worrying about it too much. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 05:58, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, guys. Now that my notifications and watchlist have been rendered practically useless :) (signed on to too many courses), I'll make sure I start coming here again more regularly. As Frank mentioned, now that he's on board, we'll start publishing reports to keep you and anyone who is interested updated on our activities. In general, as is the case in the beginning of all terms, I have been on-boarding classes and working on some other projects that we'll talk about in this month's report. Bios, there aren't any classes in your region right now, though this is precisely why I'm hoping we can reevaluate the RA team by next term so as to make sure everyone gets to do the work they want to do. I know you're working closely with some classes as OAs, and I trust you haven't needed any support from me with those—please, of course, email or ping me on my talk page if you ever do! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:37, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: LijieZHOU (talk)

Name

Lijie ZHOU

Institution

San Francisco State University

Course title and description

The course is foundation for instructional technology. It is a course for graduate student. Different theories of instructional technology will be reviewed in class, and students need to finish their literature review of the development of instructional technology at the end the semester

Assignment plan

Three main theories will be taught during the whole semester. Students are required to read at least 10 articles for each theory and finish three literature review for each theory. They will be required to upload their literature review on Wikipedia. I will also encourage them to do class peer review on wikipedia.

Number of students

10

Start and end dates

March 10th

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --LijieZHOU (talk) 18:53, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

LijieZHOU Sorry for twice blanking your submission, as the text was hidden. I have confirmed that this person does exist at their institution, but before I grant the right, have you ever edited Wikipedia before, and if so, in what capacity? Thanks! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:18, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

This sounds like it would result in a multitude of articles on the same (notable?) topics. I don't grasp what the assignment output would be in terms of what is contributed to Wikipedia and where. How familiar with Wikipedia are you, LijieZHOU? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:23, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I've been working with Lijie and some other folks at SFSU in a different capacity from typical classes. They are studying the current available materials about teaching with Wikipedia to propose a plan for improving the usability. I don't think she's actually having students edit but needs access to various tools professors have. Also, she and her classmates have read every material we have about teaching with Wikipedia, so I wish she were bringing some students on! Running to the airport, but I'll try to respond later if anyone has any other questions or concerns. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:00, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, Jami just granted her the rights, so I think we're set here. Thanks, Jami! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 20:12, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Just a side note

I have updated Wikipedia:Education program/Ambassadors/CA questionnaire and Wikipedia:Online Ambassadors/Apply/Questionnaire, so users who request permission don't have to fix USERNAME value anymore.(+, I have added auto sign to Wikipedia:Online Ambassadors/Apply/Questionnaire.) — Revi_complaint? 09:22, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Cmaximino (talk)

Name

Cmaximino (talk)

Institution

UEPA Marabá – br:Universidade do Estado do Pará

Course title and description

Physiology & Anatomy 1 Systems: nervous, locomotor and cardiovascular

Assignment plan

The objective is that, at the end of the course, each student will have created or improved an already existing article from pt-br Wikipedia on the specific topics in morphophysiology they will study this semester - namely, cell physiology and structure and function of the nervous, locomotor and cardiovascular systems.

Number of students

12

Start and end dates

March-July 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: Cmaximino (talk) 00:50, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Cmaximino, have you ever contributed to Wikipedia? Are you in contact with anyone who contributes to Wikipedia in the language you want to develop? Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:54, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Bluerasberry, I've just participated on the Royal Society Editathon, with an article on Maria Carmelo Rico. In the last few days, I've been experimenting with my sandbox to understand how to create a course page.

Unfortunately, I do not know anyone in the pt-br Wikipedia community. The anatomy and physiology sections in Portuguese are in shambles, and I don't think anyone is at charge. Mayhaps I should contact the people from the Brazilian biology pirtal?

Just to be clear here, the assignment does not involve creating/editing articles in en, only pt-br.Cmaximino (talk) 02:46, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

I support this request based on the work you have done at Wikipedia:WikiProject Fisiologia & Anatomia 1. Yes, it would be useful for you to contact a Portuguese-speaking Wikipedian if you can find one who would help. I know nothing about Portuguese Wikipedia, but if you have questions about medical policy, you or your students can ask anything at WP:WikiProject Medicine and you will always get a quick response. Would someone else comment on userrights here? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:49, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I just added the course template to Wikipedia:WikiProject Fisiologia & Anatomia 1, but the course does not exist 'per se', so students cannot enroll in it. I also noticed that conversation in this topic died out, so I'm guessing that the course proposal was not approved? Cmaximino (talk) 12:21, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Moacir (talk)

Name

Moacir P. de Sá Pereira

Institution

Vilnius Gediminas Technical University

Course title and description

The course is called Lithuanian for Foreigners, and one of the tasks for the students is to translate an English Wikipedia article into a Lithuanian one.

Assignment plan

Students will choose an English article about a person that does not have a Lithuanian version. They will then translate the article into Lithuanian.

Number of students

60

Start and end dates

The course has already begun. I hope to showcase the students’ contributions at the end of May.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Moacir (talk) 23:03, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Hello Moacir. Thanks for your interest in Wikipedia. I take it your students will be editing the Lithuanian Wikipedia? If so, I don't see why establishing a course page here is in your class' interest, because this course page module tool is for the English Wikipedia. It wouldn't register changes to the Lithuanian Wikipedia, as far as I am aware. Please someone correct me if I am wrong on any of this. Best regards. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:31, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I think they just want to coordinate on this site, and I see no reason why they shouldn't get the right, here. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 05:41, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies, Biosthmors and Ktr101. The students are far more comfortable in English than in Lithuanian, so I had hoped to stay within the English Wikispace for as much of the project as possible. But Biosthmors's assumption is right: no changes to English Wikipedia would be made, so the course page may be a bit of a dead end. Moacir (talk) 14:45, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

I second Kevin's support and have granted the userright to Moacir. Like the others, I expect that many features of this software will not apply to Lithuanian Wikipedia, however, it may still be useful just to set up a course page so that all the students can sign the roster as participants. Maybe also it would be useful for them to note on article talk pages that they are translating the articles into another language. There is not much precedent for this but it seems like something that we should support. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:44, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Time to get started. Hopefully this might be a useful precedent, then. Moacir (talk) 22:21, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to Wikiconference USA

Please come if you can!

Hello! In New York City Friday 30 May - Sunday 1 June Wikiconference USA will be held as a national United States Wikipedia meetup hosted by Wikimedia New York City and Wikimedia DC. All are welcome to attend. Scholarship applications to cover travel expenses are accepted until the end of March and presentation submissions are requested until that time but can be accepted until closer to the conference.

In previous years New York City conferences have gathered 150 attendees. At this conference we are hoping for more people to attend.

It would be nice if participants and supporters of the education program could attend. Anyone with questions may contact me or any of the other organizers, or post on the conference website. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:00, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

WEF monthly report for February available

Hi everyone, you'll find the Wiki Education Foundation's first monthly report (covering February 2014) on Commons. If you have any questions or comments, please drop us a line on this report's talk page. Thanks, --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 21:01, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Frank, you have to be kidding us, right?

a) This is not the first WEF monthly report. Look here for a list of previous ones.

b) The terms of approval for the WEF grant are that " a regular (at least bi-monthly; ideally monthly) report to the English Wikipedia community is posted by the WEF at the Wikipedia:Education noticeboard," i.e. not to yet another new Wikimedia project, "along with a link to the report from an appropriate high-visibility area like the Village Pump." You have failed to comply with either part of this stipulation.

Meanwhile, perhaps some clarity on LiAnna's situation (see above) is in order. And has the WEF now abandoned posting its minutes? Or is it that the Board has not met since November?

Please, Frank, please work to improve communication with the Wikipedia community, rather than (as at present) degrading this relationship still further.

NB this is a complaint also from your funders, who say: "I urge you to ensure the lag between when decisions are made and when they are made public is as short as possible. [...] It seems to me the WEF could do better in this regard." --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 22:26, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I've just posted two more sets of minutes at the WEF public documents page. Sorry about the delay; there is a good reason for part of the delay, but only part. Normally I publish the minutes shortly after the meeting at which they are approved, but I was not at the 12/31 meeting so the 12/17 minutes got missed. The 12/31 minutes were not published immediately they were approved because they include a discussion of Frank Schulenburg's hire as ED; we didn't want to release those minutes till the information became public by other means. When that news was announced I should have released the minutes; I can only plead pressure of real life (I'm moving house). They're up now, anyway, and I'll try to stay on time from now on. FYI, there was a board meeting on 2/6 and those minutes will be published after they are approved at the next meeting.

Re posting somewhere more prominent: yes, a link should go to the VPM. I've now done that and Frank or I will do that in the future. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 08:54, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Mike. Should I wait for Frank for the rest, or would you be able to address the other issues? Are you still the appointed person to communicate with Wikipedia? More info, transparency, and openness would, as always, be welcome. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 11:51, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Oh, and I note that the December 31 meeting was more efficient than usual: according to the published minutes, it began at 2pm EST, and finished at 1:50pm EST, i.e. ten minutes earlier than its start time. I commend the board for their speed in coming to a decision about Frank's hiring.  ;) --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 11:56, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Impressive, isn't it? Good catch; I'll try to figure out the right times and make the correction. Re your other question: Frank will be responding to questions related to the WEF and its activities; I'll continue to respond to anything that seems clearly directed at the board (such as minutes). Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:27, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Now fixed; Diana was secretary and noted the end time in CST by mistake. I've also now posted the 2/6 minutes, just FYI. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 08:59, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks.  :) More seriously, Frank seems depressingly reluctant to respond to questions such as those above. I hope that the board will either ensure he does work harder on communication or step in itself. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 15:51, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Why a PDF?

(To keep the discussion in one place, I'm copying this over from the Commons talk page. Good to see Frank beginning to respond to some queries at least! --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 02:23, 8 March 2014 (UTC))

Hi Frank et al. Thanks for reporting on your activities. :-) It's a shame to see that this report is in the form of a PDF on commons, though, rather than being on meta in wiki format. Why did you chose this format? It really hinders readability and accessibility. :-( Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:50, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

It also goes against the terms of your funders. As I have pointed out in the appropriate place. --Jbmurray (talk) 23:01, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Mike, you're absolutely right. In the future, we'd like to publish the report in at least two different formats. At this point, I didn't have the bandwidth to do more than the PDF. What's still missing – beyond a wiki markup version – is our own website (that's where everybody else would look for it). And from next month on, we'll be putting more resources into the reporting. For now, I'm glad that we were able to at least send out a PDF version ;-) Thanks again, --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 00:03, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

I am always ready to encourage and support anyone who seeks to promote community values and collaboration, and in my opinion, this report and comments about it make the education program more able to do that. Thank you for responding directly and seeking to manage educational outreach more efficiently. I appreciate your commitment to improving reporting practices. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:16, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bluerasberry, thanks for your feedback. --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 15:23, 14 March 2014 (UTC) 

I'm glad that Jbmurray posted this here. The pdf in its current format isn't readable at all, so that's problematic. But I'm wondering why, since this is supposed to be the program to close the gap between Wikipedia and academia, it's not been posted in wiki mark-up to an appropriate wiki page. And further, does the comment about "our own website" mean that WEF will become a separate project? If so, how will it overlap with the work students will be doing here on enwp? Wouldn't it be best to fold WEF into enwp - particularly as we seem to be granting additional privileges to some as indicated in the thread below? Victoria (tk) 21:42, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Victoria, thanks a lot for your interest and your questions. We will publish our monthly report in more than one format from next month on. And the comment about "our own website" simply means that we don't have an appropriate website to publish the report on at this point. That's one of the many things on our to do list and I can't wait to see it happen. Also, about the acronym: "WEF" stands for "Wiki Education Foundation". WEF will continue to work with university instructors and students that had gotten direct support by the Wikimedia Foundation in the past. The Wikimedia Foundation will focus on the global aspects of the program, whereas the WEF will focus on the United States and Canada. Best, --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 15:23, 14 March 2014 (UTC) P.S. I will follow up with you on your talk page about possible technical problems with the PDF.

Request for course instructor right: PrakashBH (talk)

Name

Prakash B Hegade

Institution

B. V. B. College of Engineering and Technology, Hubli-31 (Karnataka, India)

Course title and description

Course name: Theory of computations. The course deals with concepts of automata theory.

Assignment plan

Students will carry out the course projects and update the results and discussions on the wiki page.

Number of students

140

Start and end dates

The course has already begun. students have deadlines to submit results until May 05, 2014. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PrakashBH (talk • contribs) 10:43, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Galadrien

Galadrien (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   For the helping people in Education Program:Hanyang University/Collective Intelligence in Practice (2014). Dr. Piotr in Hanyang University encouraged me to get registered as helper of this class(and I have ended my 45-minutes speaking section for them, today).

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   I'm researcher in Inha University, but this ambassador activity is for 6 members in Hanyang University ERICA, just for now. I'll help reviewing their acitivities at Korean Wikipedia.

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   I'm PH.D Candidate at Inha University, which I have researched about culture contents and culture policies, and culture studies.

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   I have edited 8000+ edits in Korean Wikipedia from 2005(and Inner ID is 3-digit). I am the one of executive member in Wikimedia South Korea(prepare), and former-OTRS member for Korean tickets.

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Ellif (talk) 06:33, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

If I can support, I'd support him: trusted in kowiki, has no problem, WMKR executive member, and I believe he will work well here too. — Revi_complaint? 08:37, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Galadrien I reviewed this user's Wikipedia history and also support this person having in-person and online ambassador rights. I just granted them. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:57, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: humanrights4nz (talk)

Name

Natalie Baird

Institution

University of Canterbury

Course title and description

International Human Rights Law (LAWS322): Students are required to understand the workings of key international human rights institutions and international human rights treaties. They are also encouraged to critically evaluate sources of information on international human rights and develop an appreciation for the advantages and disadvantages of the international human rights framework.

Assignment plan

Students will be asked to contribute to an existing page on international human rights law, or create a new article where warranted (approx 1,500-2,000 words each). Student will select their own topic, but many students are likely to focus on topics concerning New Zealand and the Pacific region (eg Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga etc). There is currently limited coverage of the small Pacific Islands on Wikipedia, so the students' work will hopefully be a useful addition.

Number of students

Approximately 35 3rd year Law students.

Start and end dates

The course has already started. Proposed due date for assignment is Weds 7 May 2014. The students are to start thinking about topic selection in the week beginning 10 March.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman:

Humanrights4nz (talk) 07:42, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

• Support In 2011 this user greatly developed the article Human rights in Tonga, which I take as supporting evidence that this user - despite not having a lot of Wikipedia experience - is more committed to Wikipedia than many others coming to the Wikipedia Education Program. Historically law students are more cautious in following Wikipedia rules than many other demographics of students, so that also makes me support more. Finally, I feel that this user will be sensitive to diverse viewpoints because they already say that they will be talking about human rights across national borders in places with populations which historically have been underrepresented in global conversations. Thoughts from others? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:05, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your support. Please note that I have completed the Training for Educators. Am keen for the course instructor right if possible. Humanrights4nz (talk) 12:05, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: Could someone follow up on my assessment? A second opinion is desirable to grant the userright. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:15, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Looks like a good project to me, I have granted the course instructor right.--Pharos (talk) 15:52, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Course coordinator request

As some of the frequent visitors to the Education Noticeboard will already know, I am the education coordinator for Wikimedia UK. I am writing today to request the course coordinator user right so I can help UK-based instructor more directly in using the course page system. I am not a Wikipedia admin and therefore have limited rights with assigning new instructors with the appropriate user rights and/or editing specific things (such as course end dates, or online volunteers listings) for UK-based courses. We currently have 4 institutions using the course page system in the UK and hope to expand this number considerably over the coming academic year. Thanks! --ToniSant (talk) 15:59, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Hello ToniSant. I watch this noticeboard and I am unaware of any announcement that you made here about being an education coordinator, but just the same, I am glad that Wikimedia UK created this post. As a matter of protocol, the usual check made before assigning userrights is to ask someone to complete a tutorial, show some of their Wikipedia history, and then get appropriate references. Could you provide the following?

1. Confirmation that you have completed the instructor tutorial for the Wikipedia Education Program.
2. A recommendation for the granting of userrights from a Wikimedia UK representative who will take responsibility for your actions, since you are claiming an affiliation with that group.
3. A description of and link to anything you have done of Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project which demonstrates your experience in contributing.

If you provide these things, then I would support the issuance of course coordinator rights to you. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:23, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

FYI, I can confirm that Toni is who is says he is; I suggested that he post this request, since WMUK is starting to get going with supporting courses.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both. --ToniSant (talk) 16:34, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Clarification of rights issuing

Tonisant said "I am not a Wikipedia admin and therefore have limited rights with assigning new instructors with the appropriate user rights and/or editing specific things". I am not aware of Wikipedia adminship having any overlap with any of the education program userrights. Do admins have the right to grant course instructor rights? Is it correct that only course coordinators can assign education program userrights?

Could someone clarify who can grant course coordinator and other rights at Wikipedia:User_access_levels#Course_coordinator.2C_instructor.2C_online_and_campus_volunteer? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:23, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Admins can grant the coordinator right as well as the other rights associated with the extension, and by default can do things such as create and delete courses.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay thanks that is all settled. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:40, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I also feel it's important to clarify that the extension on ENWP is certainly not limited to use in the US and Canada. Though we have particular standards for the course coordinator user right within the US/CA program, I hope we're as inclusive as possible in allowing others who are coordinating educational efforts on ENWP. With the coordinator user right, Toni can now grant the instructor user right to any instructors in the UK with whom he is working, which I don't think should be the right or responsibility of Regional Ambassadors in the US/CA. Is that a fair thing for me to say? I want to make sure we're all on the same page! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:01, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I made changes related to this idea earlier - see Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard/Archive7#Regional_identity. It could be time to reconsider the notion of regional ambassadors. I am not aware of any ambassador who ever had personal agency to freely travel in person beyond their home city around their region, so to say that anyone had regional control might not be meaningful. Also, everyone has always commented on issues outside of their home region.

For my own part, I have favored classes which were interesting to me regardless of their geographical location.

If Toni is overseeing courses done in English then it seems right to me that this be the primary noticeboard for managing them, which would make classes in the UK "the right or responsibility of Regional Ambassadors in the US/CA" and the right and responsibility of whomever shows up at this board to comment in the traditional distributed process.

I am also curious about the future of non-English editing. I feel like that coordination here on this board should be an option just because English is the language with the most dependable community support, the only education program interface, and most of the educational outreach materials. While I would encourage anyone speaking non-English languages to set up project pages as they like, I also wish English Wikipedia could be as accommodating as possible for anyone who came here who spoke even a little English.

Are there other perspectives? Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:59, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I potentially have access to travel funds to go within the state of California at this point - and have always been able to talk to people in the Bay and San Diego directly (as well as occasionally LA,) but expect that I'm a bit of an unusual case (and even still I definitely don't have the ability to travel to Hawaii unless a school there wants to sponsor me or something.) I would agree that tying things to large reasons doesn't make sense (although at the same time I'd be a bit confused if there was an active class in the bay that I wasn't at least aware of.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:25, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I have been active as a Regional Ambassador, and have set up User:Pharos/Regional Wiki-Classes (Spring 2014), but I would feel more comfortable if this responsibility could be partly shared by our local group at Wikimedia NYC under supervision of WEF, and not just be on me personally. Of course, I also think that regional/subject-based class coordination should not be an either/or thing, and that we should allow for and encourage both approaches.--Pharos (talk) 16:17, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

• Given that Toni works as WMUK's educational organizer, I'm going to go ahead and give them the course coordinator flag. Hopefully this doesn't end up being controversial, but it seems to be a pretty common sense thing to do, and afaik, even if it's rarely done, the CC flag can be handed out freely by admins anyway - I know I wasn't technically an RA when I got tagged. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:25, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Kevin Gorman ToniSant I support your doing this on an emergency basis, but unless Tonisant makes a claim that following procedure is unfairly burdensome, I would still request that this user point to something in their history which demonstrates experience using Wikipedia and the endorsement of a Wikimedia UK representative. The userright you are assigning has the potential to greatly affect all of the Wikimedia community and this program specifically. What I requested should not take more than a minute of his time and a minute of the time of Wikimedia UK. There has been consensus that problems are prevented by respecting community guidelines. If you would like to be bold, Kevin, and assert that chapters get a pass on protocol then please insert that statement in the rule set. I would support that, just so long as chapters also take responsibility for the people they favor. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:32, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

• I probably should've waited longer before going ahead and granting it, but I disagree strongly that Tonisaint needs to point to something in his history that demonstrates he has experience with Wikipedia. His edit history isn't as long or as detailed as that of many of us, but it certainly demonstrates that he's not some rando applying for CC rights. He has more article experience than some people who currently have +CC. On top of that he's already directly working with at least four courses using the edu extension. In a situation where someone has obvious experience, there's no point in asking them to demonstrate it - it would weird if, say, doc james showed up asking for a userright and the first question he was asked was 'can you show us you have experience with wikipedia?' Since Sage has already confirmed that Toni works for WMUK, your request for an explicit endorsement by a WMUK rep seems to pretty much be met by Toni's initial request. Despite how much emphasis have been at times put on +CC, it's really not a right that can do very much harm, especially now that the restore page functions have been fixed.

I don't think I've so much ignored consensus about we hand out rights like these so much as there *isn't* consensus about how we hand out rights like these. There probably needs to be sooner or later, but until then it seems reasonable to just use common sense in approaching them. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:17, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Kevin Gorman There is consensus for course instructor and campus ambassador userrights. This user seems not interested in meeting those. I hope that I did nothing surprising in this case. Perhaps you have heard that sometimes when people affiliated with WMF ask for special privileges not available to other community members then it creates tension. If there is no problem with the WMUK program then I suppose everything will be okay. It is just a bit odd to give a right by virtue of someone coming in and saying they are paid to advocate for an organization, especially when their intent is to save themselves nothing more than a few minutes. I would prefer not to encourage hierarchy and rank here. The bar to getting these rights is already as low as anyone could conceive as being reasonable. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:03, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Introducing myself

Hi all,

I’d like to officially introduce myself here on the Education Noticeboard. Last month, I left the Wikimedia Foundation and started working for the Wiki Education Foundation as their inaugural Executive Director.

I grew up in Northern Germany and lived in Göttingen prior to moving to the United States. I joined the Wikimedia Foundation in 2008, at a point where the Foundation was still a tiny organization with a handful of employees.

Although my parents didn’t finish high school, they valued education as a means for people to have a better life. They worked hard in order to allow me to get the education that they never had access to. For a long time I thought my own path in life would be to become a high school teacher or a university professor. Then, in 2005, I discovered Wikipedia and it struck me like lightning – from that moment on, I spent a huge amount of my free time writing articles and contributing images to Wikimedia Commons.

I’m most passionate about improving Wikipedia’s quality and especially about teaching others how to contribute their knowledge to the pool of freely accessible information on the web.

After getting married to my wife (who’s a native Californian), I lived in Santa Rosa before moving closer to San Francisco. In my free time, I’m trying to hone my photography skills and educate others about how to take images with their digital camera and upload them to Commons. Having been a Wikipedian for more than 9 years now, I’m excited about serving as the first ED of the Wiki Education Foundation and helping to improve Wikipedia’s breadth, scope, and quality.

Thanks, --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 20:04, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this, Frank. And welcome!  :) --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 20:33, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks :-) --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 20:47, 14 March 2014 (UTC) 

Congrats on being hired as Executive Director, Frank. I will forward to seeing the organization's evolution. --Another Believer _(Talk) 21:13, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 21:42, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the intro, and thanks for all your contributions. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:54, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Much appreciated. --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 15:50, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

WEF–WMF arrangement

I see from the February 6th, 2014 board minutes (website) that there is what appears to be a new financial agreement between the WP:WEF and the WP:WMF. Frank, since I think you're taking the lead now in answering on-wiki questions about the WEF, is this sort of like a WMF grant, but not like a WMF grant? Is this agreement going to be made public? Or is it already public? Thanks. (I quoted the portion of the minutes below.) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 23:10, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Dr. Strassmann then discussed ongoing negotiations with WMF regarding a possible Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement. Dr. Strassmann explained that the Corporation had come to terms with WMF regarding the Agreement. Dr. Strassmann explained that the Agreement would, among other things, require WMF to establish a restricted fund for the benefit of the Corporation. Dr. Strassmann stated that, in return, the Corporation would agree to comply with the terms of the Agreement, including to use the funds received solely for the purposes outlined by the Agreement and that WMF may withhold or demand the funds be returned if, at any time, the Corporation ceases to use the funds for the agreed purposes. After full discussion and consideration, and upon a motion duly made and seconded, it was unanimously:

RESOLVED, that the form, terms and provisions of the Agreement be, and they hereby are, approved, adopted and ratified in all respects; and

FURTHER RESOLVED, that any Officer of the Corporation be, and they hereby are, authorized, empowered and directed to execute and deliver the Agreement, in such form as such Officer shall, in their sole discretion, approve, such approval to be conclusively evidenced by the execution and delivery thereof, and any other agreements, instruments, and documents to be executed and delivered in connection with the Contract.

Hi Biosthmors, no, this is not a WMF grant. It's based on the fact that the WEF hasn't gotten confirmation yet about its status as a tax-exempt organization (or "501(c)(3) status", see the article 501(c) organization). WEF sent the forms to the IRS last year, however, the reply can take a while and we haven't heard anything back yet (which is ok for now – we were expecting this to take some time). In order to accept donations from third-party organizations (not the WMF), the WEF will need that status. Now, the solution in our case is that the WMF acts as what people call a "fiscal sponsor". Basically that means that the donation will be channeled through WMF on our behalf (at least, as long as our 501(c)(3) status is still pending). This is nothing unusual for an organization that is as young as the WEF; the application process for the 501(c)(3) status usually takes some time. And as soon as the tax exempt status will be granted, the WMF will transfer the remaining grant money to the WEF bank account. Now, with that said, I actually don't know if that agreement has been published or if anything speaks against publishing it. But I will ask the WEF board for clarification (I haven't been involved in the negotiations between WMF and WEF). Does this answer your question? Best, --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 23:34, 18 March 2014 (UTC) P.S. As of now, the WEF hasn't gotten any funding except for the initial "start-up grant" from WMF, but we're planning to send a grant proposal to a third-party organization this week.

Yes, I believe so. Thanks for the clarification. I was curious if the agreement included any new fiscal committments to WEF beyond the initial grant. And it sounds like the answer to that is no, because it sounds like it's just an agreement to help the WEF avoid potential tax consequences on the initial grant. Thanks again. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:49, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Correct. This is just about WEF not having been granted 501(c)(3) status so far. Thanks, --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 21:04, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

To answer Biosthmors' earlier question: as a general rule the WEF won't release legal documents that are between the WEF and another party. In this case, as Frank says, it's just an arrangement to allow tax-free funds to be disbursed to the WEF until it becomes a 501(c)(3). Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:53, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

This month in Education

(Well, I am not sure if I am in the correct noticeboard, so feel free to move if this is in wrong place.)

If anyone is responsible for This month in Education newsletters, (and watching here), please put ~~~~ at the bottom of the newsletter code: It will sign as MediaWiki message delivery (talk · contribs), so archivebots like ClueBot III, LCSB3, archive bot on other wikis can archive page. Thanks. — Revi_complaint? 14:48, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Anna Koval did that delivery, and I think will be doing future ones.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:55, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: 108.4.79.39 (talk)

Name

Carolyn Eastman

Institution

Virginia Commonwealth University

Course title and description

History of Sexuality in America, 1600-Present

Assignment plan

Each student will choose a topic that is either under-written on Wikipedia (a stub or very short entry) or non-existent, and develop a full entry based on trustworthy primary and secondary historical sources.

Number of students

40

Start and end dates

January 2014-May 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --108.4.79.39 (talk) 15:29, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Hey Carolyn, do you have a username? If not, can you please create one so that we grant you the rights. Thanks! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 15:30, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

FYI, I tracked down her email address (since she probably isn't watching this page since she edited from an IP) and sent her some materials and requested her syllabus so I can review it for potential Wikipedia pitfalls :). I'll summarize it and/or any meeting I have with her as soon as we have one! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:34, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Ms. G

Name

Ms. Julia Gonzalez

Institution

Miami Arts Charter

Course title and description

This is a high school chemistry course. Students are exposed to chemistry topics starting from the atom and working our way out to interactions of compounds.

Assignment plan

As part of our science literacy initiative students will working on articles that have been marked for improvement through Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry. Students are require to explore the different type of contributions that are needed (Wikify, Style, Stub etc). Then they will choose an article to improve according to the relevant guidelines for that contribution type. After student have made their their contributions they will monitor their article and analyze the changes that are made to it after their contributions. The aim of the project is for students to understand how Wikipedia functions, how articles evolve over time and to break the myth that Wikipedia is intrinsically unreliable.

Number of students

60

Start and end dates

Aug 2013 - June 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Ms. G 14:51, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

• I support this user getting course instructor userrights. On this user's page I see that her class is already engaging Wikipedia. Having userrights to make a course page seems best. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:49, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

60 high school students writing about obscure topics in chemistry? I worry about this formula. Who's doing quality control here? Rjensen (talk) 03:23, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

I see that the instructor knows about WP:WikiProject Chemistry. I'd suggest that she contact that project via its talk page, and provide a link to a list of the pages that students will be editing. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:16, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: New user access level (student)

Since we already have a user group for instructors, can we also add a flag for the students? It could be assigned automatically for editors who enroll in a course (and expire after half a year). It should allow for some nice tricks, like an easy way to follow all students for patrollers/ambassadors/researchers, but also for more advanced ones. The one that brought me here was an idea that it would be nice if student deleted articles could be viewable by instructors, or perhaps upon deletion they could be automatically restored in draft space for instructor review (and deleted again in a week or two if no action was taken). Every now and then I've to ask for an article of my students to be undeleted, because it was speedied before I had a chance to even see it in the first place; and I doubt I am the only instructor with that problem. This wastes my time, that of the deleting admin, and delays the instuctor ability to tell the students about their errors. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:36, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Piotrus: That's an interesting idea, but probably not on the roadmap. The current plan is to build a more general system to replace the current extension; see mw:Editor campaigns. We're going to try to continue making some small improvements to the course page system in the meantime, but probably no major changes such as a new user right. The 'editor campaigns' system should make it much easier to both do systematic research on groups of users (whether a class of students, or people who joined through a specific editing workshop, or even members of a WikiProject) by connecting to Wikimetrics, and later on probably through a more flexible activity feed along the lines of the current course feeds (which would be more useful to ambassadors and perhaps patrollers). For the deletion issue, I'm hoping that a lot of the typical problems can be headed off (for both students and other newcomers) when Drafts become more robust and we can make 'move to Draft' a standard alternative to deletion.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 12:52, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Salubrious_Toxin

Salubrious Toxin (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   Wikipedia has been an extremely useful resource throughout my life, but during medical school I noticed that many of the medical articles are poorly written, cited, and updated. I am hoping to work with Wikiproject:Medicine to change this, and get medical students at my school involved in editing wikipedia. On a more fundamental level, I believe that the free, online dissemination of information is the future. It will empower and educate anyone who can access an internet connection, and will hopefully tackle some of the many issues facing society while allowing humanity to push the boundaries of knowledge forward.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   New York City. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   MD-PhD Student, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   I went through the Ambassador training module. I am currently editing various Stroke articles, starting with the Cerebral Infarct subtype.

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I plan to start an organization at my Medical School dedicated to developing high-quality wikipedia articles, modeled after this course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/UCSF_Elective_2013

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Salubrious Toxin (talk) 03:05, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Hello Salubrious Toxin. The existing rules discourage anyone from getting education program userrights unless they have Wikipedia contributing experience, and you are a very new user right now.

However, WikiProject Medicine is a place that gives a lot of support to new users, and New York City as well has regular training events for new Wikipedia contributors. I think that if you had a few conversations with other users either online or in person and you had just a little more experience with Wikipedia then you would meet minimal standards for this, as we stay rules-oriented here, it would be difficult to give you the user rights at this time.

I sent you an email about meeting up either in person or on Skype. There will also be training for contributing to medical articles at our 30 May-1 June Wikiconference USA in Lower Manhattan, and it would be great if you could attend that. We should talk more soon! Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:37, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I met this user and two other students who have started a Wikipedia club at their university and plan to coordinate participation in the Wikipedia Education Program as a student-led project. They will have instructor mentors but the contact person for the club will be Salubrious Toxin, and who will be supported by those two other students initially, me, and anyone else from Wikimedia New York City who joins. Two unusual things about this situation is that this is a student led and not professor led group, and also that Salubrious Toxin does not have much Wikipedia editing experience. However, after talking with the group for two hours, I am convinced that this group is unlikely to abuse course instructor userrights. I would like for someone to review this user and consider seconding my proposal to grant this person course instructor userrights. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:22, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

The UCSF effort was started by a student who than pulled faculty into the effort. So this does have precedence. Would be happy to speak by voice regarding what you are planning. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:50, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

This user was reviewed further in WikiProject Medicine. I granted this user "course instructor" rights and informed him of this on his user talk page. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:02, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

A post on the AfC help desk that is relevant to this project

The post at WP:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk#Review of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/diaosi seems to me to be a problem caused by bad course design. If the student's explanation is accurate it seems this student's teacher did not understand the nature of Wikipedia - expecting a student to be able to accomplish everything described in the post within the timespan of a typical college course is obviously unreasonable. Unfortunately there is no indication on the editor's user or talk page what course this is about. (BTW I have posted here before about student projects using AfC being a bad idea.) I hope you can help this student editor - to minimize confusion and spreading the issue over multiple pages please contact the editor directly. Thanks Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:25, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

The article is now in mainspace,Diaosi, (and has even survived an AFD) but nobody from here seems to have contacted the student to help them find their class project page. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:34, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

OBGYN bootcamp project

Hello, I am the course director at Harvard Medical School for a 4th year elective in Obstetrics and Gynecology. This is a preparatory course for 4th year medical students who have matched into OBGYN residencies and which is intended to provide the students with the skills they require to successfully start their internship year. As a scholarly component of an otherwise technical/skills oriented course, we are working with a Wikipedian, Lane Rasberry from Consumer Reports, to edit or write Wikipedia entries on topics regarding women's reproductive health. There are eight students enrolled and the course runs from 3/31-4/25, during which time the students will be working on their entries. The students will be meeting with the campus ambassador during the first week, choose their topics, and spend time both in class sessions and independently working on the project over the following 3 weeks. I have reviewed the instructor's information and now would like to set up the course page. Celesteroyce (talk) 12:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Hello Celesteroyce. The standard way to notify the team is with the form at Wikipedia:Training/For_educators/Setting_up_your_course_2, which you have completed freeform in your explanation above. Because I have talked with you about your class and because I feel that your expectations are aligned with the goals of this education program, I support your being granted the userright to create a coursepage. Could I have someone else review this user's intentions and comment on their request for the userright? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:26, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Based on what I read here, the intentions certainly make good sense to me; I'm not sure if Blue Rasberry is asking for anything else. I would encourage the instructor to go through the training module linked just above, and to read WP:ASSIGN. I also think it would be a good idea for the instructor to leave a note at WT:MED. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:32, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, totally new to this world, so I hope you will forgive my transgressions of local custom! I have done the training module and read ( now) the WP:ASSIGN. I am not sure where to leave note at WT:MED- and what else you would like to see? Please enlighten me. thanks for any and all assistance!Celesteroyce (talk) 01:55, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Welcome. Look forwards to seeing your class edit. As I am sure that Blue has mentioned we encourage people very strongly to use secondary sources and position papers of major national and international organizations per WP:MEDRS. One of the greatest frustrations students encounter is when they use primary sources and than what they have added is removed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:23, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for comments. Celesteroyce, I turned the switch on which designates you as a "course instructor" and now you can create a course page using the tutorial. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:23, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

And where you asked about WT:MED, I got it started for you at WT:MED#Student Ob/Gyn writing project. Just follow that link, and you or your students can post there, right below my comment. And Doc James makes a very important point about making sure that your students are aware of WP:MEDRS. Welcome to Wikipedia! --Tryptofish (talk) 23:36, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

AGF and newbie biting question

For the most part I find Wikipedians to be pretty helpful and willing to work with students. Indeed, many have gone way above and beyond in offering to help and provide feedback. We've run into our share of speedy deletes, reversions, and I've had several students make mistakes that were duly removed -- I expect as much as 20-50 new Wikipedians dive in. A couple times, however, students have had interactions with particularly abrasive experienced editors quick to remove/delete/warn/revert in a way that, while supported by content policy, disregards AGF and BITE to the extent that it turned the students off to Wikipedia entirely. This happened recently at the Rodeo Drive article (and is, to some extent, ongoing) in one of my classes. An experienced editor excised large blocks of text, insulting/warning the students who added it. When I engaged the editor on the talk page, responding to his/her removals, I pointed out several mistakes the editor made (e.g. removing content as "unsourced" shortly before removing the works cited section, which simply weren't cited inline, as "linkspam"), and assured him/her that I would go over certain issues with the students the following day in class. For the time being, however, since very little of the content so particularly bad that it demanded immediate removal (there were no copyvio, blp, etc. issues), I emphasized AGF/BITE, allowing the content to be improved rather than removing it. I also pointed out that this was an educational assignment, indicated by the talk page banner, and thus it should be assumed, given active editing by the students, that this is a page in process that will be steadily improving under the guidance of experienced Wikipedia editors. The user refused to engage in any discussion other than to repeatedly highlight certain blocks of trivia (indeed, trivia; not appropriate but not damaging), mocking its addition and giving me a condescending laundry list of things I need to teach them.

For the most part, the policies are in line with his/her changes, but the flagrant disregard for AGF and BITE not only caused a group of students distress, as this happened the evening before an assignment was due, but has also caused a sense of dread for continuing this assignment (for the students involved as well as a few others who heard about the events). There is no Wikipedia:BITE/Noticeboard or Wikipedia:AGF/Noticeboard on which to address this, and as I said the user was largely right in terms of content policy (I would likely remove such material myself if this were an article that had been sitting unchanged for a while and didn't have the educational assignment banner), so what's a teacher to do? Shouldn't that educational assignment banner mean something? Something like "This is being actively worked on by new users guided by an experienced user. Please be patient and help them or talk to the instructor." I can see this sort of thing causing not just students but educators to run for the hills. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  22:51, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I regret that an experienced editor was biting your class. The only way to deal with this is for some class moderator, either the instructor or an ambassador, to either address the problem or request help on another board. You are right that there is no BITE or AGF noticeboard because noticeboards are for mediation, whereas conduct problems like biting are always escalated to be addressed by a third party without mediation between the involved parties. To answer biting concerns either come here, alert an administrator, or as with anything else, go to the WP:TEAHOUSE. Anyone who reverts edits of others and fails to engage sufficiently is off-track - I regret that you have had a bad experience. If I had to offer an explanation, it would be that even though we try hard to stop the problems the education program definitely puts some extra stress on many established users because students tend to move more quickly in making changes than other kinds of editors. Still, you should not have bad experiences. Please message here whenever you have a problem. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:48, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this response. I updated my description of the situation while you were responding to be a little more specific. I guess my concern is that the behavioral problems exhibited in this particular case do not strike me as extreme enough to have any consequences if taken to, say, ANI (based on my experiences anyway). Perhaps the only solution is more eyeballs, which this page might be appropriate for. Maybe I'll go ahead and write my own essay on the AGF/BITE-EduProgram relationship... And while it wasn't relevant in this most recent case, maybe it makes sense to work with the anti-vandal tool developers to look for that educational assignment banner as a flag in the same way e.g. STiki pops up a warning if you're about to revert someone with more than 50 edits. Regardless...do you have advice regarding how best to proceed in the current situation? I feel like I've been pretty clear and diplomatic thus far without fruit. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  22:59, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Ryan. In taking a look at the conversation you have been having on the talk page, it sounds like the editor truly doesn't believe the content belongs in the article, though I agree the communication style is not helping matters. I understand your frustration—especially since your students are working on improvements with your guidance. I recognize that you have put a lot of work into mediating that conflict and that you have made alterations in your own assignment and classroom by going back to the students to recommend ways to improve their contributions. That flexibility is really honorable, as many instructors don't want to stray from a rigid syllabus. Thank you so much for your participation in the discussion, and I'm sorry it has been less than friendly. Perhaps now that your students have gotten some feedback about their additions, they can regroup to figure out which new information belongs in the article and how to reorganize it in a way that fits. Just as a thought: I checked out the Disney World article, as I felt the distinction between Rodeo Drive as "just a street" and as an attraction may be worth making, and there is a "transportation" section, though I notice there are no internal citations within that section, so I'm not sure what a great model it would be for your students. Still, the article about Rodeo Drive seems to me to overlook the fact that it is very much a tourist attraction and landmark in LA. I wonder if you agree and if your students can reorganize their research to reflect that in the article? Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:24, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi. I'm a little conflicted about this. I think that User:Alf.laylah.wa.laylah (and it would be nice to have informed him/her of this discussion, if you're going to complain about abuse of process) is generally right, has followed policy, and has on the whole been civil if brusque--some would say, understandably brusque, faced with this influx of edits and editors. The question is this, and I think it's an open question: should student editors be treated differently? You are suggesting they should be. Many others have repeatedly argued otherwise. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 22:58, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the ping. I'm sorry if I was grouchy with the students. There are so many linkspammers on LA articles and, given the links they were inserting and the super-close paraphrasing they were using I assumed that that's what they were. There's no need to argue the content here, though, I guess. I guess I don't really have much to say other than that I'll promise to be kind and maybe they can promise to use reliable sources and try to find some discriminating standards for what belongs in an article or at least discuss on the talk page, like e.g. *not* the fact that it's possible to get from Hollywood and Vine to Rodeo Drive, which is a triviality given that it's possible to get from any point in the universe to Rodeo Drive.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 23:08, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm with Jbmurray and I think Alf was in the right here. This is how wikipedia works; these are the rules we have. Editors either learn to follow policy or not; to verify with reliable sources, to avoid copyvio, etc, and so on. I don't believe student editors should be treated differently. In the end, if we don't have editors on the ground willing to point out problems in editing as they crop up, how does that serve the readership and the project? Particularly for an article like this? Doesn't it behoove us (whether students doing this for a grade or editors working in a volunteer capacity) to do the best job possible? Furthermore, quite frankly what happens here in terms of collaborative editing, revision, and so on, is quite educational and students should be able to learn as much from that kind of experience as from simply stuffing something into an article the night before an assignment is due. Victoria (tk) 23:49, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

First of all, apologies that Jbmurray had to do the pinging. Wasn't intentionally trying to exclude you, Alf.laylah.wa.laylah.

It's easier to argue that the content removal, taken as a whole, was justifiable per policy when pointing to examples like you cite above (concerning directions and parking information, which indeed treats it as just any street -- and I agree: who cares?). But with such exceptions, policy can also justify leaving it alone or tagging it instead. There were several items in question that were not so black and white, and I disagree with Victoriaearle that the rules should be enforced as such (maybe I'm misinterpreting, but I'm referring to Editors either learn to follow policy or not...).

I'm not arguing for student editors to be treated differently in the sense assumed by that statement. My point is that Wikipedia policies leave a huge gray area where editors have to use judgment. Take the following example, the first block of text from the first edit removing content at Rodeo Drive:

==Culture==
====Rodeo Drive Walk of Style====
Introduced in 2003 by the City of Beverly Hills and the Rodeo Drive Committee, the [[Rodeo Drive Walk of Style]] honors style legends for their contributions to fashion and entertainment. Honorees of the Walk of Style are presented with plaques featuring one of their personal quotes and their signatures, which are embedded into the sidewalks of Rodeo Drive. The symbol for the Walk of Style is a sculpture, named “Torso,” which has become a renowned piece on the street, standing 14 ft tall at the intersection of Rodeo Dr. and Dayton Way. Each recipient receives a smaller version of the "Torso" as the award for their legendary contributions in bridging the worlds of fashion and entertainment.

Removed as "promotional and irrelevant material" (possibly one or the other since other content was removed at the same time).

In fact the students had been doing research specifically on the Walk of Style. They created a new article, Rodeo Drive Walk of Style and then decided to switch to Rodeo Drive when they realized it would be too hard to stretch the sources they found to meet the standards of our assignment. They were in the process of migrating content (and, yes, adding whatever random stuff they could find) when it was all removed. This content above about the Walk of Style was accompanied by sources that simply weren't cited inline (some were on the level of tourism websites, yes, but also e.g. the LA Times).

This kind of content is not at all egregious according to policy such that it needed to be removed and then the removal vehemently defended on the basis of having also removed other problematic material. In fact I would argue the spirit of the rules and guidelines like WP:BITE and WP:AGF should push us to the opposite conclusion.

What Template:Educational assignment should count for is not exception to the rules and license to add garbage but a heightened assurance to anyone passing by that what you see will be improved, will be watched over by at least one experienced Wikipedian, and is the work of new, not ill-intentioned editors. In other words, since so much is left to judgment, it should enable the discerning Wikipedian to leave material that doesn't demand immediate action, maybe granting AGF or eventualism where you would not otherwise be inclined -- not because of an exemption to rules but due to your own judgment as to subjective enforcement when it comes to such gray areas. Similar perhaps to the way one might (and let's not pretend this isn't the case) remember to AGF when going to revert a well-known and well-respected admin or experienced user where you might not when going to revert an IP. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  03:50, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

You say "What Template:Educational assignment should count for is ... that what you see ... will be watched over by at least one experienced Wikipedian". I can't speak to the specific edits Alf made, and the example you give certainly does seem like something that many editors would have left in place, but I am sure that this is not what the educational assignment template means to most editors. If it were true in every case (as it is in your case) that an experienced editor was monitoring the edits, and that the community could feel confident that any mistakes would be cleaned up, I think everyone involved in the education program would be delighted. However, I think you're the exception: most classes are led by professors who are often not very experienced, and when they have ambassadors helping them I doubt that most ambassadors review every (or even most) student edits. I know I don't. So that template does not inspire the sort of confidence you suggest. Alf's response above seems friendly enough, and I hope things go smoothly from here on for your class, but I think as long as classes go wrong (and students are unlikely to return to their work after the semester ends) there will be editors who feel it is better to mass revert marginal work by students rather than clean it up. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:12, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

You make an excellent point about student editors not sticking around. I've often wondered why mostly they don't fall under WP:NOTHERE (the collaborative-itude clause). But in any case, when deciding if most editors would have left the material in place it's important to look at the full content of the diff there; the walk of style material that Rhododendrites quoted was the only reasonable material, and I deleted that because it was copy/pasted from the article of the same name (which, on noticing it, I didn't delete, but added to substantially). It's the other 75% of the edit (that Rhododendrites didn't quote) that was problematic, e.g.

====Fashion's Night Out====
Located directly on Rodeo Drive, Fashion's Night Out is a shopping event that features a Carnival to celebrate fashion for one night only. With proof of purchase from one of the participating retailers, shoppers can receive a complimentary ride on a 60ft Ferris Wheel overlooking Beverly Hills. This event is usually held in September from the evening hours of 6-9pm, as part of the most famous shopping event globally.

Which is one out of a number of problematic subsections essentially pasted from tourism websites.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:35, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. As I said there were terrible parts and passable parts. But now this is turning into the same back and forth from the talk page and this assignment is already taking a little more time than I have to give :) I appreciate the sentiment above that it would be ideal not to be grouchy with students. I think we've all been frustrated by well-meaning but ultimately naive new users. I guess I don't have anything to add beyond my previous, lengthier than I remember, comments above. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  14:53, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Just a quick chime-in. I agree student editors should not have different treatment re:Wikipedia policies. I think a major benefit of their work is that they do have someone who is looking out for them (their instructor) who can try to step in and alleviate their pains and convey the importance of particular policies, thus improving new editors' contributions. Rhododendrites: I think it was great that you reached out for support in doing so. Even if it just helped clarify everyone's intentions in the first place, I'm happy to have instructors engage with us and with their students' work. I hope your students can resolve everything and take some meaningful points away from this. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:40, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

It looks as though things are working out here: Thanks both to alf laylah wa laylah and to Rhododendrites for their understanding. I applaud each of you. For what it's worth, I agree with both Rhododendrites and Mike Christie above: ideally, student editors could and should indeed be treated differently (I have no problem in principle with that), as it would be understood that their work was taking place under the oversight of experienced and competent mentors. But, as Mike point out, that's far from always being the case. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:27, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Education Program research, AGF, and newbie biting

Hi educator folk,

Two related questions:

1. Has there been any research yet on the numbers, successes, challenges, etc. of classes using Wikipedia (those within the Education Program or otherwise)? For example, a large-scale survey of educators or an examination of student articles as indicated by course page data?

My colleague Dr. Frances DiLauro (University of Sydney) and I are working on a student survey to determine perceptions about the usefulness of learning with Wikipedia in the classroom for reaching student learning outcomes, but, we are in the beginning stages and the project as conceived is difficult to scale beyond our classrooms because of IRB restrictions. I would be happy to share the questionnaire with you, however, if you would like. --Bob Cummings (talk) 11:52, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

1. Has anybody written anything (either an on-wiki essay or off-wiki article) on the relationship between the Education Program and WP:AGF / WP:BITE? (See #AGF and newbie biting question below for this questions impetus). --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  22:51, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Hello Rhododendrites. There are reports about the education program in almost every issue of the newsletter. I am sorry that this was not easy to find, so thanks for asking about it. If you are looking for something specific then ask again, otherwise it is there for browsing. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:48, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I do receive the newsletter, but either I'm missing what you mean or I'm not being clear enough. What I'm looking for is information across many (if not all) classes rather than reports from a few.  :) --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  23:02, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I've read the section below, and looked quickly at the linked discussion, although I didn't examine any of the edits in detail. I'm sorry that you and your students ran into this situation. To some extent, this noticeboard has become an intersection between classes that have run into situations like this one, and editors who have come to feel (often with good reasons) that students have been creating unwanted headaches for them. In response to question #2, we do have WP:ASSIGN, that was written in part for situations like this. If you can point out any changes to that page, to make it more useful for something like this, that would be excellent. And you can certainly try to point the editor about whom you are concerned to that page as well. There is also the noticeboard at WP:Education noticeboard/Incidents, which I think is an ideal place to seek help from more editors in such situations (as opposed to noticeboards for AGF or BITE). If the situation proves difficult resolve, that board might be the place to go before seeking any higher level of dispute resolution. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:50, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't want to get mixed into the specifics of the class or article discussed below, but I did find an approach in my class that was very helpful this year. As part of the process of selecting an article to edit, students are required to evaluate several articles in their sandbox and propose how they would improve them. One group selected a controversial article, human cloning. I suggested that they add a summary of their planned edits to the talk page at the beginning of the project. In this way they got feedback well before the deadline and were able to address issues raised by another editor before they made substantial changes. They also learned how to communicate on talk pages in a constructive way. I also let my students know that I can see anything that they posted, even if it's been deleted, so that deletion by another editor will not necessarily affect their grade. If it was deleted for reasons that are contrary to the assignment, e.g. plagiarism, I can still see that as well and of course that would affect their grade. Biolprof (talk) 22:26, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Kolekar_Pandurang

Kolekar Pandurang (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   To create and share informative resources and motivate and help others to do the same.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   University of Pune, Pune, India

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   Currently pursuing PhD in Bioinformatics, complete MSc in Bioinformatics, BSc in Biotechnology

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   I have created helpful Wikipedia pages. I am member of Wikipedia Computational Biology project. I have uploaded and used illustrative media files on Wikimedia

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I like to organize and share information to masses through active social outreach activities.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Kolekar Pandurang (talk) 14:56, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Thanks for your interest, Kolekar Pandurang! Have you met with any of the other education program coordinators in Pune? As I understand, they meet up regularly. The contact for them is at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Club Pune/Contact Us. To be an ambassador two people are supposed to comment on your work. Do you know anyone in Pune who does Wikipedia who could speak for you here? If not, how would you feel about contacting Wikipedia Club Pune and joining what they do? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:01, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

• Hello Kolekar Pandurang and thank you for your contributions. I see you have contributed significantly to alignment-free sequence analysis. Did you know the WP:First sentence is supposed to be definitional, when possible? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:58, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Test question

Test — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.205.50.19 (talk) 08:17, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Need instructor rights -- teaching Wikipedia in Comm 106I UCSD Spring 2014

Hello all - I'm teaching a course on the Internet Industries and would like to have my students write for Wikipedia as a form topically relevant writing online. You can find the syllabus for the course here: https://thiscourse.com/ucsd/comm106i/sp14/

I'd like students to complete a writing for wikipedia project on improving articles related to digital media, commerce, and culture. You can learn more about me here. https://quote.ucsd.edu/lirani/

How quickly can I get instructor rights? I have gone through all the pamphlets and tutorials, but class starts tomorrow and I'm only just figuring out all the wiki steps to set up the assignment. I'd like to build my course page before class starts tomorrow.

Thank you! Lirani (talk) 16:07, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

• Hi Lirani - I've granted you the necessary user rights, and will shoot off a reply to your email shortly. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:08, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
• Thank you! Lirani (talk) 22:16, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

VPP thread that may be of interest

There is a thread (Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Summer_students) on VPP that might benefit fro the input of education people. Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:35, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Greta Munger (talk)

Name

Greta Munger

Institution

Davidson College

Course title and description

Psychology 402, senior capstone assignment. For their final paper (25% of final grade), senior undergraduates will be editing a psychology article or stub of their choice. I will help them choose articles that still need editing and they will add additional sources. I have had students edit in Wikipedia in previous years, here's the list of previous classes. I will also register the course with the APS Wikipedia Initiative. {Smallcaps|class pages}} (newest on top)

• Education Program:Davidson_College/Psy_276:_Cognitive_Psychology_(2013_Q4)
• Wikipedia:USEP/Courses/Cognition_and_the_Arts_(Greta_Munger)
• Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Psychology Senior Capstone (Greta Munger)
• Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Courses/Cognitive Psychology (Greta Munger)

Assignment plan

They will choose a psychology article that needs editing (I will suggest they focus on stubs) and add 15 new sources, first posting on the articles' talk page for comment from classmates.

Number of students

14 students, perhaps in teams

Start and end dates

April - May 12 (final edits due by May 12)

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Greta Munger (talk) 14:51, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Greta! You already have the course instructor user right, and I see that you created a course page today. Let us know if you needed anything else—thanks for posting information about your assignment here. Please don't forget to have your students review this module in the professor training (it's really important information for them, too) about editing medical topics. This will cover some guidelines about medical sources and referencing. I'm glad to hear you'll help them identify stubs and topics that you feel, through your own expertise, have big scholarship gaps. I definitely recommend sticking to stubs and underdeveloped articles rather than trying to take on some of the broader psychology topics and articles that already have pretty good ratings. Good luck, and please ping me with any questions. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:28, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Welcome LiAnna Davis to the Wiki Education Foundation

Hi all,

It’s with great pleasure that I’m announcing that LiAnna Davis has joined the Wiki Education Foundation as Head of Communications and External Relations. Her first day is today.

In her new role, LiAnna will be responsible for key communications with news media and other Wiki Education Foundation stakeholders (including the Wikipedia community), and for building educational materials targeted at instructors and students. Also, LiAnna will be responsible for building long-term strategic partnerships with educational institutions in the U.S. and Canada.

LiAnna comes to the Wiki Education Foundation with a deep knowledge of the Wikipedia Education Program. She was part of the team that ran the pilot program in the United States, and she’s supported educational activities of Wikimedia chapters and individual volunteers in more than 60 countries worldwide. In her free time, LiAnna enjoys watching baseball and spending time with her dog, Nora, who is chronicled daily in a Creative Commons-licensed photo blog, as well as on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Please join me in welcoming LiAnna to the Wiki Education Foundation --Frank Schulenburg (WEF) (talk) 17:47, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Frank. I guess this counts as a response to my question of March 3? Not sure why such a veil should have been over this job opening. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:09, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Jbmurray, At that point, neither Frank nor I had signed the paperwork to make it official. That's happened now, and I'm excited to get started with the Wiki Education Foundation. LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:44, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The courtesy of a straight answer could still have been provided on March 3. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:41, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Reimagining mentorship proposal

Hey folks. I wanted to bring your attention to an Individual Engagement Grant proposal regarding a new approach to mentorship, where a small team of editors intend to evaluate the current state of mentorship and, in a pilot study, test a more lightweight approach. We're seeking your feedback, as students and ambassadors can definitely benefit from this proposal. Your feedback will also be helpful in guiding the decisions of the grant committee, and will help us form a better proposal. If you are interested, please read over the proposal at the meta link above and leave any comments you might have on the talk page or under endorsements. Thanks, I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 15:09, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Jfk nl80 (talk)

Name

Assistant Professor Jasper Kok [11]

Institution

UCLA

Course title and description

The course title is AOS224A: The Atmospheric Boundary Layer. It is a graduate course in the atmospheric sciences department. This Wikipedia project will be 30% of their grade, and the idea is that they either create a new article, or expand an existing stub of any topic broadly within the field of Boundary Layer Meteorology. Broadly speaking, I intend to follow much (though not all) of the approach on [12]. I am myself new to editing wikipedia, and am trying to learn everything necessary to make sure that this project will help, rather than hurt, wikipedia. It helps that this is a graduate course, with generally excellent and mature students, and the students will need my permission before they can make their sandbox article go live.

Assignment plan

Each student will write one article that is either new or presently has a stub. Each student's article will be peer reviewed by two other students as part of their grade. After that, I will grade the article when it's still in the student's sandbox. If the article meets Wikipedia's standards for a good article [13], I will give permission for the article to go live (unless an editor has concerns about it, of course).

Number of students

I currently have 11 students enrolled. It's the first week of classes though, so I expect that number to drop a bit to maybe 8-10.

Start and end dates

Class started 4/1 and final's week ends 6/13. I expects articles to go live by around 6/18. I'm planning to give an overview of specific requirements and deadlines in class on Tuesday (4/8).

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Jfk nl80 (talk) 18:11, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

• Hello Jasper (Jfk nl80), and thanks for your interest in Wikipedia. I saw that you contributed a significant edit. Thank you for that. I thought I'd comment on your contribution, so that you can further learn about how things work here. There is unfortunately a significant learning curve with Wikipedia, but thanks for jumping in. When we cite books, we should cite the page number so that others can verify the information. Template:Cite book shows how that would work. I also modified your contribution to follow WP:REFSPACE (references follow punctuation) and I added a couple {{pn}} to ask for page numbers in the citations to the books. I don't typically grant the course instructor right unless I have spoken with a professor and have confidence in the assignment. Have you spoken with anyone, or would you be interested in doing so? User:Kevin Gorman is in California, and I think we're still using a regional approach. You might also see WP:ASSIGN for some recommendations that have been collected. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:53, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
• We've had a medical school class from UCSF make some edits recently, and they appear to reduce the size of existing articles (by improving them and removing unnecessary information). I'm curious. Why is the idea of your assignment one that seeks to only expand Wikipedia? I wonder if you've been influenced by promotional material that was drafted by the WP:WMF. They have used a metric of "bytes added", but it doesn't seem Wikipedia volunteers are impressed with that measure of success. (I know I am opposed to it being used as a metric that is, alone, indicative of success.) Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:57, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I granted the right after email correspondence, and Jami has been in contact as well. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:36, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

bug in education logs

Right now in my watchlist is an entry:

(Education Program article log); 15:11 . . Merimoocoww (talk | contribs) added article Shooting of Jordan Davis to their list of articles at course Education Program:American University/COMM535 (Spring 2014)

The first link goes to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/eparticle That's got to be a bug, right? Stuartyeates (talk) 21:06, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Stuartyeates. Yep, that's a bug all right: bugzilla:48495. I've updated the report and will let you know when it's been patched/fixed. Regards, Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 23:12, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Special:Courses basically unusable

Special:Courses is a real pain in the backside. It's deeply broken because:

• it's not a wiki table, unlike every other table in the wiki
• it's not sortable by anything useful (sort by date is broken by lack of date standardisation; sort by language is broken by everything being in 'English' (which is broken per WP:ENGVAR, but that's another kettle of fish); institution is broken by lack of standardisation (should correspond to article, but sometimes doesn't)); useful to sort by might include: latest edit of the course page; latest edit of the course talk page; latest signup; ...)
• There is no indication of how many pages of courses there are, nor what happens to course when they're not 'current' any more.
• There appears to be no way to include notes at the top of bottom to help users navigate (did this bug eve get filed?)

Stuartyeates (talk) 08:23, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Stuartyeates. I agree with each of your first three bullets, although I wouldn't put any of those issues very high on the priorities list. The basic question is, what would be a good general interface for listing, sorting and searching the breadth of courses and other similar group projects? That's a relevant issue for the 'Editor campaigns' features that will eventually replace the current system, as well. If you have thoughts on what you'd like to be able to do easily with a future replacement for Special:Courses, probably the most useful thing would be to record your ideas at mw:Talk:Wikipedia_Education_Program.

As for the last bullet, I apologize for not following up on that last May. The answer is that there's actually an interface message for each of those (blank by default) which could be created to insert text at the top of the page:

• For Special:OnlineAmbassadors, the interface message would be MediaWiki:Onlineambassadors-summary
• For Special:Courses, the interface message would be MediaWiki:Courses-summary

--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:49, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that Sage Ross (WMF). Do I need special permissions to edit MediaWiki:Onlineambassadors-summary and MediaWiki:Courses-summary? Currently they're not showing me an create / edit link (but the associated talk page is). Stuartyeates (talk) 21:27, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Stuartyeates: Editing the MediaWiki namespace requires admin rights. You can use {{edit protected}} on the talk page to request such edits.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:11, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

• I've just tried my hand at MediaWiki_talk:OnlineVolunteers-summary. Once I see how that works, I intend to create similar messages for the rest of the pages. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:16, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

It turns out that it should have been at MediaWiki talk:Onlineambassadors-summary. The message is now live. After an appropiate pause for you ppl to give feedback on style and content, I'll write messages for all the other special pages in the extension. Stuartyeates (talk) 08:49, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Stuartyeates! (My bad for pointing you to the old "Ambassadors" interface message instead of the current "volunteers" ones.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:22, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Redliz11 (talk)

Name

Elizabeth Price

Institution

Murray State University

Course title and description

Advanced information gathering: Techniques to teach advanced undergraduate students to report, gather, process and transform messages. Involves seeking sources in libraries, public records, books, magazines, journals, corporate reports, online databases, personal interviews and internet resources. Students will do research and create Wikipedia pages as part of the course work.

Assignment plan

My goal is to have each student create his/her own page on Wikipedia in order to emphasize doing research, contributing to world knowledge, respecting copyright and intellectual property, and getting constructive feedback from third-party sources. They also may add to/edit existing pages before beginning their own pages.

Number of students

15

Start and end dates

August 19, 2014-December 19, 2014.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Redliz11 (talk) 18:09, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Elizabeth! I'm glad to hear you're interested in teaching with Wikipedia. Since the assignment is several months away, this gives us a great opportunity to "meet" and discuss some strategies for your assignment design and for implementing it with your students. Please send me an email at jamiwikiedfoundation.org so I can give you some great resources and set up a call with you! (Note: I will also send her an email through her account in case she doesn't return here right away). Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:58, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Nominations for WEF Board

As well as a new RFC, I think it's high time that we started nominating members for the WEF Board.

As the WEF has constituted itself, it has suggested that there are three slots on the board reserved for Wikipedians nominated by the community. I propose two names below, and hope that they would accept these nominations. I would be interested to hear others. Self-nominations are welcome. Once we know how many nominees there are, we can decide how to proceed (via elections or whatever).

Update: following User:Wadewitz's appointment to the board, while this community process was ongoing, it's not clear if the WEF Board sees there as being two or three "Wikipedian" slots open. In the end, however, I suggest that this is really down to the community not to the WEF. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 09:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

===User:Colin===

• User:Colin. Colin is, as we all know, passionate and informed about the Education Program. He is critical of the way in which it has been implemented, but I think the Board needs to integrate constructive criticism into its procedures. He is also an editor who has focussed on Medical articles, and it is obvious that such articles are a particular flashpoint for discussions about the program. Finally, he is eminently rational and reasonable, thoughtful and articulate. His contributions the discussion of the program on Wikipedia are always well-judged (and I say this as someone who doesn't tend to agree with them). I think he would be a splendid addition to the board. Proposed by --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Support. Knowledgeable editor who can produce featured content. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:34, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
• Suppport As has been very involved and done much analysis of the output from this effort. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:38, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
• Support. I think that he would bring a helpful perspective. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:55, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I've not been able to keep up with this board this week. And that's my main problem. I just don't have the free time needed for this. Also, my passion is no substitute for experience and I have no experience helping with these classes and directly dealing with students and profs. -- Colin°^Talk 09:05, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Understood. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 09:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

User:Biosthmors

• User:Biosthmors. I don't think that anyone, on the WEF board or off it, has shown more enthusiasm and energy for discussions of the Education Program on Wikipedia. He is an experienced online ambassador, who has a long history of working with the program. He is continually and tirelessly making proposals and engaged in debate. Again, this is not somebody with whom I find myself consistently in agreement, but I feel that the WEF urgently needs board members who are active and energetic, on Wikipedia as well as off. I think that he, too, would be a splendid addition to the board's ranks. Proposed by --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Comment. I just saw this and haven't even had the time to read it all because I'm replying to another discussion about the education program, but at this point I'm not sure how I feel about being nominated. I'll have to think about it. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:54, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

===User:Wadewitz===

• User:Wadewitz is a Wikipedian almost without equal in her production of Featured Articles and her reviews and feedback on others. She is also, by common consent, among the most successful (if not the most successful) of educators who have integrated Wikipedia into their classes. Moreover, having Wadewitz on the board provides a link to other important initiatives such as HASTAC and FemTechNet. She is, finally, a person of utmost integrity and good sense--with whom I personally find myself almost always in agreement. I fear she may not accept this nomination, but very much hope that she does. She would be an important and game-changing member of the WEF Board. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:57, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

• I am committed to finding ways to bridging the gap between academia and Wikipedia, so I would be happy to do my best in this role. Wadewitz (talk) 22:19, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Support as nominator. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 13:07, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Appointed by the WEF Board on November 25, 2013.

Kevin Gorman

• I'm one of few people to have participated in almost every aspect of the program; I've been a CA, an OA, an instructor, and a Wikipedian. This year I'll be embarking on a project at UC Berkeley to better integrate Wikipedia in to higher education, specifically in underrepresented disciplines. I believe this program has phenomenomal potential to set a functional model for other schools to emulate - a model that would shift the burden of the program to the schools, and away from the community. I see the problems the educational program has caused the community - especially the medical editors - and I want to figure out how to sort them out while still having a productive EP. I look at the WEF as the surface of contact between academia and the Wikipedia community rather than the USEP's controller, and I believe (and have always believed) that the ENWP community has the potential to sanction education program classes. At times, I have strongly supported such measures. I've interacted with all groups involved in the program including educational technologists, senior administrators, instructors, professors, various bureaucrats, the education folks at the Foundation (including Jami who is now WEF,) and the community at large. I've consistently been a presence at ENB, and although some people have not always liked my answers, I've at least always been here. Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:35, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Strong support. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:38, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
• Support Kevin would be a wonderful addition to the board. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:02, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Doc James

I am interested in joining the board of the WEF. Have been involved with student editing projects in a number of capacities including speaking at half a dozen universities on Wikipedia and Medicine over the last three years.[14] Am involved with the efforts at UCSF [15] and am on the clinical faculty at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Emergency Medicine.[16] Additionally was one of the founding members of Wikimedia Canada and Wikiproject Med Foundation so have a bit of experience with non profits. Additionally I attend Wikimania self funded every year and plan to continue to do so. Would be good to have face to face meeting their. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:14, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Strong, enthusiastic support. I am very enthusiastic about this nomination. He is very knowledgeable, and understands both "sides" of the issues. I think it would be very important to have him as a member. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:58, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

General Discussion

• Medicine is a hot topic on Wikipedia generally and in the education program especially. I hope that there is thoughtful consideration about any candidate who is familiar with the work of WP:WikiProject Medicine. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Jbmurray, thanks for starting these nominations -- we are actively considering these and other candidates. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:17, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I presume you're not considering any other candidates for the Wikipedian slots. But it's good to hear that you're working on getting the other slots filled, too. Presumably you'll explain the transparent process that you've decided on for how to fill these other slots when the time comes. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 15:34, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

We have been sent other names as suggestions; and others have self-nominated -- in both cases I'm referring to the Wikipedian slot. Having names suggested and supported by the community is important, even if we don't have an elections process yet, and I'm glad to have this section here. We're also looking at the non-Wikipedian slots, and are considering the names you suggested there. The short version of the process for next summer is that it will probably be some kind of on-wiki election. Speaking strictly for myself, since the board hasn't discussed this in any detail yet, I'd like to use self-nomination with either a simple vote of support process, or, if there's a reason to do so, something more like the Arbcom process, which has secret ballots. Haven't given any serious thought yet to which is better but would like to see discussion here. Also I suspect there should be some minimum activity level to be able to vote or run, as there is for ArbCom. If you have any thoughts on how the elections should be run, please share them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm presuming that the process by which nominations take place is decided on Wikipedia, by Wikipedians. I see no reason why the WEF Board should determine this. That would be totally bizarre. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:14, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

See below -- Wadewitz has been elected to the board of the WEF. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 05:09, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• Timestamp. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:51, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
• Timestamp. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:42, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
• Timestamp. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:42, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: shawn.carrie

Shawn.carrie (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   Wikipedia represents an unprecedented historical paradigm shift in the opening of access to information and higher learning. I fully intend on continuing to proselytize its virtues and work to grow the project's influence and prominence with a wider audience, and academia is a primary use community that can naturally contribute to the project, while reciprocally benefiting from its open principles.

1. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   New York City - The New School for Social Research

1. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   Current MA Student (Politics); Freelance Journalist / News Editor

1. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

1. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Shawn.carrie (talk) 08:03, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

• User:Shawn.carrie, thanks for your interest and contributions to Wikipedia. It seems we don't grant this user right unless there is a class to work with. Do you already have a class? We welcome your further involvement in Wikipeida's mission, however. Thanks again for your interest. I noticed you created Charter of Grenoble. Maybe you could add some references? Also, I'm not sure it is encyclopedic to have a copy of preamble pasted in. We tend to shy away from WP:LONGQUOTES. Best regards, and let us know here if you have any questions about how to edit? Alternatively, you can try the WP:Teahouse. Also User:Pharos is active in the NYC area with education initiatives and WP:meetups. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:19, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
• Shawn.carrie I sent you an email. How would you feel about joining us at the end of May at our WikiConference in Lower Manhattan? If you came to that then I think we could find something fun for you. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:30, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Garcia-FM

Name

Ignacio Garcia

Institution

University of Western Sydney

Course title and description

Course description: A7456 Interpreting & Translation Professional Practicum http://handbook.uws.edu.au/hbook/unit.aspx?unit=A7456.4

Assignment plan

students asked to translate into their mother tongue a Wikipedia page; they are to work in the Sandbox, where the task will be assessed; students will be encouraged to publish it only after approved by instructor.

Number of students

Some ten.

Start and end dates

Class started in 26 Feb and finish on June 2nd @OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Garcia-FM 05:11, 11 April 2014 (UTC) This user is user:Garcia-fm / user talk:Garcia-fm. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:22, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

• Support I have talked to this instructor several times periodically over the last two years. I have seen articles produced by his class and they look good. This person already understands a lot about Wikipedia and has proven to be tolerant of all the chaos which happens when new users work in both English and other language Wikipedias. I trust this user to be in good communication with established Wikipedians if any problem arises. For an example of one translation done, see the English and Chinese versions of Satellite Boy. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:21, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Review my med school class, please

Hello! I presented at a Wikipedia workshop for Education Program:Harvard University/Obgyn bootcamp (April 2014). There are only a few students and the ones that participated (about 5) contributed live edits. I would appreciate anyone who can comment on their work to do so at a pace that is comfortable to you, if this is comfortable at all. If there is appetite for it then I would like to organize more outreach to med schools, and I need to gauge how much feedback can be anticipated. Thanking students for edits helps! Thank you. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:27, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Joses Paul

Josespaul (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I would love to be a Wikipedia Ambassador,act as a liaison between Wiki and my University and learn more about Wikimedia projects.

and I am very much eager to be Wikipedia Ambassador as I have a great interest and passion for Outreach programs. I Just love giving talks.I poses Good Leadership Qualities, Good Co-ordinating and managing skills, Get it Done attitude, self-motivated, I am very much passionate about teaching other about the technology and stuffs. Being a Wikipedia Ambassador would improve my co-ordinating skills and further expand my knowledge and working as a Wikipedia Ambassador would multiply my chances to attain my goal and my dream.

1. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   Anna University Chennai.

2. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   Major:Electrical and electronics Engineering (Bachelors degree)

 Year :3rd year (Pre -Final Year) 
 GPA  :3 out of 4

1. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   In Simple words I would say that: Wikipedia, Wikiquote and Wikibooks are the inevitable helping hand for every student/professional on the surface of the planet.

2. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   My Prior Experiences as Ambassador

 Google Student Ambassador- India 
 Mozilla Regional Ambassador - South Asia 
 Global IEEE Ambassador for IEEE Day. 
 Chairman for IEEE JEC SB , Region 10 - Asia Pacific. 
 Core Team Member of Adobe Designer Group Chennai. 
 Anna university Ambassador. 
 Knowafest.com Campus Ambassador.

About me:Joses Paul

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Josespaul (talk) 01:23, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

You will need way more Wikipedia experience before you should apply again. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:05, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

By "way more experience" that just means editing a few times a week for some months. We really need more contributors from India but in this program, we have to start with people who edit Wikipedia themselves so that they can teach others. I encourage you to develop a few Wikipedia articles for some time then come back. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:23, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Considering that he uploaded copyrighted images (this, this, and this) to Commons while claiming to be licensed under CC-BY shows his woefully inadequate understanding of copyright laws. I'm tagging those images for copyright violations. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 23:59, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

As an Indian, and a fellow student from India, I think this would be great, having a Campus ambassador out here, but after what happened with IEP in 2011, I'd tread carefully. Along with this, I don't see this happening anytime, not till Anna University [or any other Indian one] becomes more flexible, and drops it's 'mug-every-line-of-the-textbook-and-write-your-exam' method. My wo cents. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 19:15, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: harrybrowne1986

Harrybrowne1986

Harrybrowne1986 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   YOUR ANSWER

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   YOUR ANSWER

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   YOUR ANSWER

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   YOUR ANSWER

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   YOUR ANSWER

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   YOUR ANSWER

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    YOUR ANSWER

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

Vishal Bakhai 20:15, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

• I think you may need to gain some more experience working with Wikipedia before applying to be an OA. Can you explain some of the basics behind Wikipedia's licensing? Could you explain to someone what the difference between the Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia is?

On top of those concerns though, you recently uploaded a book, claiming a free license, that appears to be a pretty clear copyright violation. From the inside cover of the book:

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publisher. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without the prior written consent of the Publisher"

That looks like a pretty clear copyvio to me, and I'm going to pop over and take a look at it now :/ Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:31, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Notifying someone when you approve a course in their area

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman:

A lot of previous experience has shown that courses are more successful when they receive in-person support. California at least has finally gotten to the point where we have the ability to provide direct in-person support in most major metropolitan areas. We've also recently found a few classes in areas that we could've been providing physical support to earlier in the semester, but that we had not noticed. Unfortunately I frequently have days come up where I don't have time to check all the pings on ENB for instructor rights etc (or when I'm completely on vacation etc.)

As a request: when you grant instructor rights to a professor in someone else's region, could you make sure they know about it? Whether via an additional ping, a user talk message, an email, etc - anything works, just so long as the people potentially in place to provide direct inperson support are definitely aware of the course Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:33, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Sure, Kevin. I can notify any time someone posts, too! I will ping on-wiki and via email. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:36, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I can commit to trying to do this but I do not want it to be a hard rule. Additionally, I would like to know about any classes related to human health wherever they are, and would appreciate anyone pinging me if those arise. Yo Ktr101 a couple of weeks ago I snuck into your hood and presented to this class at a medical school in Boston. Blue Rasberry [[User talk:|(talk)]] 20:41, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: Blasphemy! Regardless though, I'm glad that someone was able to help address that area, as I don't think any of the people up here are as qualified as you are. I am supportive of keeping this regional though, and only because it can help us show up in person. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 21:13, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Nominations for WEF Board

As well as a new RFC, I think it's high time that we started nominating members for the WEF Board.

As the WEF has constituted itself, it has suggested that there are three slots on the board reserved for Wikipedians nominated by the community. I propose two names below, and hope that they would accept these nominations. I would be interested to hear others. Self-nominations are welcome. Once we know how many nominees there are, we can decide how to proceed (via elections or whatever).

Update: following User:Wadewitz's appointment to the board, while this community process was ongoing, it's not clear if the WEF Board sees there as being two or three "Wikipedian" slots open. In the end, however, I suggest that this is really down to the community not to the WEF. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 09:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

===User:Colin===

• User:Colin. Colin is, as we all know, passionate and informed about the Education Program. He is critical of the way in which it has been implemented, but I think the Board needs to integrate constructive criticism into its procedures. He is also an editor who has focussed on Medical articles, and it is obvious that such articles are a particular flashpoint for discussions about the program. Finally, he is eminently rational and reasonable, thoughtful and articulate. His contributions the discussion of the program on Wikipedia are always well-judged (and I say this as someone who doesn't tend to agree with them). I think he would be a splendid addition to the board. Proposed by --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Support. Knowledgeable editor who can produce featured content. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:34, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
• Suppport As has been very involved and done much analysis of the output from this effort. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:38, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
• Support. I think that he would bring a helpful perspective. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:55, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I've not been able to keep up with this board this week. And that's my main problem. I just don't have the free time needed for this. Also, my passion is no substitute for experience and I have no experience helping with these classes and directly dealing with students and profs. -- Colin°^Talk 09:05, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Understood. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 09:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

User:Biosthmors

• User:Biosthmors. I don't think that anyone, on the WEF board or off it, has shown more enthusiasm and energy for discussions of the Education Program on Wikipedia. He is an experienced online ambassador, who has a long history of working with the program. He is continually and tirelessly making proposals and engaged in debate. Again, this is not somebody with whom I find myself consistently in agreement, but I feel that the WEF urgently needs board members who are active and energetic, on Wikipedia as well as off. I think that he, too, would be a splendid addition to the board's ranks. Proposed by --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Comment. I just saw this and haven't even had the time to read it all because I'm replying to another discussion about the education program, but at this point I'm not sure how I feel about being nominated. I'll have to think about it. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:54, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

===User:Wadewitz===

• User:Wadewitz is a Wikipedian almost without equal in her production of Featured Articles and her reviews and feedback on others. She is also, by common consent, among the most successful (if not the most successful) of educators who have integrated Wikipedia into their classes. Moreover, having Wadewitz on the board provides a link to other important initiatives such as HASTAC and FemTechNet. She is, finally, a person of utmost integrity and good sense--with whom I personally find myself almost always in agreement. I fear she may not accept this nomination, but very much hope that she does. She would be an important and game-changing member of the WEF Board. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:57, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

• I am committed to finding ways to bridging the gap between academia and Wikipedia, so I would be happy to do my best in this role. Wadewitz (talk) 22:19, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Support as nominator. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 13:07, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Appointed by the WEF Board on November 25, 2013.

Kevin Gorman

• I'm one of few people to have participated in almost every aspect of the program; I've been a CA, an OA, an instructor, and a Wikipedian. This year I'll be embarking on a project at UC Berkeley to better integrate Wikipedia in to higher education, specifically in underrepresented disciplines. I believe this program has phenomenomal potential to set a functional model for other schools to emulate - a model that would shift the burden of the program to the schools, and away from the community. I see the problems the educational program has caused the community - especially the medical editors - and I want to figure out how to sort them out while still having a productive EP. I look at the WEF as the surface of contact between academia and the Wikipedia community rather than the USEP's controller, and I believe (and have always believed) that the ENWP community has the potential to sanction education program classes. At times, I have strongly supported such measures. I've interacted with all groups involved in the program including educational technologists, senior administrators, instructors, professors, various bureaucrats, the education folks at the Foundation (including Jami who is now WEF,) and the community at large. I've consistently been a presence at ENB, and although some people have not always liked my answers, I've at least always been here. Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:35, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Strong support. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:38, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
• Support Kevin would be a wonderful addition to the board. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:02, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Doc James

I am interested in joining the board of the WEF. Have been involved with student editing projects in a number of capacities including speaking at half a dozen universities on Wikipedia and Medicine over the last three years.[17] Am involved with the efforts at UCSF [18] and am on the clinical faculty at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Emergency Medicine.[19] Additionally was one of the founding members of Wikimedia Canada and Wikiproject Med Foundation so have a bit of experience with non profits. Additionally I attend Wikimania self funded every year and plan to continue to do so. Would be good to have face to face meeting their. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:14, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Strong, enthusiastic support. I am very enthusiastic about this nomination. He is very knowledgeable, and understands both "sides" of the issues. I think it would be very important to have him as a member. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:58, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

General Discussion

• Medicine is a hot topic on Wikipedia generally and in the education program especially. I hope that there is thoughtful consideration about any candidate who is familiar with the work of WP:WikiProject Medicine. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Jbmurray, thanks for starting these nominations -- we are actively considering these and other candidates. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:17, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I presume you're not considering any other candidates for the Wikipedian slots. But it's good to hear that you're working on getting the other slots filled, too. Presumably you'll explain the transparent process that you've decided on for how to fill these other slots when the time comes. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 15:34, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

We have been sent other names as suggestions; and others have self-nominated -- in both cases I'm referring to the Wikipedian slot. Having names suggested and supported by the community is important, even if we don't have an elections process yet, and I'm glad to have this section here. We're also looking at the non-Wikipedian slots, and are considering the names you suggested there. The short version of the process for next summer is that it will probably be some kind of on-wiki election. Speaking strictly for myself, since the board hasn't discussed this in any detail yet, I'd like to use self-nomination with either a simple vote of support process, or, if there's a reason to do so, something more like the Arbcom process, which has secret ballots. Haven't given any serious thought yet to which is better but would like to see discussion here. Also I suspect there should be some minimum activity level to be able to vote or run, as there is for ArbCom. If you have any thoughts on how the elections should be run, please share them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm presuming that the process by which nominations take place is decided on Wikipedia, by Wikipedians. I see no reason why the WEF Board should determine this. That would be totally bizarre. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:14, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

See below -- Wadewitz has been elected to the board of the WEF. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 05:09, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• Timestamp. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:51, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
• Timestamp. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:42, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
• Timestamp. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:20, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
• Timestamp. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:20, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Location of active WEF page

There is a discussion about the appropriate location for an actively updated Wiki Education Foundation (WEF) page that I would like to invite editors interested in the education program to comment on. The question is whether to soft redirect that page to m:Wiki Education Foundation, where the WEF will be maintaining active pages about its activities, or leave it as it currently stands. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:27, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

I'd be temped to do a soft redirect (so people can find the current stuff), but archive all the current content first so it's not hidden from people looking for the history. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:59, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Edits under the Education Program

I had a look at the Education program page and see that it recommends expansion of stub articles. This appears to be the source of some problems in recent article edits. Stub articles are often that way because there is little information available through secondary sources. Copying and pasting information from the subject's website isn't the recommended way to expand them, and this should be pointed out in the guidelines to these education projects. It often results in plagiarism and the introduction of promotional language. The obvious solution to this issue is just to revert the changes, which is a waste of effort on everyone's part. Who's in charge of the way this page is written? Pkeets (talk) 18:15, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Pkeets I nominate you, you seem to have good ideas and ought to be in charge. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:43, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't know anything about this other than having encountered edits that students are doing. Isn't there an education project? Who made up the instruction pages for this? Pkeets (talk) 16:12, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Do you mean WP:ASSIGN? If so, that's a community-written page, and if you feel you can improve it, please go ahead. Or are you referring to another page? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:12, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

The main place I can think of in the student training that deals with article choice and stubs is here: Wikipedia:Training/For students/Choosing articles 3. That page makes it explicit that the availability of good sources is a key factor.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Pkeets Despite Wikipedia being deeply ingrained in every education program everywhere, and despite thousands of participants in the specific program at this page, there are merely dozens of people looking over this content and most of it has been written by volunteers. The documentation is confusing everywhere and the best that we can say is that it seems to work well enough in most cases for most people. I assure you that if you are thoughtful enough to have an idea for improvement then you know enough to make changes where you see fit. Other people are watching all the pages - just do as you think is best and it would be appreciated. If you want feedback or other opinions then post here, but if you saw a space where there should have been a link or more instruction then add what you think is best. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:53, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

@Pkeets: Is there a specific class (or classes) where you observed this trend? If you click on an editor's contributions and they are a part of the Wikipedia Education Program, it should have a notice at the top that discloses the class they're in. If you have a specific class as an example and it's one of the classes we work with, I can take a look and send some recommendations to the Ambassador or instructor. If it is a problem with a particular class or two, it will probably be more effective if I reach out to them with some advice rather than edit various guideline pages (which, as User:Bluerasberry points out can be confusing). So please let me know any specific instances so I can dig into it more. Thanks for bringing your concerns here! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:52, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

When I asked about this problem at the Help Desk, I was referred to this page and went from there to here where I see brief information for students, including the recommendation they work on stub articles. Christina Kubisch is an example of a recently student-edited article. I had an exchange with this student to ask about the program. While it is a laudable effort to expand stub articles, especially on Music Encyclopedia and Women's History subjects, there is very little information available on Kubisch through secondary sources. This is why her article remained a stub, not the fact that she is neglected as a woman composer in Wikipedia. The only way to expand the article (apparently the goal of the class) is to use large amounts of information from her website, which is not considered an appropriate source by Wikipedia--it is plainly promotional. Therefore, asking the student to expand this article for a grade requires that she use an inappropriate source. There is no way around this. So, if I am trying to maintain Kubisch's article, am I to continually revert these good-faith edits? What will this do to the students' grades?

I know there's currently an effort ongoing to increase the coverage of women in Wikipedia, but the problem of coverage for women is structural in society, not just in Wikipedia. The fact that there are few appropriate sources restricts the size of their articles through Wikipedia reference guidelines. Pkeets (talk) 00:29, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Although I agree with you that this particular composer may not have been an awesome choice to have a student edit, it's worth noting that Wikipedia has a categorical problem with how we cover women that is much more severe than that of society as a whole. To use the example I always trot out recently, Alison Jaggar didn't have an article until I wrote one recently, despite the fact that she's one of the more famous living feminists, her most cited work getting >3200 hits, and her work literally being mentioned in >37,000 books. Also worth noting that although that article is far from awesome, using a WP:SPS is acceptable in a bio as long as it's not exceedingly laudatory. Guiding students towards the right articles is important and didn't happen in this case, but that doesn't mean guiding them away from stubs. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:58, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with Kubisch as a subject. She's an established composer and considered acceptably notable. The article is also a Music Encyclopedia article, which cements her quality and benefit to Wikipedia. The point is that there are a large number of articles on women composers, for example, that suffer from stubness because of lack of appropriate sources. Notice how much of the article currently comes from her website. The same problem is likely to be repeated elsewhere. I've fought numerous battles over this question in my own experiences in Wikipedia. You are recommending a relaxation of policy regarding sources to expand the articles? Pkeets (talk) 03:38, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting we relax any policy; WP:SPS makes it clear that it's acceptable to use someone's own website as a source for non self-aggrandizing claims about themselves. Given the lack of source material about Kubisch, she probably wasn't a great article to give a student, but that's not because stubs (let alone stubs about women) generally lack good source material for expansion - it's because Kubisch lacks good source material for expansion. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:02, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Are you having the same problem with sources on Jaggar? Pkeets (talk) 04:24, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

With more than 37,000 books that deal with her work, I'm pretty sure I won't when I do eventually significantly expand her article. There are maaaaaaaany books/encyclopedia articles/etc that deal with her life and career. I haven't expanded it yet because I've been on a stub creation rampage. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:26, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Maybe you should recommend the job to a student. Pkeets (talk) 05:05, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Sandbox/AfC issues

Short of just removing them manually or with awb, is there a way to stop the afc stuff from appearing in the sandboxes of students enrolled in courses? I've had a few students click through on it thinking it was how they submit their work when it doesn't fit with the structure of our assignment, and AfC is a really broken process anyway. The button looks so inviting though... Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:10, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Maybe redirect student sandboxes somewhere as part of the standard student welcome process? Stuartyeates (talk) 02:05, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that would work, I think... maybe an invisible guided tour that posted a different template to their sandbox at the beginning of the student training, which would pre-empt the loading of the standard sandbox preload. I'm not keen on doing this myself right now—I just finished some frustrating guided tour work, and I'm a little burnt out on staring at javascript—but if someone else wants to try their hand at it, I'll help out. Ultimately, given that this is a problem that's not specific the education program, it's probably something better addressed by changing Template:User sandbox for all new users.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:16, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

There's definitely a reason I'm not a coder, but, although students aren't assigned to a new particular usergroup, since the contribs page displays if someone is a student or not - I think using Ep-user-roles-message-main-student - if it's possible to pull that role, it should be easy to substitute a student specific template in to the sandboxes of all enrolled students. Of course, the only easy way I can find to pull that role is with the API, and I'm not about to try to implement an API call in a template with 90,000 transclusions for something that is a relatively minor issue. Oh well, I'll probably either just semimanually substitute it for my students or just deal with the 3-4 at a time who accidentally submit to AfC. Kevin Gorman (talk) 18:31, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

btw, "really broken" process? WP:SOFIXIT. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:16, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Saying go fix AFC is like saying go fix our editor retention issues. I patrol AfC on occasion, and have engaged in multiple serious discussions in various places about how to go about improving our article creation process multiple times. I doubt you'll find all too many people who disagree with me that AfC is broken, it's just not an easy fix, or a top priority for me currently. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:55, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm currently doing a reasonable job of welcoming all students as they appear on Special:Log/student. I use the twinkle student welcome thing. Maybe that could be extended? Stuartyeates (talk) 20:49, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Education Program technical update, April 2014

I sent this update to subscribers a few days ago, but forgot to post it here.

Since the last update, development of the editor campaigns project has been continuing, and it's almost at the point that it will be useful to users running edit-a-thons and other non-course outreach events. (If you are planning such an event soon and would like to beta test it for tracking the contributions of newcomers, get it touch.) In the meantime, we've made a few small improvements and bug fixes to the Education Program extension:

Default course end date

The default end date for courses is now approximately six months in the future, instead of immediately. This will prevent the common problem where a user creates a new course page but does change the default dates, resulting in a course that is immediately considered "ended" and thus cannot be enrolled in.

Notifications when you get added to a course

Whenever a user gets added to a course by someone else, they will now receive a Notification.

Disabling individual student profiles

The student profile special page (Special:Student/Username, not to be confused with Special:Students) is a page that lists the courses a student editor is enrolled in, and is also supposed to list the articles that user is working on. However, the list of articles can include incorrect data in cases where an instructor or volunteer assigned the articles to the student editor. These profiles are being removed from the extension altogether. This change should go into effect Thursday, May 1. (Logs are still available to find out which courses a user is enrolled in.)

Article edit notifications for students coming soon

A nearly complete patch from Facebook Open Academy student Jeff Lloyd will add a new type of Notification: students will be alerted to edits made by others to the article(s) they are assigned (as well as the corresponding talk pages). Expect to see this feature within the next several weeks.

Duplicate courses and API deletion

Bugs in the course page creation process (now fixed) led in some cases to duplicate listings for the same course at Special:Courses. This happens when the same course page had two (or more) different course ID numbers. It is possible to clean up such duplicate entries using by making calls to the API. I've documented this process and written a Python script for it.

If you have feedback about these changes, or other questions or ideas related to course pages, please let Anna Koval or me know!--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:55, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Subscribe or unsubscribe from future Wikipedia Education Program technical updates.

Globalising focus

Being in the Southern hemisphere it is somewhat confusing to see courses described by "Winter 2014" and "Summer 2014", and I'd ask in the future that there is a guideline changed to make this a date. The 10-12% of us humans down here would certainly appreciate it. Kind regards, --LT910001 (talk) 03:49, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

I refer here to Special:Courses --LT910001 (talk) 03:50, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

LT910001: I tried to standardize hemisphere-neutral course terms (2014 Q1, etc) when we first started using this course page system, but it's a Sisyphian task, since instructors usually go with either the terminology used at their own institution or whatever is already in the system that is close to that. For the system that eventually replaces the current course pages, I anticipate that sorting by actual dates rather than an arbitrary "term" parameter.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

::: So don't use the word 'Term' use 'start date' and 'end date' Stuartyeates (talk) 20:40, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

I see. Couldn't the form of input be changed, eg from text to a calender or drop-down menu? That is one way this problem could be solved. --LT910001 (talk) 02:50, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

There is a calendar for the start and end dates, but in the current system the term needs to be a (relatively simple and short) string, because it forms part of the page name for each course. It would probably be possible to rework this individual element, but it's not trivial. And there enough other issues that the tech folks who've looked at it have all agreed that we're better off developing a new repacement system rather than continuing to try to fix the existing extension one bit at a time. Developing that new system (see mw:Editor campaigns) is what Andrew Green (the primary maintainer of the extension) is focusing on right now, although other people are welcome to submit patches for the current extension.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:52, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your response - you're definitely better off focusing on the new system. Good luck, --LT910001 (talk) 01:25, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Nominations for WEF Board

As well as a new RFC, I think it's high time that we started nominating members for the WEF Board.

As the WEF has constituted itself, it has suggested that there are three slots on the board reserved for Wikipedians nominated by the community. I propose two names below, and hope that they would accept these nominations. I would be interested to hear others. Self-nominations are welcome. Once we know how many nominees there are, we can decide how to proceed (via elections or whatever).

Update: following User:Wadewitz's appointment to the board, while this community process was ongoing, it's not clear if the WEF Board sees there as being two or three "Wikipedian" slots open. In the end, however, I suggest that this is really down to the community not to the WEF. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 09:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

===User:Colin===

• User:Colin. Colin is, as we all know, passionate and informed about the Education Program. He is critical of the way in which it has been implemented, but I think the Board needs to integrate constructive criticism into its procedures. He is also an editor who has focussed on Medical articles, and it is obvious that such articles are a particular flashpoint for discussions about the program. Finally, he is eminently rational and reasonable, thoughtful and articulate. His contributions the discussion of the program on Wikipedia are always well-judged (and I say this as someone who doesn't tend to agree with them). I think he would be a splendid addition to the board. Proposed by --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Support. Knowledgeable editor who can produce featured content. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:34, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
• Suppport As has been very involved and done much analysis of the output from this effort. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:38, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
• Support. I think that he would bring a helpful perspective. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:55, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I've not been able to keep up with this board this week. And that's my main problem. I just don't have the free time needed for this. Also, my passion is no substitute for experience and I have no experience helping with these classes and directly dealing with students and profs. -- Colin°^Talk 09:05, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Understood. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 09:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

User:Biosthmors

• User:Biosthmors. I don't think that anyone, on the WEF board or off it, has shown more enthusiasm and energy for discussions of the Education Program on Wikipedia. He is an experienced online ambassador, who has a long history of working with the program. He is continually and tirelessly making proposals and engaged in debate. Again, this is not somebody with whom I find myself consistently in agreement, but I feel that the WEF urgently needs board members who are active and energetic, on Wikipedia as well as off. I think that he, too, would be a splendid addition to the board's ranks. Proposed by --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Comment. I just saw this and haven't even had the time to read it all because I'm replying to another discussion about the education program, but at this point I'm not sure how I feel about being nominated. I'll have to think about it. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:54, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

===User:Wadewitz===

• User:Wadewitz is a Wikipedian almost without equal in her production of Featured Articles and her reviews and feedback on others. She is also, by common consent, among the most successful (if not the most successful) of educators who have integrated Wikipedia into their classes. Moreover, having Wadewitz on the board provides a link to other important initiatives such as HASTAC and FemTechNet. She is, finally, a person of utmost integrity and good sense--with whom I personally find myself almost always in agreement. I fear she may not accept this nomination, but very much hope that she does. She would be an important and game-changing member of the WEF Board. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:57, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

• I am committed to finding ways to bridging the gap between academia and Wikipedia, so I would be happy to do my best in this role. Wadewitz (talk) 22:19, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Support as nominator. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 13:07, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Appointed by the WEF Board on November 25, 2013.

Kevin Gorman

• I'm one of few people to have participated in almost every aspect of the program; I've been a CA, an OA, an instructor, and a Wikipedian. This year I'll be embarking on a project at UC Berkeley to better integrate Wikipedia in to higher education, specifically in underrepresented disciplines. I believe this program has phenomenomal potential to set a functional model for other schools to emulate - a model that would shift the burden of the program to the schools, and away from the community. I see the problems the educational program has caused the community - especially the medical editors - and I want to figure out how to sort them out while still having a productive EP. I look at the WEF as the surface of contact between academia and the Wikipedia community rather than the USEP's controller, and I believe (and have always believed) that the ENWP community has the potential to sanction education program classes. At times, I have strongly supported such measures. I've interacted with all groups involved in the program including educational technologists, senior administrators, instructors, professors, various bureaucrats, the education folks at the Foundation (including Jami who is now WEF,) and the community at large. I've consistently been a presence at ENB, and although some people have not always liked my answers, I've at least always been here. Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:35, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Strong support. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:38, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
• Support Kevin would be a wonderful addition to the board. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:02, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Doc James

I am interested in joining the board of the WEF. Have been involved with student editing projects in a number of capacities including speaking at half a dozen universities on Wikipedia and Medicine over the last three years.[20] Am involved with the efforts at UCSF [21] and am on the clinical faculty at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Emergency Medicine.[22] Additionally was one of the founding members of Wikimedia Canada and Wikiproject Med Foundation so have a bit of experience with non profits. Additionally I attend Wikimania self funded every year and plan to continue to do so. Would be good to have face to face meeting their. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:14, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Strong, enthusiastic support. I am very enthusiastic about this nomination. He is very knowledgeable, and understands both "sides" of the issues. I think it would be very important to have him as a member. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:58, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

General Discussion

• Medicine is a hot topic on Wikipedia generally and in the education program especially. I hope that there is thoughtful consideration about any candidate who is familiar with the work of WP:WikiProject Medicine. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Jbmurray, thanks for starting these nominations -- we are actively considering these and other candidates. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:17, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I presume you're not considering any other candidates for the Wikipedian slots. But it's good to hear that you're working on getting the other slots filled, too. Presumably you'll explain the transparent process that you've decided on for how to fill these other slots when the time comes. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 15:34, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

We have been sent other names as suggestions; and others have self-nominated -- in both cases I'm referring to the Wikipedian slot. Having names suggested and supported by the community is important, even if we don't have an elections process yet, and I'm glad to have this section here. We're also looking at the non-Wikipedian slots, and are considering the names you suggested there. The short version of the process for next summer is that it will probably be some kind of on-wiki election. Speaking strictly for myself, since the board hasn't discussed this in any detail yet, I'd like to use self-nomination with either a simple vote of support process, or, if there's a reason to do so, something more like the Arbcom process, which has secret ballots. Haven't given any serious thought yet to which is better but would like to see discussion here. Also I suspect there should be some minimum activity level to be able to vote or run, as there is for ArbCom. If you have any thoughts on how the elections should be run, please share them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm presuming that the process by which nominations take place is decided on Wikipedia, by Wikipedians. I see no reason why the WEF Board should determine this. That would be totally bizarre. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:14, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

See below -- Wadewitz has been elected to the board of the WEF. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 05:09, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• Timestamp. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:51, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
• Timestamp. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:42, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
• Timestamp. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:42, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
• Timestamp. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:15, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Nominations for WEF Board

As well as a new RFC, I think it's high time that we started nominating members for the WEF Board.

As the WEF has constituted itself, it has suggested that there are three slots on the board reserved for Wikipedians nominated by the community. I propose two names below, and hope that they would accept these nominations. I would be interested to hear others. Self-nominations are welcome. Once we know how many nominees there are, we can decide how to proceed (via elections or whatever).

Update: following User:Wadewitz's appointment to the board, while this community process was ongoing, it's not clear if the WEF Board sees there as being two or three "Wikipedian" slots open. In the end, however, I suggest that this is really down to the community not to the WEF. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 09:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

===User:Colin===

• User:Colin. Colin is, as we all know, passionate and informed about the Education Program. He is critical of the way in which it has been implemented, but I think the Board needs to integrate constructive criticism into its procedures. He is also an editor who has focussed on Medical articles, and it is obvious that such articles are a particular flashpoint for discussions about the program. Finally, he is eminently rational and reasonable, thoughtful and articulate. His contributions the discussion of the program on Wikipedia are always well-judged (and I say this as someone who doesn't tend to agree with them). I think he would be a splendid addition to the board. Proposed by --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Support. Knowledgeable editor who can produce featured content. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:34, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
• Suppport As has been very involved and done much analysis of the output from this effort. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:38, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
• Support. I think that he would bring a helpful perspective. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:55, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I've not been able to keep up with this board this week. And that's my main problem. I just don't have the free time needed for this. Also, my passion is no substitute for experience and I have no experience helping with these classes and directly dealing with students and profs. -- Colin°^Talk 09:05, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Understood. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 09:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

User:Biosthmors

• User:Biosthmors. I don't think that anyone, on the WEF board or off it, has shown more enthusiasm and energy for discussions of the Education Program on Wikipedia. He is an experienced online ambassador, who has a long history of working with the program. He is continually and tirelessly making proposals and engaged in debate. Again, this is not somebody with whom I find myself consistently in agreement, but I feel that the WEF urgently needs board members who are active and energetic, on Wikipedia as well as off. I think that he, too, would be a splendid addition to the board's ranks. Proposed by --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Comment. I just saw this and haven't even had the time to read it all because I'm replying to another discussion about the education program, but at this point I'm not sure how I feel about being nominated. I'll have to think about it. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:54, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

===User:Wadewitz===

• User:Wadewitz is a Wikipedian almost without equal in her production of Featured Articles and her reviews and feedback on others. She is also, by common consent, among the most successful (if not the most successful) of educators who have integrated Wikipedia into their classes. Moreover, having Wadewitz on the board provides a link to other important initiatives such as HASTAC and FemTechNet. She is, finally, a person of utmost integrity and good sense--with whom I personally find myself almost always in agreement. I fear she may not accept this nomination, but very much hope that she does. She would be an important and game-changing member of the WEF Board. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:57, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

• I am committed to finding ways to bridging the gap between academia and Wikipedia, so I would be happy to do my best in this role. Wadewitz (talk) 22:19, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Support as nominator. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 13:07, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Appointed by the WEF Board on November 25, 2013.

Kevin Gorman

• I'm one of few people to have participated in almost every aspect of the program; I've been a CA, an OA, an instructor, and a Wikipedian. This year I'll be embarking on a project at UC Berkeley to better integrate Wikipedia in to higher education, specifically in underrepresented disciplines. I believe this program has phenomenomal potential to set a functional model for other schools to emulate - a model that would shift the burden of the program to the schools, and away from the community. I see the problems the educational program has caused the community - especially the medical editors - and I want to figure out how to sort them out while still having a productive EP. I look at the WEF as the surface of contact between academia and the Wikipedia community rather than the USEP's controller, and I believe (and have always believed) that the ENWP community has the potential to sanction education program classes. At times, I have strongly supported such measures. I've interacted with all groups involved in the program including educational technologists, senior administrators, instructors, professors, various bureaucrats, the education folks at the Foundation (including Jami who is now WEF,) and the community at large. I've consistently been a presence at ENB, and although some people have not always liked my answers, I've at least always been here. Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:35, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Strong support. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:38, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
• Support Kevin would be a wonderful addition to the board. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:02, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Doc James

I am interested in joining the board of the WEF. Have been involved with student editing projects in a number of capacities including speaking at half a dozen universities on Wikipedia and Medicine over the last three years.[23] Am involved with the efforts at UCSF [24] and am on the clinical faculty at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Emergency Medicine.[25] Additionally was one of the founding members of Wikimedia Canada and Wikiproject Med Foundation so have a bit of experience with non profits. Additionally I attend Wikimania self funded every year and plan to continue to do so. Would be good to have face to face meeting their. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:14, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Strong, enthusiastic support. I am very enthusiastic about this nomination. He is very knowledgeable, and understands both "sides" of the issues. I think it would be very important to have him as a member. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:58, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

General Discussion

• Medicine is a hot topic on Wikipedia generally and in the education program especially. I hope that there is thoughtful consideration about any candidate who is familiar with the work of WP:WikiProject Medicine. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Jbmurray, thanks for starting these nominations -- we are actively considering these and other candidates. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:17, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I presume you're not considering any other candidates for the Wikipedian slots. But it's good to hear that you're working on getting the other slots filled, too. Presumably you'll explain the transparent process that you've decided on for how to fill these other slots when the time comes. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 15:34, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

We have been sent other names as suggestions; and others have self-nominated -- in both cases I'm referring to the Wikipedian slot. Having names suggested and supported by the community is important, even if we don't have an elections process yet, and I'm glad to have this section here. We're also looking at the non-Wikipedian slots, and are considering the names you suggested there. The short version of the process for next summer is that it will probably be some kind of on-wiki election. Speaking strictly for myself, since the board hasn't discussed this in any detail yet, I'd like to use self-nomination with either a simple vote of support process, or, if there's a reason to do so, something more like the Arbcom process, which has secret ballots. Haven't given any serious thought yet to which is better but would like to see discussion here. Also I suspect there should be some minimum activity level to be able to vote or run, as there is for ArbCom. If you have any thoughts on how the elections should be run, please share them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm presuming that the process by which nominations take place is decided on Wikipedia, by Wikipedians. I see no reason why the WEF Board should determine this. That would be totally bizarre. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:14, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

See below -- Wadewitz has been elected to the board of the WEF. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 05:09, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• Timestamp. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:51, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
• Timestamp. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:42, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
• Timestamp. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:42, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
• Timestamp. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:15, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Examples of good student outcomes

I've been doing some GA reviews recently, and ran into an education project run by a Singapore law professor. His students have done an excellent job on bringing some articles on Singapore law up to GA level. (I should point out that the WEF won't be working with this group since they're based outside North America.) Some example articles that have reached GA: Fettering of discretion in Singapore administrative law, Illegality in Singapore administrative law, and Precedent fact errors in Singapore law; and there are several more, already reviewed in or in the pipeline. It's nice to see a student group achieving a high level. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:23, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I wondered why there were so many Singapore-based articles at GA, and thought it must have been a staggeringly prodigious individual! --LT910001 (talk) 07:44, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

A discussion at Editor Retention about student editors

Please see WT:WikiProject Editor Retention#Keeping student editors past the end of the semester and feel free to contribute to the conversation. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:28, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Current vs. past student articles

I think Template:Educational assignment and corresponding Category:Wikipedia articles as assignments are a great idea. The template acts as a useful banner to tell experienced editors what to expect (in a way), and the category allows for ambassadors as well as those of us who might be inclined to lend support to a student project, to locate them. (The category also serves researchers and a host of other purposes, too, of course).

I think it would be useful, however, to distinguish current from past student articles more effectively than is possible now. There is a date field that's part of the template, but it only changes the text displayed and from what I've seen it's not used as often as it should (I'm guilty myself). The result is a sometimes unclear banner and cumbersome category (about 1900 currently).

This is what I'd like to do, and hope to get feedback from people more experienced with these tools:

• Move Template:Educational assignment to Template:Educational assignment current (or Template:Current educational assignment) with minor tweaks to wording
• Move Category:Wikipedia articles as assignments to Category:Current educational assignment articles
• Create a separate Template:Past educational assignment which would duplicate some of the other template, but would categorize using Category:Past educational assignment articles instead. Perhaps it could also record the date with specific formatting for more nuanced categorization in the future.

As on alternative approach, the existing Template could be modified to check for a variable that would switch the category. I prefer the idea of separate templates for simplicity's sake, though (the user friendly kind, not the technically efficient kind). It would be good to be able to slap a template on there without parameters and have it still deliver the desired message and category (simpler for wikignomes but more importantly simpler for educators and/or students).

I would be happy to take on the work of implementing this and going through the articles and applying the correct template myself if there's support for it.

Thoughts? (I'm also prepared to be told this already exists and I just haven't found it yet) :) --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  18:21, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I like this suggestion and the clarity it would add. Speaking as an instructor, it just as easy to have students change the template on the talk page as a component of the final assignment as it is to have them insert the template for their first assignment. Biolprof (talk) 20:50, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

This is a really good idea. Instead of "past" and "current" designations, would it be helpful to use university terminology (like the Spring/Winter/Fall/Summer term)? I know some people are bothered by how US-centric that is, so it may not be a good idea. Just thinking that tagging "current" will become problematic when those are no longer current. We could also include a few notes on the banner. Nothing along the lines of "so don't edit here" (since that's not what we want to encourage or how Wikipedia works best), but we could write a few suggestions for offering constructive feedback to the student editor's talk page or to the talk page of the course. I think we should make it as informative as possible. Some people don't know what that banner means or why it's there, so maybe we should explicitly put it there. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:59, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

• It should be pretty easy to create a template that uses a date parameter to automatically switch from an active template (that should probably be prominent and contain a decent chunk of information) to an inactive template (that should probably be collapsed and unless expanded just say something like "This article was the subject of an education assignment at $university from $start until $finish." I'll be up to my neck in students for the next ten days or so at least, but can take a crack at setting one up after that if no one else has but there's agreement it's a good idea. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:06, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

@Biolprof: - It may, but with the variation in instructor experience and time to dedicate to these assignments, I think it would be best to make it as simple and/or automated as possible. In my experience the very idea of template parameters gives some people a headache. It would be great if we had a bot that could do it, but until then it seems like "put {{educational assignment current}} on the page during the course of the assignment, and then replace it with {{educational assignment past}}" would be simplest (to me, anyway).

@Jami (Wiki Ed): - Indeed the vast majority of universities use those, but I think there are enough exceptions to make it difficult to rely on ([just speaking in terms of US schools] there are different sessions within the same semester, weeks-long intensives, year-long courses, quarters, and all the different formats used by public and private primary and secondary schools, although I know that's not as much of a focus). I agree it would be good information to have though, and it would be great to eventually get into using a category hierarchy like Category:Educational assignment articles from 2014 (or spring 2014, etc.). ...I also agree it would be good to have more information on the banner. Another idea for text to add to the banner for these purposes might just be "Please change this banner [in such a way] after {{{date}}}".

@Kevin Gorman: - You're probably much more savvy than I am with templates, and I agree that something automated would be great, but I think it would also be good to have something that works without requiring properly formatted parameters (for reasons above), unless of course the parameters are generated automatically. ...Sticking with this idea for a moment -- and this may be a technically inept question -- but are there variables associated with the Courses extension such that some sort of identifier (course page location, for example) could make it so semester and year are automatically imported (keeping in mind an instructor might have more than one course going at once)? --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  00:36, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Using a date parameter on the template, that specifies the month after the assignment is finished by, articles could be added to a category by date, such as Category:Articles finished by February 2014, just like {{uncited}} and so on. (eg Category:Articles needing cleanup from May 2014) You could easily see what articles have finished, and then a user or bot can replace the templates after that date has passed with the past assignment template. Another benefit is that there are so many templates that currently do it, implementing and maintaining this would be easy. --LT910001 (talk) 00:50, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Ok well, sticking with a single template for the moment, I think I have a working version. It's pared back a little only for testing purposes (doesn't recognize the date parameter, adds category to user talk namespace). Here's the practical end of the changes I made:

1. With the existing template, specifying a date means the assignment is over and ended on that day (even if it's in the future). Now the text and functionality respect whether an end date is in the past or future.
2. Depending on whether the date specified is in the future or the past, it categorizes either as Category:Current Wikipedia educational assignments or Category:Wikipedia educational assignment articles ended in (month) (year).

• Template: User:Rhododendrites/sandbox/eduassign
• Example 1, with a date in the future: User talk:Rhododendrites/sandbox/eduassign1
• Example 2, with a date in the past: User talk:Rhododendrites/sandbox/eduassign2

--— Rhododendrites ^talk |  01:41, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

• ...I'll have to fix it so that it adapts properly to missing one of the date parameters, of course. We could also set it to default to 5 months in the future (via a bot, I suppose) if no date parameters are given at all (roughly a semester) in order to preserve correct categorization. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  01:47, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
• Fixed. When calculating if the date is in the past it defaults missing months to December and missing days to 31 (so a 2015 date would default to "current" until 2016). Missing days and months are not printed on the screen, though. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  02:15, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Two points: (a) I would much prefer that these linked to the the course page for the course involved, even it if were a optional argument

and (b) It would be great to have some code on the course page that generated the filled-in template for the course. Stuartyeates (talk) 00:55, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

It does have a link parameter to link to the course page. My examples didn't include one. Adding it to User talk:Rhododendrites/sandbox/eduassign1 seems to create some line breaks for a reason I'm not seeing at the moment (hopefully someone else sees the problem) -- but it is there nonetheless :) I think (b) is a great idea that shouldn't really be too hard, I don't think, involving just some subst-ing when the course page is created. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  03:34, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation Monthly Report for March 2014

Just a note to let anyone who's interested know I've (finally) posted the Wiki Education Foundation's Monthly Report for March, both on wiki and on Commons. My apologies for the delay; hopefully we've worked out the process kinks and can get the April report out in a more timely manner! I welcome any suggestions for what would make this report more useful for you in the future. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:38, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the report, @LiAnna (Wiki Ed):. Great to have a sense of what's going on, and especially great to have it in wiki format for easy reading on the web or on a phone! I am sure I will read reports far more frequently if they are in this format. Kudos!

The report does leave a few questions; if you have answers, I'd love to hear them. (If this isn't stuff you can talk about, or can't talk about yet, I have no problem with that.)

• What were the key components of the grant proposal to the Stanton Foundation? What kinds of performance targets is the organization aiming to achieve on the 1- and 3-year horizon, and what's the general approach to getting there?
• Does the organization now consider itself sufficiently funded for the next 3 years, or will there be efforts to raise money from other sources? What kind of funding targets do you have, and what kind of programmatic activities would you like to do that are not possible unless more money can be raised?
• Can you speak to the outcomes the Stanton Foundation hopes to see, and how strongly they align with the WEF's goals? (I of course know the alignment is strong; but it's almost never 100%, or there wouldn't be a need to have two separate organizations!) Basically, are there things the WEF would like to do, but that the Stanton grant won't fund?
• Will there be some kind of document like a Strategic Plan or an Annual Plan that covers things like this? Is there a date you expect to publish something by? -Pete (talk) 02:00, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

These are great, thoughtful questions, Peteforsyth — and ones that I can't answer quickly. :) I'll get back to you next week with more detailed answers. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:38, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Still working on more detailed answers, but as I mentioned above, creating a web platform one key component; I've just posted a job opening for a Product Manager, Digital Services position to oversee this web platform development project. Applications are due May 15. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:56, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Responses to Pete's questions

Since these answers are a bit lengthy, I'm separating this out as a new section and repeating Peteforsyth's questions.

What were the key components of the grant proposal to the Stanton Foundation? What kinds of performance targets is the organization aiming to achieve on the 1- and 3-year horizon, and what's the general approach to getting there?

We care deeply about Wikipedia’s quality. With that in mind, our expected outcomes for the next year include:

• Enhance effectiveness of the existing education program in the United States and Canada by strengthening our support structure for participating student editors and instructors, including:
  • building a web infrastructure tailored toward the needs of instructors, providing best-practices information in an easy-to-understand format
  • enriching the existing pool of support materials that are key resources for instructors and student editors (with a strong focus on discipline-specific materials)
  • restructuring the Ambassador program so it is more effective and has the capacity to expand
  • engaging and training more university faculty members (including librarians, teaching and learning center faculty, instructional technologists, etc.) to support their instructors who implement Wikipedia assignments
• Create a pilot program to work with high-achieving student editors to improve underdeveloped content areas on Wikipedia.
• Build alliances and share best practices with other like-minded organizations that serve to scale our programmatic and increase our overall reach.

Our key performance indicators in year one include satisfaction rates from instructor surveys, response time in addressing on-wiki incidents, improvement of student editor success rate through discipline-specific support materials, and the adoption rate of our new web platform to support instructors, student editors, and Ambassadors. In addition to this, we’ll measure how much we’ll be able to encourage and empower high-achieving student editors to fill content gaps on Wikipedia.

Does the organization now consider itself sufficiently funded for the next 3 years, or will there be efforts to raise money from other sources? What kind of funding targets do you have, and what kind of programmatic activities would you like to do that are not possible unless more money can be raised?

The Stanton grant includes 90% funding of Year 1, with an option of 70% funding of Year 2, and another option of 50% of Year 3, so we will pursue additional funding sources to pursue our existing programmatic activities.

We expect to hire a fundraiser within the next couple of months. After this position has been filled, we’ll have a better understanding of what realistic funding targets for our organization might look like. We have to take into consideration that we don’t have a powerful fundraising instrument like the Wikimedia Foundation has through its website. Thus, we’ll have to develop a sound and thoughtful fundraising strategy, and that will take time.

Can you speak to the outcomes the Stanton Foundation hopes to see, and how strongly they align with the WEF's goals? (I of course know the alignment is strong; but it's almost never 100%, or there wouldn't be a need to have two separate organizations! Basically, are there things the WEF would like to do, but that the Stanton grant won't fund?

The Stanton Foundation cares deeply about Wikipedia’s quality, and they recognize the success the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States and Canada has had in this area over the last four years. The Wiki Education Foundation and the Stanton Foundation are in alignment with this goal.

At this point we haven’t determined which additional programmatic activities we’d like to pursue. Although we have some ideas, we’d like to be really considerate about how and in which direction we grow. We are committed to planning new programs in a responsible way, and that takes time. For example, in November, we’ll start a pilot with high-achieving student editors to see how much they can fill content gaps on Wikipedia; it will take until 2015 to determine whether it makes sense to develop this approach into a fully fleshed-out new program.

Will there be some kind of document like a Strategic Plan or an Annual Plan that covers things like this? Is there a date you expect to publish something by?

We’re planning to publish an “Impact Report” in early 2015. We expect this document to describe our vision, what we’ve achieved so far, and how we’ll move toward making this vision come true.

I hope this answers your questions sufficiently, Pete! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:33, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Very helpful responses, @LiAnna (Wiki Ed):. Thanks! A couple specific comments:

• I look forward to hearing more about the pilot program. Presumably this would explore a model that would be expanded if it is deemed successful? If so, I hope you'll be able to share the goals and structure of the pilot ahead of time.
• I know that these documents take time and resources, but I think it would be helpful if you could publish a forward-looking plan in the coming months, before reporting on impact in 2015. I would like to support the WEF's efforts, if possible -- and I'm sure many Wikipedians feel the same. There are many of us who are excited about the possibilities of broadly connecting Wikipedia with academia. But it can be hard to engage effectively and helpfully without knowing the plan. -Pete (talk) 17:39, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Re "a model that would be expanded if it is deemed successful": Absolutely, Peteforsyth. We have November slotted as the point where we'll start developing the pilot plan; look for more details of it in the fall. And I'll see what I can do about publishing something explaining more of the plan soon. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:17, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Student editor has very bad experience which was escalated

I posted at WikiProject Medicine about a student who edited a health article and had a very bad experience. I thought people here might like to know. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:42, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I think it's a very interesting case study, and I've commented in more detail at the medicine project. It was entirely avoidable, and a lot of it goes to how we need to communicate better with instructors before they begin the assignment. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:13, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

See also the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 13#How to encourage newish editors to make small edits, and I'm about to start a related discussion at WT:ASSIGN. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:40, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

All of this underlines the points:

1. Professors sending students to Wikipedia need to talk to us first.
2. Without our ambassadors, class assignments can run afoul quickly.

It's too bad that this professor didn't contact this project, that editors from WikiProject Medicine stood idly by, and that an experienced editor couldn't exhibit a little more patience. This is Wikipedia and it's not for everyone. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:29, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

There is not a project on Wikipedia with more awareness of the education program than WikiProject Medicine. Practically everyone there interacts with students. If that project had known there would not be a problem.

Part of the problem was that the student did not respond to being messaged multiple times and the professor escalated this to blogs and social media without ever trying to contact anyone first, not the editor, any WikiProject, any help links, the Teahouse, the Education program, or anything, except possibly OTRS. I am lacking details of what happened. The general public perception of Wikipedia is that it is complete anarchy and there is no way to talk to anyone, except maybe people at the top of the WMF, so many people only take drastic measures or become angry.

Even Jimbo does not think of the education program when asked about university outreach. I personally am more impressed by the education program than I am by the successes of all GLAM projects, which is not to dismiss GLAM but I still do not like him saying that GLAM is the sector most responsible for managing university outreach.

I do not want to fault anyone for their behavior in any case, but I do wish that instead of taking all kinds of odd complicated actions like happened in this case the person would have found it easy and obvious to engage as we wish they would have. Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:54, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

This situation is indeed a mess all around, and I have sympathy for almost everyone involved. The comments by Jimbo that Bluerasberry links to are depressing, though, as is the discussion that follows; almost equally dismaying is Sue Gardner's kneejerk repetition of the notion that the core problem was that the Wikipedia editor involved was a man (which was simply untrue). But back to the main issue: sadly, no easy solutions come to mind. This could be the topic of a second summit, following the "plagiarism summit." Let's call it the "newbie summit" or somesuch. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 04:09, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

This is why I think in many ways AGF is one of our best guidelines. It's one thing to be bitey towards vandals but it's something else to unnecessarily bite a n00b that needs some guidance. The long-time editor involved has received a fair amount of heat following this episode and I'm also dismayed that this is getting turned into a gender bias story. I think a "newbie summit" is a good idea because getting new good-faith contributors into the right WikiProjects I think will make all the difference. Chris Troutman (talk) 04:21, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes Wikipedia can get unpleasant. And this is for all editors not just new ones. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:57, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Neat example of a student outcome

Hi all -

Some of my classes are starting to wrap up and have finalized content in live space. One of the articles they've created in particular strikes me as interesting - Climate resilience. It's not the best written article I've ever seen on Wikipedia - it has formatting mistakes, the prose isn't FA class, some parts sounds a bit essayish, etc. But, that said, it's a pretty good article - and it's about a high level topic in modern environmental environmental science that we previously pretty much ignored except for a few sentences at Resilience (ecology). The references are solid, it's illustrated (including with a chart created by one of the students,) it's generally a pretty good introduction to the concept of climate resilience, and it's a big topic especially pertinent to the modern world that we were basically totally missing before. (For comparison, there's at least four thousand english language books explicitly about climate resilience, if not more.) I think it definitely compares well to the first article written by almost any non-student I've seen - it definitely compares well to my first attempt. And it provides a stepping stone for future Wikipedians to improve the significantly important topic. I'm going to notify a few Wikiproject of its existence in the next few days also, but just thought I would drop it here as an example of a good outcome of the program. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:46, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Very impressive. I think it would be great if there were a way to showcase some of the best student-written articles, perhaps starting with this one. There are, of course, more than a couple people who could use some additional convincing that student editors can/do produce quality content, and maybe a little highlight on the Main page (or some other prominent location), brought to you by the Education Program, would help. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  01:43, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Rhododendrites: There's this, which Jami has been adding to term by term: Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Courses/Trophy case. It's not really linked from anywhere anymore (and it should probably be moved to be a subpage of Wikipedia:Education program now), but it's a starting point.--ragesoss (talk) 01:48, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Job opening for Wiki Education Foundation

Just a note that I've posted another job opening for the Wiki Education Foundation; this one is for the Executive Assistant to the ED. Please encourage any San Francisco-area ED candidates you know to apply! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 04:34, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Welcome John Willinsky to the Wiki Education Foundation board

Hi all! Please join me in welcoming Dr. John Willinsky to the Wiki Education Foundation board. More information can be found at m:Wiki Education Foundation/Press Release 8 May 2014. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:22, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

This is an excellent person to coopt onto the board. John is a pioneer and one of the major figures in open access publishing. He's an important voice, immensely knowledgeable and savvy, and he's well aware of the stakes of the current struggles in and around higher education. I'm hopeful that he can also contribute to thinking creatively (and helping us all think creatively) about Wikipedia's role in those struggles. As someone who is often frustrated by the parochialism and defensiveness of WEF staffers and board members, I'd like to give praise where it is due and to underline that this is a seriously good move, and might well start to take the organization in the directions that I've long been suggesting it could go. Indeed, to my mind this is probably by some distance the best thing that the WEF has done to date, and hopefully it's the sign of good things to come. More, please! --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:31, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Glad to hear it -- I'm very much looking forward to working with John, and I agree he's a great addition to the board. Thanks for the positive comments. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:03, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Idea about contacting students and instructors

In the course of making a comment at WT:MED about how instructors sometimes fail to find the information that we have for them, I thought of something that I'd like to repeat here. Perhaps we could work with the developers at WMF to create something that shows up while anyone opens a new editing account, saying something like: "If you are a class instructor, please look 'here', and if you are a student in a class, please look 'here'." Of course, that depends on where "here" is, but it could be the training modules for the Education Program. My thinking is that there are just too many instructors and student editors who start editing without having seen what we want them to know about. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:22, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Tryptofish: That's an interesting idea. Steven Walling has spent a while trying to make the experience for new users more conducive to making good edits and sticking around, in particular through the GettingStarted extension that provides some hand-holding while new users make their first edits. And Steven's Growth team is currently working on an editor campaigns system for providing customized onboarding experiences (for example, leading them through specific Guided Tours or pointing them to specific pages) depending on how a user signed up. I suspect that we could do well by giving new users the chance to self-select the kind of onboarding experience they get.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:58, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

"giving new users the chance to self-select the kind of onboarding experience they get": +1 to that; I think that idea has a lot of potential. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:04, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Good! (As long as it is onboarding and not waterboarding... bad joke, sorry!) I'd very much like to see these kinds of things come into being. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:02, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

What percentage of new accounts do these represent? DGG ( talk ) 02:40, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

DGG: I don't know exact numbers, but it's very small. Based on the report card metrics, en.wiki gets about 6,000 "new editors" per month, defined as users who make their tenth total edit. The number who create accounts each month but do not reach 10 edits is much larger. For that reason, it would only make sense to me as part of a more general self-sorting system for newcomers, which could potentially provide a better onboarding experience for any newcomer, not just a special message for the fraction who are students or instructors (at the expense of extra, useless complexity for everyone else).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:34, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: LijieZHOU (talk)

Name

Institution

Course title and description

Assignment plan

Number of students

Start and end dates

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --LijieZHOU (talk) 17:11, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

@LijieZHOU: You should already have the instructor user right for your project. Do you need a different one, or are you testing something? :) Shoot me an email; I'm around all day! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:02, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Requesting feedback on video

Welcome to Wikipedia and Wikiproject Medicine

We've done an introductory video for new editors at Wikiproject Medicine. I was hoping some people might take a look and offer feedback. Thanks. Ian Furst (talk) 23:05, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Earlier discussion is at WT:MED#Rough draft of video for new editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:20, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: michael

197.211.32.242 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   i want to become wikipedia ambassador, due to my level of reaoning things and penning down ideas on paper. i want to help campus students for better construction of their comprehensions

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   i am based in sub-saharan africa nigeria to be precise and i attend university of ilorin, ilorin kwara state nigeria, yes am plannin to work as ambasssador in campus

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   biology education am in my 2nd year

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   i am very logical and creative when it comes to writing

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --197.211.32.242 (talk) 03:26, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

@197.211.32.242: Do you have a username, as we cannot give rights to IP addresses. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:29, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

• I believe that it is technically impossible to give IP users elevated privlidges, so you'll need to login or create an account first. Stuartyeates (talk) 03:31, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Csilansky

Csilansky (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I have professional interests in technological and information literacy, and I am pleased to hear that faculty at my institution have begun to explore the inclusion of Wikipedia projects in their curricula. As an instructional technologist, I will assist faculty and students with these projects in the hope that they will be productive and educational for them and for the Wikipedia community as a whole.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   I am in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and will be working with Franklin & Marshall College.

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   I have a B.A. in Scientific and Philosophical Studies of Mind and a professional background in technology. I am currently serving as an instructional technologist at Franklin & Marshall College.

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   I've been using Wikipedia for reference purposes for virtually its entire lifespan, but I'm new to editing. I've completed the Ambassador training and made some of my first few edits. I hope to gain more experience this summer in preparation for assisting educational projects this fall.

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I think I've covered everything relevant already, but feel free to contact me if you have any other questions.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Csilansky (talk) 16:01, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

@Csilansky: You must work with Courtney and Nydia! They have done such amazing work this term, and I'm excited they're transitioning you into this role to keep it in the instructional technology department. Have you taken the online training for Ambassadors yet? I'm sure Nydia can work with you to answer questions after you've completed that, but I'm also happy to set up a video chat to complete some on-boarding for you. Let me know when you complete it and we can figure out next steps from there. Thanks! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:57, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

@Jami (Wiki Ed): I do! Courtney is unfortunately leaving F&M to look for other opportunities closer to home, but she told me that she's had some great experiences here and recommended that I get involved. Nydia is just next door to me and mentioned how helpful you've been, so it's great to meet you. I'm in my first few weeks as an instructional technologist after having worked in IT here for about 7 years. I've taken the training for Ambassadors course and browsed through some of the helpful documentation linked there. I think I'll take you up on that video chat offer and spend some time reviewing materials and tossing questions at Nydia in the meantime. Thanks for the offer and for the warm welcome! Csilansky (talk) 13:06, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Lovittc.seattleu (talk)

Name

Charity Lovitt

Institution

Seattle University

Course title and description

UCOR 1810: Chemistry for the Informed Citizen. - The course is an interdisciplinary science course for freshman. Students learn how scientists create models to explain natural phenomena. It may surprise you to learn that many scientists use Wikipedia as a starting point for more in-depth research on the topic. Science, like many other human endeavors, is characterized by frequent, rich interactions and the formation of lively communities. Just like articles on Wikipedia can change over time, scientific theories often ‘evolve’ as more scientists contribute to the conversation. You will help to contribute to scientific conversation by editing /creating a Wikipedia page on a poorly explained topic. Learning objectives: • Develop writing skills by learning how to write objectively and neutrally for a diverse and interested audience. • Discern the types of information sources available when searching for science-related information. • Develop critical thinking and research skills by analyzing Wikipedia articles written by fellow students. • Collaborate with students to develop and achieve actionable goals.

Assignment plan

Students choose a topic from one of the pages listed below. They then identify a part of this article that needs to be improved. Humectants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humectant Thickeners http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thickener Food Coloring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_coloring The goal of this project is to edit portions of these articles so that they eventually become a well-developed Wikipedia page like the one on Chemical Sweetners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweeteners While participating in this project, students learn how to write with a neutral tone and how to find resources that educate on this topic. There will be several milestones for this project. Students will

• Establish a user account and edit the instructors Sandbox page.

• Create an annotated bibliography • Edit/ Create a Wikipedia sandbox page on their controversy. This page will undergo several revisions. o Draft, Peer Review, Final Version • Present a poster at an oral poster session with this class. • Complete a Reflection

Number of students

24

Start and end dates

April 1st- June 15th

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Lovittc.seattleu (talk) 23:05, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

• negative. It is asking too much for freshmen to handle serious chemistry articles to be read by scientists. This is appropriate for chemistry majors at the junior-senior level. Rjensen (talk) 23:54, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

My freshman chemistry professor gave highly technical papers to everyone in the class and told us to rewrite them. None of use could read them and a lot of us were rural farm kids who had no science background whatsoever but we did the assignment and from then on we were a lot less shy about going into the journals. I am not going to dismiss this proposal immediately, especially since it seems to be a chemistry class targeted at non-majors who may not even be scientists at all. I just emailed the professor and asked for a voice or video meeting. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:22, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, User:Bluerasberry, for reaching out to this instructor. I recommend emphasizing the role of Seattle University's librarians. There have been a few freshmen classes this term who did pretty great work, largely because of how closely they worked with the campus librarian. I'm not sure if Seattle University has a science library, but I bet somebody can come into the classroom and help them learn how to do the appropriate research and write neutrally for Wikipedia. Let me know if I can do anything. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:49, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Matthewvetter (talk)

Name

Matthew Vetter

Institution

Ohio University

Course title and description

Writing & Rhetoric II, Writing in Wikipedia

This is a general-education, junior level composition course themed around Wikipedia. The course engages students in observation and participation in the Wikipedia community in order to learn about productive writing processes, research, collaboration, genre, and how communities of practice mediate writing conventions. Students in this course will focus especially on topics and articles related to Appalachia and Southeast Ohio issues. The course syllabusdetails these goals and the course's learning outcomes more fully.

We're hoping to work with Wikiproject Appalachia and would also like to recruit one or two online ambassadors if possible.

Assignment plan

The assignment sequence for this class include:

• a short essay reflection of "representations of Appalachia,"
• a genre awareness presentation in which students study featured Wikipedia articles to learn about some of the major conventions of the article and how those conventions reflect community values and goals
• a proposal for a wikipedia edit where students target a specific article and identify opportunities for development
• the main article edit where students add researched material to an article on Appalachia or Southeast Ohio topic
• and a final reflection on the previous course work and readings for the course.

Number of students

20

Start and end dates

This summer course runs from June 30 through August 15.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Matthewvetter (talk) 16:09, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Support I've looked at the syllabus and I think the course is quite well designed; the requirements are appropriate for a composition course for college juniors, and the students will learn useful skills. Rjensen (talk) 16:30, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

@Matthewvetter: Welcome back! I granted you the user right since you have taught with Wikipedia several times before. I'll shoot you an email from my new email address so we can talk about your plans for the assignment. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:21, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Plagiarism, revisited

I was previously of the opinion that students were unlikely to plagiarize at a significantly higher rate than other groups of editors were; I'm starting to change my mind, in part because of User:Ocaasi's awesome offer to let me use iThenticate, and some of the things I've seen in my semester at Berkeley. I will be going in to a lot more detail about this in my final report from Berkeley, but I think we need to accept that some portion of students will plagiarize or paraphrase excessively closely without close supervision. I would guesstimate that number to be around 10%, and I would further guesstimate that there's around a fifty-fifty split between intentional/malicious plagiarism, and plagiarism/close paraphrasing done by students who have either never properly had paraphrasing explained to them, or who are experiencing excessive stress and feel pressured by their deadlines (some students may be taking five other classes in addition to whatever class has them editing.)

I think that this can mostly be handled through extremely close supervision by instructional staff, especially when they have access to things like iThenticate. However, I don't believe that most classes currently participating in the USEP receive such supervision. I don't think it's likely that we will be able to make all classes participating in the USEP check closely for paraphrasing and plagiarism issues, especially given how many under the radar classes exist. I strongly think it would be a good idea for the WEF to find a way to monitor and flag plagiarism and excessively close paraphrasing problems in USEP classes. The best idea I have offhand is through widespread semi-automated use of iThenticate, but that's mostly because it's the only tool I have really used myself and am not sure what other tools are out there.

I'm going to be running the work of some unsupervised classes through iThenticate at some point soon as I have the time to do so, and will post my results, though I'll only be generalizing unless I'm confident that the individual students I am looking at are not personally identifiable. Unfortunately, through talking to other people and observing classes (including ones I haven't been directly involved in,) I've come to the conclusion that student plagiarism really is an issue. I don't think it's a bigger issue with Wikipedia-based assignments than with other assignments, but cheating seems to be at a near epidemic level at many US colleges. I think Berkeley is better than most, yet (to use a non-Wikipedia based example,) many of our CS classes end up failing 10% or more of their students each semester for cheating.

I think the good of the EP far outweighs the bad, especially with closely supervised classes, but have become convinced that this is actually a problem that we likely need to address. Most students are honest and try to complete their assignments fairly as assigned; a fraction sizable enough that it's worth acknowledging don't. (Some students in any class are also likely to lack the writing ability to contribute net positive content as well, but I'm less worried about those, because they're more easily identifiable. It's worth remembering that in almost any college class, a non-trivial number of students receive F's.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 05:41, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this, Kevin. I agree with you that plagiarism is an issue; and that it's not (or shouldn't be) an insuperable one. (I continue to push for some kind of Plagiarism Summit!) I look forward to your further report, but in the meantime do you think you could outline the difference between iThenticate and (say) Turnitin? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:11, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

They're both products made by the same company. I've never used Turnitin (none of my schools have had licenses,) so I can't point out all of the differences, but I believe iThenticate is aimed at a more scholarly market than Turnitin. iThenticate has full access to Proquest, so it picks up a lot of stuff that Turnitin wouldn't, but doesn't use the submitted essay database that Turnitin does. Work submitted to iThenticate also isn't retained like work submitted to Turnitin is, but since both services index Wikipedia's content anyway, in this context that isn't a meaningful difference. I can say that iThenticate has picked up multiple paragraph of writing in some places that was serious direct plagiarism that I probably wouldn't have noticed on a quick hand check, because it picks up on things like paragraphs that are stitched together from, say, eight different sources, where the author of the paragraph used the same exact wording as those sources (in one case, only 20 of 300+ words in the paragraph were original, but because it plucked from enough sources, I wouldn't have noticed it in a spot check.) I believe the version I'm using may also have had some work done on it to make it more useful on Wikipedia, but you'd have to check with Ocaasi on that one. I've always been leary about using these types of tools on students over pretty much the typical objections you hear, but having used them, I'm changing my tune. I think 10% is a pretty realistic figure, and in my mind that's a high enough to justify their use (and assignments involving Wikipedia don't have the IP concerns many people have with Turnitin, since CC-BY-SA allows such use anyway.) When used by the instructional staff in a course, they also provide some opportunities to address problems we may otherwise have missed with particular students - if someone's issue is that they've never had paraphrasing explained to them, sitting down with them and explaining it is a real easy way to fix the problem in a non-punitive way that benefits the student.

My full report may be a few months away, partly because I've tried to pull this project off without anywhere near enough funding because I've really wanted to make it work as a proof of concept (and thus hopefully justify similar projects elsewhere, and also more funding, heh,) but it'll definitely be coming. It became obvious enough that one of my recommendations was going to be that the WEF find a way to systematically check student work for plagiarism that I figured I'd start a discussion about it way before I'm done over-all. To be honest, I'm a little bit scared about what I'll find when I iThenticate a course whose instructional team doesn't have Wikipedian support and where the instructor isn't active on-wiki - when I've done so, I'll share my results. Kevin Gorman (talk) 11:01, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like iThenticate is more suited to Wikipedia work, then. The essay banking is less of an issue here; and the access to ProQuest is useful. But, and contra LiAnna below, I really don't think that the solution here is primarily technical. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:51, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

If by that you mean that the best solution is one implemented in the classroom, not by checking after the fact, then I agree. I think that a technical component would be extremely useful, though, whether it's via iThenticate or someone else. To use an analogy from manufacturing, building quality in is better than testing it in, but you still keep testing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:10, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

By that I mean mostly (as I've said many times before) that we need to understand better how and why and when students (and editors in general) plagiarize. This then can, yes, inform assignment design etc. But technocratic solutions are hardly solutions at all. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 00:11, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes we need volunteers to manage the machines. These machine can tag possible plagiarism but people need to follow up.

We need to have the people leading the classes involved with Wikipedia. Wikipedia cannot support dramatic expansion of the number of classes editing as things stand now. We need others within the class to help with formatting refs, fixing caps and providing feedback. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:13, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

@Jbmurray: Nobody believes the plagiarism solution is a solely after-the-fact technical one. As I mentioned, our web platform will also include a better way to deliver information on things like assignment design -- such as one best practice is to talk about plagiarism in class. So it's both a way of having instructors know they need to emphasize that with students during class before they begin the Wikipedia assignment as well as a way to check student work after the fact. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:16, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

It's on matters like these that the education program drifts further and further from the pedagogical goals of actual instructors. Hence (again) my call for what I've been describing as a "plagiarism summit." --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 00:11, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Just a note in reference to Kevin's statement above: One of the Wiki Education Foundation's priorities for the coming year is building a web platform, in which we want to include features for both plagiarism checking and assignment design. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:33, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

• Jmh649 in the past has had opinions about using Turnitin on Wikipedia. I have not used this myself, but I agree with Kevin that plagiarism is a serious problem worth addressing and anyone who has a remedy for this is a friend to the Wikimedia community. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:36, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

iThenticate (which is essentially turnitin) has definitely picked up a few issues with plagiarism that I would not have spotted on my own, although obviously each case still needs to be checked since it marks commonalities only and can't indicate plagiarism by itself. I ran a group of students from other classes working on challenging theoretical topics through iThenticate last night, and, bluntly, promptly got frightened. As I have time (this is crunchweek for me + I currently have chemical burns over a good part of my body, heh,) I'm aiming to look at something like 10 students each from 10 different classes that aren't on tough theoretical topics with the hope that what I ran in to last night is limited to stuff like postcolonial theory that, bluntly, a lot of students don't understand even when they've had multiple classes about it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:38, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Postcolonial theory, ha! :) I'm not surprised, in that synthesizing complex arguments is indeed hard, and the ban on "original research" frankly makes it harder. (I'm not arguing for "original research," but I'm trying to explain why students are more likely to plagiarize than in essays, for instance). Again, my feeling is that we need to have a better idea (as you're suggesting) of when and why students--and anyone else, for that matter--plagiarizes. This is why the kinds of research that Sage has done, while useful, is insufficient. My feeling has always been that students plagiarize more for Wikipedia assignments than for others, partly because of the nature of those assignments, and partly because of their attitudes to Wikipedia. On the other hand, I don't think that students plagiarize more than other editors, at least when we're comparing like-for-like edits. But this is more experience and intuition than anything else. Hence the need for a proper conversation about it. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 00:07, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

We have stalled efforts to develop this sort of tool here WP:Turnitin. This tool is key and is one of the most important things Wikipedia/Wikimedia needs to right now. I have seen plagiarism rates between 10-30% depending on the class in question. I would support IEG funding for someone who wants to take up pushing this project forwards. I have been trying to get WPF engineering staff to take this on without success. Agree a summit at Wikimania would be excellent. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:47, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Since I basically live next door to Turnitin, it may be worth me popping in to at least talk with them some once this semester is done. Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:50, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

They have agreed to give us free access per User:Ocaasi and are interested in working with us. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:53, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

iThenticate, the tool I've been using, is a slightly more scholarly version of Turnitin done by the same people, I did indeed get free access to it via Ocaasi, and it's been invaluable. In terms of popping in to chat, I just know that sometimes progress on things goes quicker when you meet up with people inperson :) Kevin Gorman (talk) 18:46, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I am wondering if a op-ed in the signpost would be useful to increase awareness. Would be happy to collaborate on it.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:02, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Kevin, did you run the ithenticate tool on other non-education users, to compare rates of plagiarism? Or does anyone know if this has been done in the past? I agree that plagiarism is a serious problem, but I'm not sure that we can say that the education program is worse than new editors elsewhere in the encyclopedia (which I would guess also are plagiarizing at a non-trivial rate). Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:47, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately it's hard to run against already existing articles, though I could run it against a sample of newly created articles once I have the time. My current main class - the last time I checked anyway - had around 5% of students with serious issues, about half intentional, and about half unintentional (and thus a good way to teach a student something important that they've missed in their other classes.) Running iThenticate on a couple classes last night that dealt with extremely complex concepts - I don't want to out the classes before I reconfirm it myself, but you can imagine something like an undergraduate philosophy class writing about Wittgenstein's ideas - some classes had 'serious problem' rates upwards of 60%. Running it on some other classes dealing with less complicated stuff or that received more supervision looked to be in the area of 10-15%. I've been spending significantly more hours a week working directly with students than I have in previous years, and in a broader variety of areas than I have in previous years (ex: I'm now the person who assists in figuring out what's up with academic misconduct,) and come across some kind of student-specific causes of plagiarism. That said, my class does have quite a low rate of plagiarism, so I probably should've framed my original post more as "Students plagiarize for different reasons than non-students do, and I strongly suspect that classes without close supervision on-wiki end up with a higher rate of plagiarism than non-students on-wiki do" instead of how I originally framed it. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:44, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Interesting. It makes sense that students plagiarize most when they are out of their league, so to speak. We see a lot of the same issues with non-native English speakers that end up copying a lot of content because they are apparently unable to express the same things in their own words. (The IEP was an extreme example of this on the education side, but there is an insane plagiarism rate from South Asian users generally in my experience.) Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:19, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

@Calliopejen1: See m:Research:Plagiarism on the English Wikipedia. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:24, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

In my experience as a professor, I have seen about the same amount of plagiarism in WP assignments as in other written assignments. I spent a lot more time discussing this (and too close paraphrasing) in class this semester and am pleased that no direct plagiarism and only one case of too close paraphrasing have been detected this term. The latter was identified during peer review by a classmate and was found in content that had been contributed prior to the semester. That being said, I would love to have access to iThenticate or collaborate with someone who could use it to check all of my student's work. Biolprof (talk) 21:07, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Plagiarism summit

I wanted to pull this out separately, since Jbmurray mentioned it as a proposed course of action (if it's already been discussed in detail somewhere, please just point me to that page). I certainly can't promise we could do something like this, but I'm interested in exploring the idea more fully. I welcome any thoughts on things like: Is this an in-person meeting or a virtual summit? Who would attend? How would it be structured? What outcomes do you expect, and how would those outcomes address the challenges on wiki? Is this something just about the education program or something larger about plagiarism on wiki? Are we just talking US/Canada? English Wikipedia? All language Wikipedias? Any other thoughts? --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:40, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi: I've talked about this to anyone who'll listen for as long as I can remember. For instance, I discussed it at length with Frank a month or so back. It begins from the observation that plagiarism is a key faultline that both unites and divides Wikipedians and academics: both view it as a problem, and view the other as to blame (if in different ways). So it deserves some thought and discussion, both to tackle the problem itself and as a way to encourage dialogue. Different views and positions could be aired, and there could be time for presentations. But I'd see it mostly as an opportunity to talk and brainstorm, and to understand the variety of points of view.

I think that in-person is more efficient and effective, though there could be a virtual component. I don't think there's any point in inviting people who already agree: the point of the summit is to get together people who have been at odds. So I would invite the harshest critics of both Wikipedia and the education program, as well as those who have been working with or on both. There would be academics, Wikipedians, educational technologists, and others. But it would ideally be as far removed from something like the Boston fest as possible.

All this would help shift the WEF and the education program away from its current profile, of defensive but self-congratulatory wonks removed from academia and Wikipedia alike, towards something that could make an impact and a difference, with a view of the big picture. Again, I spoke about this at length with Frank a few weeks ago. I await Frank's report back on his conversations with me, and with others, as he opens up a debate on the future of the WEF and the EP. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:25, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Jbmurray, this is useful -- I'll definitely ask Frank for his notes, too. And I welcome thoughts from other community members on the idea of a plagiarism summit too! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:40, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

@Jbmurray: Frank sent me his notes from your talk; they say: "Plagiarism -> causes most anxiety in academia: get people together and talk about what this means, what can be done ("plagiarism summit")". He says he doesn't remember more detail than that — so I do apologize if you've covered this. But what specific outcomes would you want from this summit, and how do you see those outcomes affecting the current situation on-wiki? I'm really interested in hearing why you think the technical solutions we've outlined (better way of providing information up-front to instructors and a plagiarism check on student work) aren't as primary this summit. To be super clear here, I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to understand what you think this summit will achieve, and why it's more important than the technical solutions already in planning. Ultimately, you and I want the same thing in this: No plagiarism on Wikipedia. So if there's something we can try to do — either in the Wikimania conference as mentioned below or in a separate event — I'd love to know more of your thoughts of how to get there. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:20, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Egads. You have a long conversation with someone, and all you get are these second-hand stubs of notes?! Another reason for the WEF not to abandon open discussion.

Anyhow, first of all, I think we need to be very wary of talk of "outcomes" along the lines you are suggesting. This is part of the problem currently besetting us. I'd prefer to be part of the solution. The idea is to move the WEF towards encouraging blue-skies thinking, and proper discussion of the big picture rather than limited technical outcomes.

Meanwhile, my goal is not above all "no plagiarism in Wikipedia." This is a very limited and rather uninteresting goal, albeit an important one in some ways. The point of a summit is to get people talking. The thing about plagiarism is that it's a matter dear to the hearts of people from across the spectrum of Wikipedia and academia. As I said above (and as I said to Frank, albeit unrecorded), it both unites and divides. Hence the interest and importance of the topic.

But if you want a specific set of outcomes, how about these: i) bringing together people with very different perspectives on the education program ii) starting free and open debate iii) enabling a glimpse at the bigger picture of (let's use the WEF's own words) the "free knowledge movement iv) helping to position the WEF as a thinktank that has something of interest and importance to contribute both to Wikipedia and academia. Again, I talked about all this at length to Frank, and look forward to his reporting back on this and on other conversations he's had. Hope not all of this effort has been lost. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:22, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

To be super clear — Frank had 2 pages of notes covering a variety of topics; that was just his only reference to the plagiarism summit idea. Although in looking through your outcomes, I see this as more of a Wikipedia and education summit rather than specifically about plagiarism (but obviously plagiarism is one of the major discussion topics). Are others interested in this? I'd love to gauge the interest level and hear from more people whether this is something many Wikipedia editors would be interested in. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 03:26, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I see it as being just about plagiarism (hence the title). Other summits might cover other topics. This just seems to be the obvious place to start, to keep things focussed. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 03:54, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

How about the day before the start of Wikimania in London? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:33, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

It's looking like I unfortunately won't be able to make it to London, but could always try to attend virtually. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:08, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for proposing this. As a bystander not entirely affiliated with the program, but having done a fair amount of GA reviews, I'd note that both plagiarism and close paraphrasing, which is a related issue, are not uncommon. Addressing some of the causes (eg ignorance, the dearth of content in some areas, positive encouragement when adding content leading to a cycle of adding more and more for more and more acclaim, ideological opposition to copyright, self-plagiarising from authors of books and studies) and ways to deal with it (policing, bots, warning systems) and prevent it (education, instructor supervision, checking of at-risk groups such as students, warnings/templates) would be very useful--LT910001 (talk) 01:01, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I really like Jmh649's idea of incorporating this into the education pre-conference at Wikimania. I've added it to the agenda of the Future of Education Workshop, which is 21-22 June, where we'll be planning the education pre-conference. Jbmurray, Doc James, others: any chance you'd be able to come to London for the Future of Education Workshop? Sadly, there aren't scholarships available, so the planning committee has been focusing on the UK in creating lists of people who we think might be able to attend, but I'd love to have your input there if that's feasible. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:34, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Already busy that weekend. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:51, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

There's no way I can make it to London. Moreover, I'm rather doubtful about tacking such a thing onto Wikimania or similar, as you wouldn't get the variety of input needed. I think this is something that can and should be organized separately, probably in North America. It doesn't need to be too expensive. You could do a reasonable job for $20,000, for instance. A better one for $30,000. Which is a drop in the bucket of current WEF funding. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:15, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

What do you see as the spectrum of inputs that would be needed for success? What kinds of people, representing what viewpoints? Students, instructors, Wikipedians? Librarians? Educational design experts? Educational technologists? And what do you see as the necessary content -- panels, workshops? What panel topics or workshop goals? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:36, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I see the three fundamental constituencies as being academics, Wikipedians, and educational technologists. And I think we need to have (in each camp) viewpoints for and against a) Wikipedia and b) the education program. This is too crude, but a start. I'd envisage a one-day workshop, two days max. With perhaps a couple of panels, but mainly with discussion primed via position papers. As for the goals, see above. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 22:52, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

You say "as for the goals, see above". From what you wrote above I see two descriptions of goals: understand why students (and other editors) plagiarize; and then later on you list four outcomes: "i) bringing together people with very different perspectives on the education program ii) starting free and open debate iii) enabling a glimpse at the bigger picture of (let's use the WEF's own words) the "free knowledge movement iv) helping to position the WEF as a thinktank that has something of interest and importance to contribute both to Wikipedia and academia". Of these five, only the first is something that I would think of as an outcome, and even that one is difficult to address directly. The last I don't want to see made into a goal; the WEF's credibility should be a result of it doing the right things, not an end in itself. But let's say everything you ask for is accomplished -- different perspectives are shared at the summit, and debate is free and open and addresses the free knowledge movement -- then is that enough? I'm not sure it is, though I agree those are good things; I'm not sure those outcomes would justify the summit. And to your first-stated goal: I think academic research into the causes of plagiarism is worthwhile, but speaking with my Wikipedian hat on I don't believe the answer will make a great deal of difference to how it is addressed. So I'd like to see something more specific as a goal. I'd like to see some discussion prior to arranging such a summit about what the money spent on it would achieve. I'd particularly like to hear from Wikipedians, yourself included, along with the others who have commented above. Part of my role on the WEF board is to represent the interests of the Wikipedian editing community. I want the same things you want, but I'd like to be more convinced that a meeting of the kind you describe would constitute progress, and I'd like to see that other Wikipedians are convinced.

It's a truism in criminology that deterrence is better achieved by improving detection than by increasing severity of punishment. I think the technological approaches that have been discussed have an important place, and I suspect more Wikipedians would support putting resources into plagiarism detection than into a summit. I'd like to hear more input on this from others. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library)

Mike, if the WEF aren't interested, then so be it. But it seems a wasted opportunity. When and if you (they) have any other good ideas as to how to bring the various constituencies together and get discussion going on issues of mutual importance, I look forward to seeing them. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:06, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I won't be making the decision -- Frank will, and I haven't discussed it with him at all and don't expect to. I posted to try and get arguments for and against the summit, and expand the definition of what it would do, not to tell you that it wasn't going to happen. Regardless of what the decision is, I'd like to see it made with substantial discussion from Wikipedians. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:35, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

It's not at all the scale of a "summit", but I believe that quite a number of the participants on this thread will be at WikiConference USA in a couple weeks, and perhaps we could set up an initial meeting then, perhaps as part of the "unconference" on Sunday June 1.--Pharos (talk) 05:10, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation update

I've added a post to the new Wiki Education Foundation blog about our current job openings. I'm trying to find the right balance between keeping the Wikipedia community informed of our activities and not overwhelming the noticeboard with posts any time we announce something. I'd love to hear any suggestions from community members about what the right balance is. Should I just post the monthly reports here and let you subscribe to the Wiki Education Foundation blog by RSS or email if you want more timely updates? Should I post here every time I publish a blog post? What specific updates are you interested in having me post here from the Wiki Education Foundation? --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:59, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I would like a short note about all WEF news, including blog posts, to appear here. This and the incident boards are the only places I watch related to the WEF. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:30, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

assignment: contribute to the Wikimedia Commons

In classes that incorporate Wikipedia, I've twice offered extra credit for contributing original, encyclopedic images to the Commons. In the semester that just ended, I pushed it a little harder, framing it as a sort of Wikipedia:Wikipedia Takes Your City event. 7-9 people contributed more than 150 images, most of them taken just for this purpose, and about a third of which were also added to Wikipedia articles. I was so pleased I threw together a really basic gallery (including the previous semester's and images students took specifically for the articles they were working on) and showing it off here. A few said they really got into it. Maybe learning about and contributing to the Commons is a good way to strengthen that important sense of having contributed something meaningful [to something meaningful]. Since it was sort of tacked on and we only spent a little while on it in class, there are things I'd like to improve upon, though. Are there other materials or assignment descriptions out there for the Commons other than things like Wiki Loves Monuments that can be appropriated for a class? I'm thinking subject specificity or field trips, maybe? --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  02:09, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

See Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in the United States and its state- and county-level categories. I'm personally more interested in WLM than other projects, but there's plenty of need for non-monument photos as well. Nyttend (talk) 02:33, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: See Illustrating Wikipedia: A guide to contributing content to Wikimedia Commons, a brochure we particularly put together for students and other newbies looking to contribute to Wikimedia Commons. You may also be interested in some of the Commons-related assignments in the Case Studies: How professors are teaching with Wikipedia brochure. Hope this helps! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:30, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I'm really excited to see more Commons assignments, and your students have done great work so far! I look forward to seeing more good photos coming from your classes. :) --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:35, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for these ideas. I also found Panoramap thanks to someone at the Commons village pump, which seems to function somewhat similarly to Wiki Loves Monuments. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  20:38, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Template:Educational assignment

The previous thread on this was archived. It doesn't seem like there was any opposition to this change, but bumping it one more time before moving forward with [requesting] it. Having worked out the bugs in the template (as far as I can tell), I'd like substitute (effectively) the content at User:Rhododendrites/sandbox/eduassign for Template:Educational assignment (tweaked for the article talk namespace, of course). --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  22:12, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Sukesh pabba

Sukesh pabba (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I like being a part of Wikipedia team.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   Vasavi College of Engineering,Hyderabad

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   Bachelor of Engineering, Mechanical

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Sukesh pabba (talk) 06:12, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

• @Sukesh pabba: "you need to have an edit history on the site so that you can be adequately evaluated by the team" I recommend you try the Counter-vandalism academy and re-apply when you have a few hundred edits, at least. Chris Troutman (talk) 06:23, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

and please avoid plagiarism, as happened in your one substantive edit, which copied web materials to Proteus (design software)‎. Rjensen (talk) 17:25, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

siddhant41hig

Siddhant41hig

Siddhant41hig (talk · contribs)

1 Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

a: To support faculty and students researching and working on their various assignments.

2 In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

a: No involvement,but learned many things from wiki pages while doing assignments.

3 Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

a: sorry,till now no articles.

4 How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

a: By various advertising techniques and mouth publicity in schools and colleges.Also I am member of CSI-India.

5 What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

a: we offer them opportunities to get engaged.

6 Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

a: None of above

7 How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

a: I am on Wikipedia too often.Yes,I will easily be available for 2 hours a week.

8 How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

a: I will bookmark their contribs pages, and their talk pages.

9 If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

a: I would first of all see if the concern is legitimate,then after that I will contact student and make them to know about copyright voilation.

10 In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

a: A basic definition of a copyright violation is anything that violates the exclusive rights of the copyright holder like right to reproduce,right to distribute copies etc.Fair use allows you to use copyrighted material for specific purposes, such as: educational purposes, to parody, in scholarly works if due acknowledgment is given

11 What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

a: I am applying now is to make myself available so that if a project does start up in this area, the teachers/professors will be able to find someone who can support them in person in right away. Siddhant41hig (talk) 09:02, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Endorsements

acropolis institute of technology and research

Welcome. You need to become an experience Wikipedian before you apply for this position. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:05, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Stanton grant proposal released

A quick note that I've posted a blog from Frank about releasing the Wiki Education Foundation's grant proposal to the Stanton Foundation on Commons. Hopefully this will also help answer Peteforsyth's request for more detail on our plans too. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:42, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

About outing students

At WT:MED#Rough draft of video for new editors, WhatamIdoing raised the issue of whether things like asking student editors to identify themselves as student editors (such as asking them to put Template:Educational assignment on the talk page of the article they edit) might violate WP:OUTING. I don't see it that way, but maybe I'm wrong. What do other editors think? If there is some incompatibility with our policies, how then should we go about working with class assignments? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:58, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I've welcomed hundreds of newly enrolled students using the stduent welcome template and never had feedback about WP:OUTING. I can see that if might be an issue if there were a course with only a handful of editors though. Stuartyeates (talk) 23:07, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

About classes with a small number of students, I think the question of outing personal identity only becomes an issue if the student editors identify themselves by name, as opposed to adopting non-identifying user names. I suppose that, in theory, someone with bad intent could track down a class roster at the school, but I think the responsibility for privacy of the roster might reside with the school rather than with Wikipedia. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:17, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

My subjective impression is that a significantly higher proportion of students than general editors use something that appears to be their real name. Maybe we could look at the new student infonew student info and new educator info to see whether it could be tweaked to avoid suggesting using real names and/or recommend using pseudonyms? Stuartyeates (talk) 23:28, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

That's an issue that has come up in the past. Speaking personally, I wish student editors would not use their real names. However, it's fairly common for instructors to actually require that the user name be the real name, on the grounds that it mimics scholarly writing and increases responsibility. I've said in the past that I think that there's an ethical issue about students being compelled to post information on Wikipedia as a result of the requirements of a class that they are taking for credit, but the consensus in the past has been that the ethical issues reside with the educational institution that imposes the requirement, rather than with Wikipedia. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:36, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

It's best practice in the US to get students to sign some kind of FERPA consent form before starting any project where privacy might be an issue (including any time work they do is made public). I try to devote some time to privacy-specific Q&A during our first Wikipedia workshop, too. I strongly discourage using usernames based on real names, but I haven't made it mandatory, so despite several warnings and sending out instructions for how to change it, there tends to be one or two in each class who insist they don't care. For practical purposes I maintain a table of everybody's real name, username, article(s), and group(s) off-wiki, on whatever course management software we're using. TL;DR: If you're gaining students' consent in class, I fail to see how WP:OUTING can apply.

Responding to the original question about outing in the sense of saying "this is a student editor" irrespective of other variables, I'm not seeing WP:OUTING apply even if you don't get formal consent. I'm assuming there aren't schools that make class rosters available to the public such that disclosing someone is a student in the class -- even if it's a class of one -- could constitute divulging contact information.

Last, though it wasn't part of the original question, I have a strong objection to requiring real names. In my opinion it should be formally discouraged (lots of reasons), but that's a tangent :) --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  01:32, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Can we prevent educators from requiring real names? It seems like we should be able to make it a requirement of participation in Wikimedia programs. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:18, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I've posted a note about this discussion on Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#WP:OUTING_and_the_education_program. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:24, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Stuartyeates that tweaking the new student material could be very helpful. Most of my students chose their university ID for their WP and I didn't think to discourage this. On the other hand, I don't think my students care about being identified on WP. Maybe we are niave. It would be very easy for anyone who looked at my course page to identify me and I can't think of any good way to avoid this. I think if I want to do more editing outside of course work and care about anonymity, I'll create another identity :) Biolprof (talk) 03:01, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I'd welcome having stronger advice to student editors and instructors to not use real names on-Wiki, but the fact remains that some instructors currently require it, even after considering such advice. I really cannot see treating that as a policy violation by the instructor, such that we would block the instructor from editing as though they were a disruptive editor (not that anyone was proposing that, but we ought to recognize that it could be a logical conclusion to draw from a decision that we don't want to require students to use their real names). That seems over-the-top to me. An aspect of the issue that has been brought up in earlier discussions is one of informed consent by students. For example, if a student editor, using their real name, makes edits that are plagiarized, Wikipedia will be providing a permanent online record that this person once committed plagiarism, something that could later come back to haunt the student when, for example, seeking employment. That's potentially a big deal, and student editors are rarely aware of it. I'd like to see a way of telling all potential student editors that Wikipedia does not require them to disclose their real names – but I don't know what, if anything, Wikipedia should do when the student tells the instructor "I'd rather use a screen name" and the instructor says "you have to use your real name or I'll penalize your grade". --Tryptofish (talk) 22:16, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

If editors choose to disclose their own information, then that's never going to be a problem with OUTING (which exempts disclosures by the account owner). But we're not supposed to identify "personal information" like location, age, and occupation. If we post that, based on our own interpretation of the edits made by this person, someone is a student in Lake Wobegone High School, then we've violated OUTING. (There is room in the middle: "If you are a student working on an assignment for a class, please read these pages" is informational, not OUTING. "You are an editor in this class at this school" is OUTING.)

Where we got started, though, is that I don't think it's a good idea to push students to out themselves, even to the extent of identifying themselves as being students, although my primary concern is people pushing for names, locations, and ages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:51, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm glad that we agree that students choosing to self-identify as students is not a problem. I hope that you agree, then, that student editors putting a template on a talk page indicating that they are editing as part of a class assignment, or students linking from their user page to a course page set up by their instructor as part of the Education Program, or the creation of that course page with a list of participating student editors, are not outing violations – because those were the things I was talking about at WT:MED when you first raised the issue with me. I'd like to argue that when other editors, such as many of the editors posting here, tell apparent student editors on a talk page that they ought to do those same things (using a template, linking to a course page, etc.), that is also not a violation, even though it can be construed as telling the student editors to post "identifying" information. It likely would involve posting that this editor is a student in this class assignment in this class at this educational institution, but it would never involve a request that the student post their real name, address, or age. As you can see above, the issue gets complicated when students, particularly if required by the instructor, "choose" to post their real names. We need to decide whether, when that has happened, there is still an outing violation when editors seek to identify which editors are part of a class assignment. If you look at WP:ENI, it's pretty typical for an editor to post that we have a problem showing up on such-and-such pages, and it looks like a class of student editors, and we need to figure out what class it is so that we can get the instructor to cooperate in fixing the problem. In my opinion, that's both necessary and within policy. But if you are arguing that editors must not do that, then we need to figure that issue out. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:37, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

My concern is when a student in a small class decides to use a pseudonym, they can be outed by a process of elimination. Clearly if the course has only one student and the host institution publishes a course list, then a pseudonym is no protection. Similarly if there are only a handful of students most of whom use their real names and others can be tricked into self-outing. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:51, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, those things can happen internally within an educational institution, but it would be very difficult for someone in the general public to do any of those things. My own concern, instead, is whether an editor who posts at WP:ENI in good faith, or an editor who asks in good faith if another editor is part of a particular class assignment, is somehow going to get in trouble for doing something that seems to me to be both necessary and within policy. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:24, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Discussion here has quieted, and I'd like to try to derive some tentative take-home messages before everyone moves on to other things, because I think the issues are important. Here's my personal take on the discussion:

1. There is serious concern about student editors, who are required to come here and edit for course credit, using their real names as their user names, or otherwise disclosing their real names. It would be good to do more to provide new student editors with information about the issue of real names, and information about how Wikipedia permits everyone who wants to, to not use real names. There is a remaining issue of instructors who require real name use even if students do not want to, and that will require further discussion.
2. The kinds of things that established editors typically do in dealing with class projects – including asking new editors if they are student editors, asking what class it is and how to contact the instructor, and suggesting the use of templates and other identifiers of class assignments – are permissible and appropriate within policy. But of course, editors should never ask student editors for their real names or other identifying material unrelated to editing.

That's my take. Do other editors agree with that? --Tryptofish (talk) 18:29, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard is the only sane place to interpret these rules, since that's the community that's responsible for enforcement. Stuartyeates (talk)

No, editors discuss changes to policies on policy page talk pages all the time, and administrators do not have more "say" in policy than do "ordinary" editors like me. I remember that you already linked to here from AN, and please feel free to post there again if you want. And I'm only seeking to find out what the consensus is in this discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:43, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

As an instructor, I am fine with Tryptofish's summary. I would only add to #1 "provide new student editors and instructors with information…" Biolprof (talk) 02:28, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, and I agree with you entirely about that addition. The main concern I have at this point is to ascertain whether any editors have issues with #2. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:05, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

• I always stress the potential implications of using your real name vs a pseudonym to my students, and think it's an important thing for them to be aware of, although I think the choice should generally be left up to the students. I'll be producing a one page handout dealing with pseudonyms vs real names aimed at students in the near future as part of an upcoming project. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:57, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes agree there are pluses and minuses to using one's real name and I have encountered both. We do need methods to determine all the edits coming from a specific class though as part of our work to maintain the quality of Wikipedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:19, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Surveying Mentors and Mentees

For those of you who have worked with new Wikipedians, you will receive a request to take a quick survey about your experience as a mentor.

This survey is intended to inform the creation of a new tool that can assist in matching mentors to newcomers.

If you do get a request, I hope you take the survey and forward a survey link to the newcomers you worked with.

Thanks!

• SURVEY FOR MENTORS: https://syracuseuniversity.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_4V2SSrhU2NFOVAV
• SURVEY FOR MENTEES: https://syracuseuniversity.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_4V1quUdMZ1By3Ah

Gabrielm199 (talk) 14:53, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

• Please take a look at the meta wiki page talking about research. I believe that research that involves actively recruiting participants is supposed to be approved by the Wikimedia Research Committee before subject recruitment starts. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:05, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Kevin, as I understand it, Gabrielm199 has been discussing this with Aaron Halfalker already, in relation to the Reimagining Wikipedia Mentorship grant proposal along with User:I JethroBT and User:Soni. I couldn't find anything in the RCom documentation about either a formal requirement or a procedure for requesting approval for something like this, so I suggested Gabrielm199 give people a heads up here, as a final check to make sure folks would be generally okay with it. If there aren't any specific problems folk here fine, I've offered to do a mass message of the 'for mentors' survey to current Onlne Volunteers.--ragesoss (talk) 15:36, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
    • For some reason I flubbed up and linked the wrong page, but r-com does say that r-com approval is necessary before subject recruitment can begin - see here. I just figured I'd mention it since I've seen people get scolded for not seeking it out proactively before. Since Aaron is the first point of contact for the approval process anyway, it's probably better just to ask him directly if it's fine to start recruiting now, or if the formal process is really needed. Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:25, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
      • Thanks Kevin (ping Gabrielm199. I'll wait until Aaron Halfalker can clarify whether this has the necessary approval, then.--ragesoss (talk) 19:54, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
        • Hey folks. RCom's review process was intended to improve the interactions between non-Wikipedians and the Wikipedia community. Given that this project is a Wikipedian-run initiative, I think that an RCom review would be overkill. I don't see anywhere in the docs that suggests that review is required. However, if there are substantial concerns, I think that we should consider a review anyway. In that case, I can request a reviewer who is less close to the subject than myself. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 22:53, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
          • I have no concerns that I think would require a review, but the meta page I linked doesn't differentiate between Wikimedians and non-Wikimedians - it would probably be good to update its verbiage because people get cranky about surveys without apparent approval decently often. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 15:50, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
            • Hi folks- Are there substantial concerns that merit review? If so I will go forward with going through the formal process. Please let me know. Gabrielm199 (talk) 20:04, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
              • From my perspective, I don't think so. I'll try to send out the mass message for you tonight. (And if anyone gets upset afterwards, I'll take the heat for that decision.)--ragesoss (talk) 20:11, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I've just sent out the mass message for online volunteers.--ragesoss (talk) 13:34, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Clarification about applying

Perhaps we could do something to make it more clear to potential applicants that we are hoping for people to have some Wikipedia experience before applying to be a student ambassador. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:20, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:57, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I placed an edit notice here that states this. Eleven notifications in one day is a bit much today, especially when one user applied three times and even answered another user's questions. Tryptofish, please feel free to automatically remove these users in the future, as there is no reason to even keep their misguided applications here. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:36, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I agree with you, but I was hesitant to do more than I had done (insert comments advising a WP:SNOW close, now all deleted by you) per WP:BITE. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:23, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

I honestly had no problem removing them, as it was clear that twelve applications in one day, including ones like I mentioned above, were an attempt at disruption. We're lucky to get one a week, so having twelve in one day seems a bit suspicious to me. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 00:33, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm having some health issues that mean I'm a bit drugged out currently, but shouldn't it be possible to create an abusefilter that automatically prevents anyone who isn't autoconfirmed from posting a CA application? In a couple of days once said health issues are resolved, I'll poke at it myself if no one beats me to it. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:25, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Ktr101 I do not think this was disruption - it looks like some group in India all wanted to begin using Wikipedia and they did not know where else to go but here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:46, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

This page has just been semiprotected, which means that unregistered users can no longer edit it. This can only be a short term solution to the problem because I want to welcome IP editors here. A better solution would be somehow preventing unregistered users from applying to become campus ambassadors. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:22, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

I requested that, as it was becoming more annoying to get a ton of notifications then temporarily stopping it. I know it's a short term fix, but my goal was to help stop the initial notifications, as it had gotten beyond a handful and was very disruptive. That being said, I am okay with someone unprotecting it, but I would like to wait a few days first. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:23, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I would simply welcome them and give further details on their talk page. They are not harming content so not so bad. They may be useful as translators as they likely speak languages other than English. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:08, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I have trimmed the last two applications for campus ambassador. Users must have experience with editing Wikipedia before they apply. Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:11, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

possible student assignments in AFC

I noticed there are three pending AFCs that appear to be student assignments:

• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Amish Birth Culture - User:Oconorc
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Hasidic Culture of Birth - User:Rachbernrd
• Draft:Birth culture of Brazil - User:N356BirthCulture

These articles were created by three separate editors but they all have a very similar format and structure. Does anyone know anything about this? GabrielF (talk) 05:00, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

The names Oconorc and Rachbernrd might be associated with University of Pennsylvania. They don't have a course currently, but a previous course also had only three students. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:16, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, looks like its this class at the Penn nursing school - [26] GabrielF (talk) 05:19, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I've given each the "student" welcome so hopefully we get some response. We don't appear to have any active ambassadors at that school so I'm not sure what else can be done. Chris Troutman (talk) 06:01, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I've left a comment at Birth culture of Brazil about plagiarism in the article. The other two articles seem fine. There are long background sections in each article that give some general facts about the population but don't address birth specifically. We'd probably want to trim those significantly. The articles also need a lede section. Otherwise they look usable. GabrielF (talk) 06:39, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

@Ktr101, Gregatmu, Cmcunningham, and Jami (Wiki Ed): Wouldn't it be wise for the WEF to then find the professor responsible and reconcile this? Certainly we have ambassadors in the region that could look into this. I don't know if the vaunted WEF staff has something better to do. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:21, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

New Wiki Education Foundation staff

I’m excited to point you to a new Wiki Education Foundation blog post announcing the hires for three positions. Sage Ross joins us June 2 as Product Manager, Digital Services; Jessica Craft joins us June 3 as Executive Assistant to the ED; and Sara Crouse joins us June 16 as Deputy Director & Senior Director of Fundraising and Partnerships. You can read more about their backgrounds and roles on our blog. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:17, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm aware that on-boarding new staff members is complex process for very good legal and procedural reasons, but it would be very useful to introduce them by their unified wiki user names, even if the account is merely created and has not yet had got any edits. I see that User:Sage (Wiki Ed) has introduced themselves below, but it would be preferable to see proper delegation of authority for the avoidance of doubt. Stuartyeates (talk) 01:37, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Stuartyeates: I made this edit with my known account before posting here.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:40, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but the authority for User:Sage (Wiki Ed) is delegated from User:LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (or persons / organisations they act for) not from User:Sage Ross (WMF), right? Stuartyeates (talk) 02:43, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

LiAnna mentioned me by name, and I confirmed that this new account is me using an account I'm already known to control. I'm not sure what you mean by "delegation of authority" or what other kind of potential doubt aside from my identity you had in mind.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 02:50, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm also unclear on what authority I need to give to Sage's account, but I will also point out that as you can see from the blog post, Sage is the first to start, and he starts officially on Monday. I don't think it's appropriate to ask a new staff person to create an account prior to starting work; Sage is a longtime editor (whose volunteer username we linked from the blog post), so he created one voluntarily. I imagine Jessica and Sara will create their user accounts when they start working for our organization. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 12:12, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi everyone

As you might guess, I'll be using this account instead of User:Sage Ross (WMF) as of next week. --Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:51, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Neelnath

Neelnath (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I am an active user of Wikipedia and I also see it being used around in my institute. I have also been an active user of internet and different LMS for purpose of learning. I think use of wikipedia for imparting education through assignments is a very interesting concept and can help both students and wikipedia in terms of quality of content both being put on internet and being used education. I would like to introduce this concept to students and faculty around me and encourage them to practice it.

1. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   I am based in Ghaziabad, India doing my Post Graduate Diploma in Management (Equivalent to MBA) from Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad. I want to work with this campus as a Campus Ambassador.

1. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   I am currently doing a Post Graduate Diploma in Management with majors in Sales, Marketing and Business Development. Prior to this I have worked with Halliburton Offshore Services Incorporation as Petroleum Engineer. I also have a startup, PetroFirst. I have done Bachelor of Engineering in Petroleum Engineering.

1. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   I have tried to integrate Wikimedia with my startup website, PetroFirst to segregate energy encyclopedia. The website failed on other integration and hence is not online right now.

2. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I am part of the Cultural Committee of my college which makes it more convenient for me to reach out all of the students and hold interaction with them, organize seminars for students and teachers alike. I have been volunteering for a long time and was the President of Entrepreneurship Cell and UNESCO Chair Youth Mission at my previous institute.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Neel 11:24, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Less than 50 edits. Not enough yet IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:58, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Comtebenoit (talk)

Name

Ben Marwick

Institution

University of Washington

Course title and description

ARCHY 309 'Mainland Southeast Asian Archaeology' This course is open to Anthropology majors at all undergraduate levels. The goals of the course are for students to be able to describe some of the archaeological evidence from mainland SEA and construct a basic timeline of major social, economic and technological events across the region; understand the controversies current in mainland SEA archaeology, especially those surrounding major transition events; apply scientific archaeological thinking to evaluate different sides of the current controversies, and; interpret archaeological evidence and evaluate the validity of different explanations. We're using wikipedia to make connections between the literature we read in class and online content. We're improving wikipedia by (1) adding scholarly sources to existing articles, (2) contributing new verifiable content to existing articles, and (3) contributing new articles (though some may never leave the students' sandboxes). These activities are in addition to essay writing and face-to-face seminar work.

Assignment plan

Every student edits wikipedia every week (after being quizzed on the inductions in the first week), minimally by adding one relevant sentence to one article per week. The sentence must contain a footnote to a citation (the tutorial is very effective) to the item of scholarly literature they read for class that week (on which they also submit a hard copy of a page of notes). Students are also working in groups to create one new article per group, using some of the good article criteria as guidelines (though we will not be seeking GA nominations for the usual reasons).

Number of students

11 (usernames: Lizzy8127, Arctickinkajou, Rsuwsearch, Hurlej, Johnhart151, Rocket027, Z. PUPU, Cookingtheworld, piesquared93, Rjmath, Liann2009)

Start and end dates

March 2014 - June 2014 (Yes, we're in the middle of it already, I'm just now catching up on non-grading details. It's been going so well I plan to do it again with a different class in the fall)

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Comtebenoit (talk) 21:39, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

1. Have gone ahead and granted the course instructor right. Pongr (talk) 03:32, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
2. @Pongr – Thank you! I've now made my course page Comtebenoit (talk) 07:36, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Comtebenoit

Comtebenoit (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   To create course pages to coordinate my students' activity on wikipedia, to support others at UW using wikipedia for teaching and learning

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   Seattle, I plan to mostly serve my workplace, the University of Washington, but am also interested in serving primary and secondary schools and other universities in my local area.

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   PhD ANU 2008, Assistant Professor 2008-current

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   Casual contributor to wikipedia since 2005, mostly on my academic research interests

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I occasionally do workshops and talks for the UW Centre for Teaching and Learning to promote the use of technology in teaching throughout campus, and so I am well-placed to inform and advise other instructors on the effective use of wikipedia at UW.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Comtebenoit (talk) 23:14, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

1. Seems like a sane candidate: long, if sparse, edit history; sensible editing, if leaning towards over academic; seem like they've done the training. That's an accept from me. Disclaimer: given the articles edited, I may have run across this user on the internet as a result of our day jobs. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:01, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
2. Hi @Comtebenoit: - I went ahead and granted the right, although it's worth noting that the right doesn't actually do very much besides letting you create a campus ambassador profile, and that for the class you're teaching yourself, the course instructor right you received will cover most of what you need for that class. I'll also grant you accountcreator, which will allow you to create more than six accounts in a day since you're both involved in teaching a course and involved in outreach efforts (without the right, only six accounts can be created from an IP per day. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:26, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
3. @Kevin Gorman: - Thanks, and thanks for the further explanation. Comtebenoit (talk) 04:06, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation board minutes posted

Just a note to say that I've posted two more sets of approved minutes at the WEF public page. Sorry about the slow pace of publishing these; I can only plead as an excuse that I have been homeless for over a month while waiting to move into a new house. Now that I'm in I should be able to keep these updated in a more timely way. There have been two more board meetings since 6 May, and the minutes for those will be approved at the end of next week and posted then. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:02, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation monthly reports, April and May 2014

Just a note that I've published the April and May versions of the Wiki Education Foundation's Monthly Report today. April's report is available: on Commons, on Meta, and on our blog. May's report is available: on Commons, on Meta, and on our blog. Let me know if you have questions. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:50, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: Akifumii

Akifumii

Akifumii (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I would like to become a Wikipedia Ambassador because I enjoy getting involved in the Wikipedia community and helping others especially students and newbies to Wikipedia.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   I am mainly active on the English Wikipedia however I do spend a significant amount of time on Meta completing translation requests and such.

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   Here on Wikipedia, I mainly revert vandalism, correct spelling/grammar errors, review new pages as well as pending changes. I don't really contribute heavily to any articles other than cleaning them up.

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   No. Not here on Wikipedia. However, I have welcomed and assisted those new to Wikia.

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   I feel that having a warm, welcoming attitude to new editors would be the best. Ordering them around will probably make them not want to come back.

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   I have never had any conflicts with other editors and seem to get along with everyone pretty well.

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   I am online every weekday for a few hours a day. I will be available 2 hours a week if I get chosen as a mentor.

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   I will always make sure to check their work and contributions and remind them of the Copyright rules on Wikipedia.

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   I would mark the page for speedy deletion and refer them to the terms of use. I will remember to stay calm and keep my cool when reminding one of my editors.

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    A copyright violation is when someone copies someone else's work and passes it off as theirs.

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    I am an enthusiastic and energetic person who cares about Wikipedia and its users. I speak 5-6 languages fluently so this may help this program.

Akifumii^Talk 15:11, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

Akifumii has asked me for advice prior to applying. Editor seems to be comfortable editing articles and discussing on talk pages so I gave the go-ahead for applying. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:59, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

1. Support - Akifumii's editing history doesn't go back very far, but I don't see any problematic editing habits. Neelix (talk) 17:23, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Dennishidalgo

Dennishidalgo (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I believe in the principles behind the Wikipedia project and I have used it in my classes for years. I would like to include it more formally in my courses and would like to be of assistance to others in my campus.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia.

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   Ph.D. in History and a faculty member at VT

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   It is minimal. I have uploaded a few files for use in a few articles I have written or reviewed in Wikipedia.

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I am an educator who relish in watching students learn. The same applies to others outside of the classroom. I also enjoy learning from the interaction with others.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Historian (talk) 02:46, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

• Hurray! He's a serious established professor with expertise in areas that need help and a good Wiki editing record. Strong support. Rjensen (talk) 08:28, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
• Good + varied edit history. Appears to know how to follow instructions. That's a yes from me. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:03, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
• @Rjensen & Stuartyeates Thanks for your comments. What should be the next step?Historian (talk) 07:53, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

New Wiki Education Foundation board member

A note announcing the addition of a new board member to the Wiki Education Foundation, Karen A. Twitchell. Our press release has more information. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:05, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: osamaraddad

Osamaraddad (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   That most of the information that I know is from Wikipedia, Wikipedia helped me in my daily life and at school and at university, motivated by my love and respect for Wikipedia I hope to earn the honor of representing Wikipedia in my University

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   Jordan , At the Zarqa University

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   I am a Software Engineering student

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   I contributed to the adjustment of many topics on Wikipedia and localize many of the topics

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   my cv : http://osamasraddad.wix.com/my-carrer

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Osamaraddad (talk) 19:52, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

You say above that you have contributed to many topics. Which languages / wikis / account were those on? Your current account only seems to have edits on the English and Arabic language wikipadias from today. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:15, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

At English WP, only 2 edits are here. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

@Osamaraddad: Information on the program at Zarqa University is here: w:ar:ويكيبيديا:برنامج_ويكيميديا_للتعليم/مناهج_دراسية/جامعة_الزرقاء. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:32, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi, @Osamaraddad: I work with volunteers in Jordan who run the local Wikipedia Education Program. We'd love to have you get involved at Zarqa University. I can introduce you to some professors who are interested in supporting the program at your university. I'll ping you on your user talk page on ar:wiki. Tflanagan (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

adding a token?

Hi -- I created a course; did not see the need for an add token; and now I see the need for it. Is there any way I can retroactively do an "add token" section? --Lquilter (talk) 20:26, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Lquilter: When you edit a course page using an account with instructor or course volunteer user rights, you will see an input field for the enrollment token (which will be empty if one has not been set).--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:02, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Great, thanks; I see it now. --Lquilter (talk) 23:43, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

keeping up with my work

Hi again, ENB-watchers! As announced last week, I've started as "Product Manager, Digital Services" for Wiki Education Foundation. I'm going to try to continually document what I'm working on at my userpage. To get an idea of my current priorities, see User:Sage (Wiki Ed).

I want to ask everyone who interacts regularly with the education program on English Wikipedia (whether as a professor, an ambassador, or an editor in topic area where students often work) to take a few minutes to think about what technical features might solve important problems or make your work with classes easier or more effective. I'm looking for broad perspectives: these ideas could be things built into Wikipedia by default, or optional gadgets, or services that Wiki Education Foundation could provide on a separate website. Basically, I want to know about your top technical priorities, within the realm of what Wiki Education Foundation might possibly tackle.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:52, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

@Sage (Wiki Ed): - A technical feature I would find useful is a way to track when my students' edits are reverted. If an edit is reverted so after it's made I'd want to know so I can advise the student on how to manage it without too much time passing and missing the teachable moment. This could be a rough proxy for edit quality - a student with a high proportion of reverted edits is probably doing something wrong and needs extra guidance. I'm also curious about the half-life of my student's edits, for example if an edit lasts a week what are the chances it will last a month? Are there any existing tools to do this kind of tracking? Comtebenoit (talk) 04:10, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Comtebenoit: Thanks much! These are both good ideas, and those specific ones are not ideas that I've come across before. The broader needs they address — easy ways to monitor student work continuously and stay on top of editing activity that is likely to be on particular interest for instructors and ambassadors, and readily available analytics to see how classes are doing at a glance — are both things I'm eager to work on.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:55, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Those are very good ideas, and there would be many benefits to being able to track that sort of thing. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:42, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Online Ambassador application: Alec250

Alec250

Alec250 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I want to have an opportunity to contribute to the Wikipedia community that has been so helpful over the years and I want to be able to give back to that community by helping educate Students who are new to the site in its use, features, and guidelines. I also want to be able to support the Wikipedia Education Program by assisting professors in need of help, providing guidance to students, and by praising the work of exemplary members of the Wikipedia Education community.

2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.

   I have contributed to various Wikipedia articles by improving the substance of the article, correcting article grammar, adapting the text to more accurately align with Wikipedia's formatting standards, and by adding missing references.

3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).

   Freakonomics Radio, Slavoj Žižek bibliography, Young doctors notebook season 1, A Young Doctor's Notebook (TV series), and Farmed and Dangerous.

4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?

   I have encouraged a few people to first become involved with and help contribute to Wikipedia, and I have then helped these users develop an understanding of the editing process and helped them with their various questions regarding the site.

5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?

   I feel the most important ways we could encourage new users is by engaging with them in a dialogue regarding their areas of expertise and their questions and concerns about the use of the site. That way we could be proactive in directing them to the WikiProject or specific pages that they could most contribute to, as well as by responding to their comments regarding usage of Wikipedia.

6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.

   I have had no major conflicts with other editors. As far as I can recall, the most notable occurrence was a small edit of mine that was reverted. No dialogue or conflict was created in response to that event.

7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?

   I attempt to log on to Wikipedia at least once a day if not more, during my normal schedule. I will most certainly be available for two hours per week, if not far more.

8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?

   I would review the text or image that students had produced and if it seemed unoriginal, lacking consistency with previous user contributions, or noticeably specific in its discussion of a topic, I would take the suspect text or image and search for it in various search engines, e-book libraries, and in the U.S. Copyright Office's official record website. I would do the same to check the validity of any website used as a reference.

9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?

   I would first attempt to notify the person who holds claim to the original source of the content. I would then either nominate it for speedy deletion and/or list it on Wikipedia's Copyright Problems page depending on the extent of the copyright infringement and the proof I hold to justify that supposed infringement. If it were only a suspicion, I would tag the contribution for investigation and inform the student who published it of the suspected infringement on their talk page and hopefully engage in a dialogue to find out if it was or was not taken without attribution, and then proceed to explain to them Wikipedia's policy regarding copyright violation.

10. In your _own_ words describe what copyright violation is.

    Copyright violation is when somebody claims (either overtly or simply by means of posting it someplace that requires original content) that certain intellectual property (be it a body of text, a picture, or other original work) that is protected by the regulations pertaining to copyrights, is their own original work and in doing so violates the copyright holder's rights to his or her intellectual property without their permission. It could also occur when displaying intellectual property which is specifically protected by a 'creative commons' or other form of intellectual property license that allows for sharing of the text or images provided that attribution is given, without providing the required attribution.

11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

    Nothing else that is relevant.

Alec250 (talk) 20:22, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Endorsements

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

• Apparent ability to to follow instuctions: yes. Edit history: yes. That's an endorse from me. Might want to get more practise adding wikilinks into content though. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:53, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
• Support Good editing history, reasonable application --Akifumii^Talk 18:05, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Odd e-mail

I just received an e-mail that said that @Xaosflux: removed me from the user group "eponline", yet I was never a member of that group. Has anyone else gotten something like this, as I would be curious to see what was behind this, as it obviously isn't spam. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:15, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

this log says " changed group membership for User:Kevin Rutherford from course online volunteer to (none) (housekeeping, account is not in use and alt account for an admin that can re-add if needed)"; Stuartyeates (talk) 02:22, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

That log was right, it looks like you added your alt account (which likely has the same email address) to that for a test a long time ago. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:39, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that one, as I didn't even think of my alternate account! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 21:13, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Karen George joins Wiki Education Foundation board

Just an FYI. See the press release for more information. Wecome, Karen! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:39, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

I am glad to see someone with business experience recruited to the board. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:08, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Bibaishya2012

Bishalbaishya2012 (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I want to spread digitization of knowledge and importshalance of e-encyclopedia

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   Army Public School Narangi

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   Student in 12 (10+2) in CBSE India Board

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   Challenging but interesting

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   YOUR ANSWER (OPTIONAL)

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Bishal Baishya 08:46, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Based on this editors' edit history, I have misgivings in relation to their understanding of how wikipedia works. Stuartyeates (talk) 10:00, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

@Bibaishya2012: Do you have an editing history that we don't know about, as I would like to see more of a history before I support. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:47, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: HullIntegrity (talk)

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Name C. Jason Smith Institution LaGuardia Community College--CUNY Course title and description I will be teaching four courses over the 2014-2015 academic year where my students will be writing original articles or expanding existing stubs in the area of Children's Literature. The courses are ENG 102: Writing Through Literature (2 sections), ENG 103: The Research Paper, and ENG 280: Children's Literature. Each semester the students in different sections will be working together online as a community. Assignment plan In each course the "research project" (40% of final grade) will be to compose an original article, or significantly expand an existing article, on a book within the scope of the Children's Literature and Young Adult Literature Project list. We will begin working with the Caldecott Medal list and the Newberry Medal list and then expand out into significant authors and illustrators on both lists. Number of students Approximately 100 students over the academic year (25 per class). Start and end dates 5 September 2014 to 20 December 2014; 5 March 2015 to 15 June 2015. @OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --HullIntegrity (talk) 12:27, 23 June 2014 (UTC) Return to the Course pages module. Support. Here we have a senior academic with a very good Wiki editing record. He presents a well-designed class project that is tightly focused on important articles (about major prize-winning books for children) --a topic he knows well and wants to improve. Rjensen (talk) 13:33, 23 June 2014 (UTC)  Done Good wiki-history, already has support of a course coordinator above. — xaosflux Talk 18:38, 23 June 2014 (UTC) Should your instruction method require bulk account creation, please drop a note at WP:PERM. — xaosflux Talk 18:41, 23 June 2014 (UTC) Will do. Thanks! HullIntegrity (talk) 19:23, 23 June 2014 (UTC) {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}}

Request for course instructor right: KatieBU (talk)

Name

Kathleen McQuiston

Institution

Bucknell University

Course title and description

Too Much Information: The Effects of Digital Information Technologies on Our Lives

This undergraduate class examines the benefits and costs of the ubiquitous access to information via digital technologies in all aspects of our lives from an interdisciplinary perspective. We analyze our information ecosystem and how digital information technologies impact it. We will also discover how new technologies are often disruptive, particularly in our social, educational, economic and legal Major topics covered will include: definitions of knowledge and information; the law and economics of copyright, especially in regard to digital properties; the effects that filtering, particularly Google on information. We will also study Wikipedia as a major topic in the course and to include a scaffolded set of assignments in which students participate in real time in the collaborative community of Wikipedia.

Assignment plan

Students will edit existing Wikipedia pages as well as create new Wikipedia entries and engage in the discussion pages for both sets of entries. Students will reflect on their interactions with the Wikipedia community and on writing for audience and purpose. They will also critically evaluate the sources they use to meet Wikipedia’s sourcing policies.

Learning Outcomes for the Assignments:

Students will participate in the process of collaborative knowledge creation, becoming the creators of information on a resource for which they are used to being the consumer.

Students will gain a deeper understanding of the strengths and weakness of Wikipedia as a universal encyclopedia.

Students will understand, through active learning, how community standards work in maintaining Wikipedia as a reliable public resource.

Number of students

10-12

Start and end dates

8/27/2014 - 12/23/2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --KatieBU (talk) 16:49, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

KatieBU, in light of that feedback, please let me suggest that you read WP:INSTRUCTORS, and that you make it a priority to work with your students to make sure that they resolve any conflicts that they get into with editors here. In the past, editors who have become unhappy with student projects have contacted administrators at the instructor's university. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:17, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

My comment refers to what is now the first posting in the section just below, where it has been moved. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:49, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion about the appropriate role of RA's, broken off from the previous section

This proposal involves using the Wikipedia editing experience as a laboratory experiment, but the goal does not include an improvement of the quality of Wikipedia articles. There is no discussion regarding the kind of training the students will receive on how to edit Wikipedia. An analogy is taking student drivers from the first week of the course in driver's education, and sending them on a trip through town. Their mission is not to go to some destination, but rather to record how the local police and other drivers honk and yell and react to the inexperienced newbie. This proposal uses Wikipedia editors as test subjects without their permission, a procedure that is unlikely to pass the campus review board at Bucknell University. My reaction is negative on this proposal.Rjensen (talk) 10:13, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

@Rjensen: - I see absolutely nothing in her listed assignment that suggests it intends to use Wikipedia editors as test subjects of any sort or that suggests that improving Wikipedia is not one of their goals (particularly given that critical evaluation of how to meet our sourcing policies is an explicitly listed project.) Moreover, there's absolutely nothing in her application that suggests she's planning anything that would need IRB approval. Parts of her proposal are vaguer than is absolutely ideal, which is true of almost every new instructor who wanders over here. WP:AGF is rather applicable here. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:06, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

@Kevin Gorman: Well I can see the risks--nasty edit wars, angry editors. We are told that "Students will edit existing Wikipedia pages as well as create new Wikipedia entries and engage in the discussion pages for both sets of entries. Students will reflect on their interactions with the Wikipedia community" and "Students will understand, through active learning, how community standards work in maintaining Wikipedia." That says to me that they will be graded on their interaction with other editors on talk pages-- that is they are using editors as a tool to get a grade for themselves. There is no hint whatever of training in use of Wikipedia which is a major theme of all successful proposals here. There is no statement that they will be graded on the quality of their contribution to Wikipedia. This page has carried many accounts of painful interactions between editors and students -- those interactions caused real anger to our editors: I suggest that causing real anger in a Wiki editors is a clearcut negative impact. we know the risk is real because we have talked about it here at length. This proposal lacks controls that indicate any awareness of the problem. Tryptofish has very good suggestions here. Anytime students are graded on their interaction with outsiders (our editors) that have a likelihood of causing anger and anguish the IRB criteria of "risk to subject" are met. [IRB criterion = "Risks to subjects are reasonable in relation to: anticipated benefits, if any, to subjects"...what are the anticipated benefits to the editors? the proposal does not say] The IRB allows students to passively observe and report on what goes on in Wikipedia, BUT when the students are required to themselves enter the fray on talk pages the line is crossed, in my opinion. There is a) a real risk (this page has documented that and we all know how nasty edit wars can be) and b) the "anticipated benefits" to the subjects (Wiki editors) is not indicated. (the proposal only talks about the benefits to the students.) ps for typical IRB rules see "(IRB) Approval - Research - University of Kentucky" Rjensen (talk) 06:40, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I have a couple questions: Wouldn't it make sense to have students assigned to our most active WikiProjects (an intern-like process) to learn while providing utility to those projects? Do we have an online or campus ambassador to oversee the students? If properly harnessed I think this project could be useful. If Professor McQuiston simply wants her students to enter the fracas then I would agree that their presence would be unwelcome. Chris Troutman (talk) 06:45, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Rj - I don't need a pointer to a generic set of IRB review rules unless they happen to apply specifically to the university that this instructor is coming from. I have gotten more than half a dozen courses that involve similar Wikipedia-based assignments approved by UC Berkeley's faculty senate commite on courses of instruction, and have throughly read and consulted with people about UCB's requirements that trigger an IRB review. If this project were conducted at Berkeley, it would be categorically exempted from going through any IRB process unless the results of the project was intended to create a launching ground for future research rather than simply to educate students in research methods, a category that includes teaching students including how to interact with outside communities. And even if it *were* subject to an IRB, it would likely pass one (but it 99.999% of the time wuld not be.) Given this, unless you have specific information that Bucknell's policies explicitly cover this assignment, you should not be suggesting that the instructor's assignment has failed to seek necessary IRB approval that would not be granted, because that amounts to a direct attack on the professional integrity of the instructor, and is covered by WP:NPA. It's totally possible that Bucknell has a different IRB policy than UCB's, but unless you can explicitly point to Bucknell's policy and raise a concrete, constructive concern...

As a regional ambassador, you should be helping instructors interested in participating in the program by doing things like providing useful guidance to them about how to participate in the program in a way that is beneficial for both them, their students, and Wikipedia. If you would rather attack the integrity of people interested in the program on very flimsy grounds, I think it may be time for you to step down from your position as RA, as well as to stop launching such attacks. The fact that the instructor here explicitly listed compliance with Wikipedia policy as a goal is a very good sign that she could benefit from guidance from people like us to try to improve the outcome of her assignment, rather than serious attacks on her professional integrity. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:50, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Our role here is to recommend yes or no on proposals, and if I consider one to be inadequate I will say so. The details of the Wikipedia assignment in this Bucknell proposal are very thin and are inadequate in my opinion. There seem to be no experienced Wikipedians involved in it. As for the IRB requirements at Bucknell, yes I have read them (online) and I think they apply because I think this project explicitly uses Wikipedia editors and their behavior as a research project and students will be required to interact with them on talk pages. The key issue from Bucknell's IRB rules is whether student editing poses the risk of edit wars on Wikipedia and/or is likely to upset editors compared to the benefit the Wiki editors (not just the students) will get from the project. We know from this page in 2013 there were numerous examples of student projects that did indeed upset senior Wiki editors and disrupted and degraded Wikipedia. That is a real risk and one reason we are here. The proposal on the table seems to be unaware of any risk to Wikipedia & to its editors of sending untrained students to edit and become active on talk pages. The proposal does not even hint at what topics the students will be working on--that's a flaw. Will they be working on controversial topics? Will they be monitored? Wikipedia editors are the subjects of the research proposal here. Bucknell says all research that includes "minimal risk to subjects" has to be submitted to the chairman of the Bucknell IRB Board. [Bucknell says: "minimal risk" means that the probability and magnitude of discomfort are not greater than those ordinarily encountered in daily life. Editors who discussed actual classes on this page were, I believe, VERY upset with some class projects. Did those 2013 class projects meet the worse-than-daily life standard? I would say yes.] If any IRB chairman wants to know what can go seriously wrong in real life, well look at the archives of this page. In my opinion it is our duty to evaluate proposals to see whether the instructor is aware and is taking precautions. In this case I see inadequate awareness and inadequate precautions. Rjensen (talk) 06:05, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Our role is not only to recommend yes or no on a proposal, it's often to act as a first point of contact for instructors who are often completely unfamiliar with what Wikipedia expects from such assignments, and to guide them in the right direction. If you believe that it's more appropriate to accuse a new instructor of serious professional misconduct than to guide them towards making sure their assignments fit in the model that we prefer and that we've found produces better results than alternate models, I am not at all sure you belong in your current role (or commenting on applications on this page in general.) I see nothing in Kathleen's proposal suggesting that she actually intends to conduct any experiment of the nature covered by IRB's on Wikipedia at all. Moreover, I would suggest you reread Bucknell's IRB policy, particularly the types of projects that are categorically exempted from IRB review. Unless Bucknell handles IRB review very differently than Berkeley does (and our policies are relatively similarly written,) than even if Kathleen's proposal aimed to conduct research on Wikipedia it is exempt from IRB review by meeting all of Bucknell's part A exemption criteria and meeting (1) of the part B exemption criteria. It could be that Bucknell *does* interpret those criteria significantly differently than Berkeley does, and would require an IRB review of this - but I doubt it. More importantly, neither you nor myself are in a position to evaluate nuanced details of internal Bucknell policies. It could have been appropriate to suggest to Kathleen that she may want to investigate whether or not her proposed assignment needed IRB approval - but it's absolutely inappropriate to pretty directly suggest that a university instructor is commiting a serious breach of her duties without far more evidence than vaguely worded instructional design - particularly when such an allegation could have significant real-world consequences. Despite the fact that your words were couched in polite verbiage, I view accusing an editor of something quite serious with potential real life implications on very little basis as a significant, actionable breach of NPA, and will be bringing it to ANI if you do something like that again.

I totally understand expressing disagreement with proposals, and trying to guide instructors in the right direction before approving or disapproving of their plan. However, accusing someone of significant misconduct that would carry severe penalties with it if your accusation was true based on a flimsy interpretation of their words... is not at all appropriate. Kevin Gorman (talk) 07:03, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

no one here likes this proposal; the instructor has no Wikipedia editing experience and does not understand the way Wikipedia editors interact and how they treat newbies. I have not accused her of any professional misconduct whatsoever: there has been no "conduct" on her part and nothing so far has actually happened. Rather I see a poorly thought out research design that seems to require her students to treat Wiki editors as research subjects, which in my opinion opens up the IRB system. Our job here is to evaluate proposals and when I see a serious problem I will speak up regardless of Kevins's personal advice to me to shut up and go away. My advice to Kevin is ....well let's avoid an edit war here! Rjensen (talk) 14:58, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Don't try to speak for everyone else at this board Rjensen, and don't try to guess about someone's familiarity with Wikipedia unless they've explicitly said they have experience or explicitly said they are a complete newbie. And, yes, the way you phrased your initial post is something that would be sufficient to start an investigation (and a pause of a person's other research) at Berkeley and many other schools, which is a pretty serious thing. There's nothing in her (admittedly rather vague) assignment design that suggests she intends to treat Wikipedia editors as research subjects, and as pointed out above, it's quite likely that Bucknell treats their IRB criteria in the same way Berkeley does and categorically exempts stuff like this from IRB review. Your role here is not only to evaluate proposals; it's to evaluate proposals and make suggestions on how to improve them. No new instructor is going to understand what our ideal version of a Wikipedia-based assignment is off the bat. If you're unwilling to do that, I don't think you should continue to attempt to act as a regional ambassador; if you agree, let me know, and I'd be more than happy to remove the relevant userrights. And I'm being quite serious in saying that given the potential repercussions, I view your initial comment as an inappropriate abrogation of WP:AGF and WP:NPA, and will be starting an ANI section asking for outside review of your conduct if you do the same thing again. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:13, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello all! I work with KatieBU at Bucknell, and I've been helping her design her course wikipedia assignment. Let me apologize for the somewhat vague state of the proposal here, which is mostly my fault. We're still early on in the process of designing the course assignment, and I wanted KatieBU to apply for the instructor right (since she will be one of the instructors of record for the course) early so we could seek help and guidance from the Wikipedia community, and especially the education project ambassadors, as we designed the assignment. Let me try to address the concerns here, and hopefully we can work together to draft a revised proposal that will make sure our course will benefit both Wikipedia and our students. First, we certainly do intend for students to improve the project. Our choice of topics was left a bit vague because our course topic treads on some very well covered ground in Wikipedia, and we were still thinking about the best way to involve students in the process and give them opportunities to make meaningful contributions to the process. I very much like @Chris troutman:'s suggestion that students might be involved as "interns" within active wikiprojects (or perhaps a subset of active wikiprojects, selected by faculty as relevant to the course topics), which is in line with some of my own thinking on the topic. Second, when my colleague says that students will, "Students will reflect on their interactions with the Wikipedia community and on writing for audience and purpose," she certainly does not mean that students will be encouraged to intentionally provoke editors, breach wikipedia's processes, or otherwise disrupt wikipedia as an experiment. This would be a clear violation of Wikipedia policy, as I am well aware. Rather, she means that students will be asked to reflect on their experience editing and learn from Wikipedians, who have expertise on managing our contemporary information environment that we would like the students to gain. We want them to think about what Wikipedia's policies mean and why they work, and to learn how being a good Wikipedian teaches us something about how to write for a global audience and think critically about issues of sourcing, notability, etc. Finally, we certainly do intend to provide the students with training on Wikipedia best practices. We've been drawing from this assignment: Education Program:Bucknell_University/History_of_Ecology_(Spring_2014), also run by a Bucknell faculty member, as a model. Any suggestions for further student training would be richly appreciated. I hope this mostly covers the concerns that have been raised. Again, I apologize for not more clearly communicating this in the initial proposal, and hope we can work together to build a course of value to students and the project alike. afamiglietti (talk) 00:17, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks very much for saying that, and for your help! I'm happy to hear it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:49, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi @Afamiglietti: - I'd be quite happy to work with you and Katie in further developing your assignment design. I've been working closely with classes at Berkeley (where I am currently Wikipedian-in-Residence) and elsewhere for a number of years, and have gotten at least decently good at helping new instructors navigate around some of the common potholes that Wikipedia based assignments run in to. When working with remote instructors I often find a combination of email and google docs to work better than direct on-wiki collaboration in helping design a syllabus - feel free to drop me an email using the Special:EmailUser function. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:13, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Vickypapageorgiou (talk)

Name

Vicky Papageorgiou

Institution

ATHENS METROPOLITAN COLLEGE

Course title and description

SPEECH AND LANGUAGE THERAPY - ENGLISH TERMINOLOGY - 3RD YEAR STUDENTS, MY STUDENTS HAVE A VERY GOOD GRASP OF ENGLISH AND SINCE WE STARTED WORKING ON SLT TERMINOLOGY, WE THOUGHT THAT WE COULD GO ONE STEP FURTHER AND WORK ON TRANSLATING THESE TERMS FOR THE GREEK WIKIPEDIA. WE HAVE ALREADY WORKED ON TRANSLATING FROM ENGLISH INTO GREEK A SUFFICIENT NUMBER OF PAGES AND WE NOW NEED TO POST THIS MATERIAL, FIND HELP FROM EXPERIENCED EDITORS AND CONTINUE FROM THERE.

Assignment plan

My students have started translating pages related to SPEECH AND LANGUAGE THERAPY TOPICS FROM ENGLISH INTO GREEK.

Number of students

10 students

Start and end dates

MARCH 2014 - DECEMBER 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Vickypapageorgiou (talk) 09:38, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Please note, this is the English Wikipedia, are you wishing to run this course on the English Wikipedia, or perform tasks on the Greek Wikipedia? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:23, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

• If your students will be translating articles from English to Greek, then you probably don't need any user rights here. Also, um, please turn your caps lock button off. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:15, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Rights vs. no rights

Decided not to jump into the back-and-forth above, but my question stems from KatieBU's proposal and its subsequent discussion. It's a question that might best be answered by pointing to an appropriate page on the subject:

Since it's not likely a professor is going to change their lesson plan just because they don't get course instructor rights, what is the rationale for restricting access based on type of proposal? What kinds of things do instructor rights allow that would be destructive in the wrong hands? Or is the concern that if someone's not going to be responsible, the education program wouldn't want them to be seen as having some "official" status? --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  15:35, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Course Instructors gain the following additional privileges (from Special:ListGroupRights):

   Add or remove yourself as instructor from courses (ep-beinstructor)
   Disassociate articles from students (ep-remarticle)
   Manage Education Program courses (ep-course)
   Manage Education Program institutions (ep-org)
   Remove students from courses (ep-remstudent)
   See Education Program enrollment tokens (ep-token)

So, a course instructor could impact any of those areas; possibly disrupting other peoples courses in the process. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:21, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

I think that Rhododendrites' question is a good one. Student projects will go ahead, if that's what the instructor wants to do, with or without our "approval". It's just that, without, the instructor does not get the tools listed by Xaosflux. Commenting on the discussion in the section above, my own feelings are intermediate between those of Kevin Gorman and of Rjensen, and a good deal milder than either. I share Kevin's concerns about, basically, WP:BITE, and also Rjensen's concerns about potential headaches for established editors. My preference would be to give instructors who post here pointers and advice, as I attempted to do, rather than to get into arguments, but I do think that the discussion above has accomplished two things that may perhaps turn out to be useful: to give the instructor a foretaste of what could await students when they start to interact with other editors (whether we, here, agree with those editors or not), and to establish a caution that can be linked to if, later on, there needs to be some dispute resolution. Instructors need to understand what they are getting their students into. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:00, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

• My view is probably pretty strong. I see off-wiki coordination of editing crossing into WP:MEATPUPPETRY very easily (typically as soon as their first article is up for discussion anywhere and some bright spark suggests to their friend they weigh in). As soon as that happens all participants risk being blocked on mass. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:41, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia should always seek to chase off anyone that's WP:NOTHERE, instructors and students included. Participation with WEF has to be a matter of contribution to the wiki, not just an assignment for students to complete. Anyone that comes to this noticeboard should know that. The educators that send their students here without our cooperation likely don't want cooperation, anyway. I find most educators want cooperation and will work alongside our effort if only we make efforts to explain and compromise. Chris Troutman (talk) 03:33, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

At the same time, the ones who grant the rights generally are pretty good in deciding who and who should not be getting them. As mentioned in the page's edit notice, we do not allow anyone who does not have an edit history here the rights (which allows for removing people who are not professors immediately, as well as to stop people who are trying to impersonate anyone. We also search to make sure that these people actually do indeed exist (we have had at least one sock try to get the rights here before), and we also have no problem removing them should we realize that we have either granted the rights in error or have to rectify an issue that has popped up where they need to be immediately stopped. People are allowed to discuss editing offline, as Wikipedians do it all the time. What crosses the line is when they attempt to stack a discussion and it becomes blatantly obvious when a ton of new users show up to a discussion. What we should always do is to assume good faith, even if it means that we might accidentally cause a problem here or there. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:53, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

• I think that the package of rights given to instructors has relatively little ability to cause serious harm to the projects. When talking to an instructor, I will encourage them as hard as I can to adapt their lesson plan to something that I think will work well on Wikipedia. If I can't get them to adapt their lesson plan and I think their current lesson plan is likely to lead to serious issues, I will seriously encourage them to not pursue such an assignment. One of those steps usually works, but in the rare event that there's an instructor deadset on using a poorly designed Wikipedia-based assignment and they don't change their minds after I've tried steps #1 and #2 to the best of my ability, as long as I am confident they are the instructor they say they are, I'll normally grant them courseinstructor userrights regardless of any misgivings I have about their assignment. It's a lot easier to track or stop a class that has a centralized course page than one that doesn't - I've dealt with poorly run courses that had course pages before, and poorly run courses that didn't. It's FAR easier to mitigate the damage from poorly run courses that have course pages than those that don't. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:21, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Has there ever been discussion of using something like a training prerequisite? E.g. If I want instructor rights, I go through a training program (something that takes maybe 30-60 minutes, maybe) and then write a synopsis of how I plan to incorporate WP into my classes. At that point, granting rights becomes less subjective -- just a matter of ensuring training was completed and that the proposal makes sense. Going through the training would serve at least four functions: (1) Ensuring a base level of competency on what Wikipedia's all about, (2) providing guidance to make the instructor think about their proposal and its implications before actually writing it, (3) demonstrate commitment to the success of the assignment by willingness to jump through the hoop, (4) encouraging, I think, the participation of instructors who might be intimidated by the very idea of editing this wikipedia page and posting a proposal. Maybe there could be a provision to get around the training requirement for people with a certain edit count, say. Just an idea. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  00:00, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
    • That's a very good idea. We already have the training modules. User:Sage (Wiki Ed), perhaps you could work on something where someone who has gotten to the end of a module could "click here", and that would put them in a category of users who have completed that training. Also, the editing process of applying for rights on this page could have something to indicate that the user is or is not in the appropriate user category. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:10, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Kevin Gorman, agree--the rights are what are necessary for the ed program, but can not disrupt the encyclopedia at large. Worse case scenario would be disrupting other instructors courses/students. This is not a very frequent issue, and we assume good faith in volunteers so there has not been a technical requirement to 'lock' instructors to specific courses/institutions at the technical level. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:39, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
  • I also agree. Regular editors have access WP:HUGGLE and WP:TWINKLE with far less oversight or approval before using yet those tools are way more powerful and could do far greater damage than the rights given to course instructors. Otherwise it seems like a clear-cut violation of WP:AGF. Wikipedia is not going to blow up if a rouge instructor disassociates an article from student or see the enrollment token. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:40, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
  • We have tried creating the specific barriers for entry in the past (e.g., 'you must complete the instructor training before getting the user right'), but it doesn't work very well in practice. Not only does it lead to such a back-and-forth that instructors end up ignoring advice altogether, but there are so many exceptions: people who have already done this for several years but not since we had the extension; instructors who are Wikipedia editors already or who have been an Ambassador before teaching it in their own class; instructors who attend an in-person workshop and training with an Ambassador; etc.. I completely believe that it's best to use this process as a way for someone to touch base with the interested instructor and have a conversation about any of the flags you see in the assignment design. Ultimately, I think it's best for a class to have a course page than not, which means they need the user right. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:02, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Improving instructor onboarding workflow

Making the onboarding process for new instructors smoother is definitely on my todo list. Part of that will involve a more sophisticated, probably off-wiki, course page wizard that gives instructors more flexibility and better step-by-step guidance for designing an effective assignment, and part of that will be improving the rights request process.

The current setup is that instructors who have made contact with the US/Canada education program before they begin request rights after they have gone through (nearly all of) Wikipedia:Training/For educators. The rights request step comes in the final "course pages" module. However, the path for them to get back to the final pages of the training and then leave feedback (and confirm that they did complete the training) doesn't work very well. Other instructors who either find their way here on their own, or are already running assignments and get pointed to Wikipedia:School and university projects by other editors, use the button near the top of that page to request instructor rights without going through the training. The idea there is to make it easy to establish contact with courses that might otherwise be under the radar. (Even if it's a bad assignment, we're going to be better off with a bad assignment we can track with a course page.) However, changing that page to more explicitly and prominently encourage instructors to go through the training first might be a good idea.

In terms of fixing the training/course-page-creation/instructor-rights workflow, my current idea is to have instructors first complete the training, and then set up a course page using a revised wizard (probably in Education Program talk: space, where they can get started without rights), and then request user rights. That way, we can see a more fully-developed version of their assignment plans and we can give better advice on refining it our changing problematic aspects of it, and an instructor can go straight through from start to finish without needing to wait on a reply to their rights request. Then after they are granted rights, they can just transclude the course page they already built onto a real course page.

Adding quizzes and verification of completion to the training is also something that's part of my tentative plans, although the training for students is the main place where those things will have an impact, I think.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:33, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Sage, I have a question for you, or for anyone else who monitors this board for that matter. For a long time, for years in fact, my own belief has been that the better integrated into the community an instructor/professor is, the better the experience – for the instructor, the students, and the community at large. Do you, or the WEF, have plans to further integration beyond on-line training modules? My sense is that training happens, as it does for all editors, by jumping in and learning the ropes. We have a few significant differences on WP from regular academic writing: the inability to use original research, the necessity to simply stick to already written secondary sources, the use of language (encyclopedic vs academic), and the overwhelming need to be willing to share and collaborate with anyone who comes along and edits a page. One idea might be reach out to the community and determine whether editors exist who might be willing to lend a hand to new instructors/professors. Not WMF/WEF paid ambassadors or Wikipedian in residence but actual editors who work in the trenches. I'd like to see a strong integration between the WEF courses and the community at large and yet my sense is that sort of integration is still somewhat lacking. Victoria (tk) 20:59, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Like editor-TA's? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:16, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

That's not at all what I'd call it, and shows the gap between the Education program and volunteer editors. In the classroom the person standing in front of the room is the subject expert and delivers content to the people sitting in the seats. Here, the person who writes quality content, has done for years, is the expert - and that's expertise that in my mind should be drawn on as an integration tool. Personally, I do both, but without the helping hands who taught me to edit, wouldn't have the WP knowledge I have. Just because I might have subject knowledge, I'd not ever perceive those editors as TAs. Somehow I've managed to bring between one and two thousand students through this place without causing any ripples, and I've always believed I owe learning the ropes to the editors who taught me, and still do, how to navigate the ropes. Integration is a discussion I had, somewhat tangentially, with Mike Christie about six months ago. Victoria (tk) 23:09, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Victoria: My team at Wiki Education Foundation definitely shares the view that the more that instructors become part of the community, the better. In broad strokes, I think improving the technical tools for interacting on-wiki will help with that somewhat (for example, making it easier to leave on-wiki comments in response to student edits). In the non-technical realm, Jami has been doing a lot of thinking on it and talking with many Ambassadors and professors, and I think she's starting to synthesize ideas for re-organizing the Ambassador roles so that instructors can more often get the kind of mentorship that will improve their own understanding of the ins and outs of editing their particular subject area.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:26, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for responding, Sage. I think what, in my view, seems to be missing is a way forward in terms of treating the volunteer editing community as stakeholders in addition to the WEF community. Somehow the two should become seamless otherwise ongoing friction might continue. I agree with your assertion in terms of making it easier to leave on-wiki comments, but again have to wonder why (well, I don't, I know the answer to this question from my students) students are reluctant to engage on talk pages. Making it technically easier is a good start, but also to a degree creates a false construct and a sense of separation. And, as far as thinking about how to re-organize the Ambassador roles, that must be happening outside of en.wp without community involvement because I've not been aware of Ambassadors being solicited for opinions on their talk pages (a few Ambassadors are on my watchlist, but I've only been aware they were ambassadors by clicking on their contribs where it's posted). If an WEF member were to go directly to an Ambassador's talkpage and have an conversation there, then others would see it, and perhaps become interested. Or, have you considered reaching out to community members to ask for volunteers to test drive the modules? People in the trenches might have ideas that you or others at the WEF hadn't thought of. For instance, one small suggestion I'd make is to emphasize that citation templates aren't necessary and to allow an instructor/professor to have the students use the preferred referencing style (MLA/APA/etc) for that discipline. I think using talkpages would be a good way to close the gap - and I do think there is a gap. I see very few people posting here, the number of watchers to this page is fairly low, yet, this is the place where imo conversations either are taking place, or should be taking place. Anyway, don't take this as criticism. It's an issue I've spent a lot of time thinking about over the past five years and I decided to take a moment to throw out some suggestions and may have gone way off track. Best, Victoria (tk) 15:17, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Your observation that students are reluctant to make use of talk pages caught my attention, and is a very interesting observation. It rings true to me. I've also noticed that, when students do comment on talk, it often sounds very artificial, typically in the form of students who appear to have been told to comment in talk posting compliments to one another on talk. For example, one student has worked on a page, and other students show up to say positive things about that student's work. Obviously, they are doing that out of the belief that grades depend on positive feedback, so they are helping each other out. In reality, talk pages aren't that difficult to use, and we have (non-student) editors learning how all the time. It's a matter of getting a little experience with it, and becoming "acculturated". I think that off-Wiki classroom experiences set one group of expectations in place, and Wikipedia has different expectations. We need to find better ways to "acculturate" students into using Wikipedia talk pages (or Flow) as part of learning about editing. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:23, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

This obviously won't come close to fixing the problem as a whole, but one trivial way to encourage students to use talk pages more than they do now would be to stop giving students notifications every time their course's talk page is edited. Currently, every single edit to a course talk page produces a notification for every student in the class. 99.9% of the time these edits are only relevant to the instructors/ambassadors and at most a couple of students in the class. Students quickly notice this, and then get in the habit of ignoring the red notification box - which means they miss being pinged to talk pages where their presence is directly requested. From my experience it'd be way preferable to only have course talk page edits produce notifications for instructors and ambassadors - it would up the chance of students noticing things like pings. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:42, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Kevin Gorman: that's an interesting observation. Which class did you encounter this in? In most courses, the talk pages don't get heavy traffic... certainly not enough to cause notification fatigue. And a big part of the reasoning for sending Notifications to all the students is so that an editor who noticed course-wide problems could get the attention of the whole class without posting to every individual talk page. But I'm curious how often courses have the problem you describe, where the course talk page has too many irrelevant comments that students shouldn't be notified about.

One related thing that may help improve talk page use — that is part of the intention, at least — is the patch to add Notifications for each student whenever the article or talk page of their assigned article is edited. That way, they have a more discoverable indication that someone might have either posted about their work on the talk page, or made an edit that they should respond to on talk. It's not deployed yet, because we wanted to make sure this particular feature won't cause site performance issues, but I think it'll be in place for the term starting in August/September.

For all these kinds of Notifications, I'm curious to find out whether students actually find them helpful or not. If anyone has anecdotes from classes they worked with, please share. I'll see if I can learn more from post-term instructor feedback. (Jami, have you heard anything from professors or Campus Ambassadors about how useful/annoying the course-specific Notifications are?)

@Sage (Wiki Ed): I haven't heard much about that, though it has been a problem for me personally. I assumed that was because I log on to so many classes, though. I can see how that would be a similar problem for Kevin, but it's interesting to hear that is happening for the students, too. It would be great if, technically, we could actually create a feature that works in the sense of "send a message to all students," which only those with user rights could utilize. I'm sure something like this is in the works with Editor Campaigns. Anyway, to answer your question more explicitly: no, I haven't heard much feedback about this, but I also haven't heard that the talk page posts/notifications were super useful this term. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:59, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Tryptofish: as I understand it, general Wikipedia usability research (not particular to the education program) has found that Talk pages have a significantly higher learning curve than article editing. Yes, many editors eventually learn to use Talk pages, but once you know how, it's easy to underestimate just how confusing our Talk pages are to newcomers. The don't follow very many of the conventions that people are used to in other web discussion fora. I'm not saying there's not a specific set of different expectations being created in the off-wiki classroom context, but I wouldn't assume that is the case either.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:54, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I ran in to it in my EJ course last semester. We had maybe three copyright concerns brought up on our course talk page, as well as a couple of other concerns. Even though the course as a whole ended up going fairly smoothly, I saw a lot of students with 10 or 15 notifications backed up, since there was a decent bit of back and forth on our course talk page (that were very rarely relevant to students - and in most cases the ones that were relevant to students were things that I or one of the instructor could have just directed them towards.) Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:32, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

(Replying to Sage's reply to me.) Yes, I understand what you are saying (and I hear it all the time from WMF folk). I shouldn't have implied that things are easy for new non-student editors. But let's please not get distracted from what I was trying to say. I gave an example where students show up on a talk page to compliment another student's work, uncritically, because they collectively see doing that as a way to get better grades. That's something specific to student editors, and not editors in general. Let's put it this way: lots of new editors have a learning curve when it comes to using WP talk pages, but student editors have a set of specific misconceptions (from Wikipedia's perspective) that they pick up in class. I'm suggesting that we would do well to understand better how that happens, and to find better ways to help students understand what Wikipedia needs them to understand. OK? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Tryptofish: You're right, the pattern of you point out — classmates usually focus on positives when giving peer feedback and don't do enough to point out areas for improvement — is specific to student editors. My take on it is not that (in most cases) it's about grades, because those reviews of early drafts aren't generally inputs into the grades (except in terms of whether or not a student did give feedback to their peers as required). The professors I've worked with as an Online Ambassador have been acutely aware of students' hesitance to criticize their classmates' work; I think this has much more to do with not wanting to seem harsh with someone you know in real life than with grade incentives. But I agree, it's something worth working on: if we can find ways of getting student editors to leave more critical (and therefore useful) feedback, I'm all for it.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:59, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, come to think of it, it makes sense that it's often not about grades, but about social expectations. (I've seen some projects that I think were at the high school level where it sounded like it could have been grade-related, though.) And it's a good thing when the instructor recognizes it as a problem. I'm not so much coming at this issue prescriptively, but to point to where we actually need more research. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

@Victoriaearle: You mentioned that you've pushed your students to edit Wikipedia. In what courses? You don't have any edits in the Education Program namespace. I've been a campus ambassador for three semesters. I'm not sure who these "WMF/WEF paid ambassadors" are, but it's my job as a campus ambassador to provide this help to the college professor. And yes, I am one of those "actual editors who work in the trenches." Certainly I agree that the more integrated professors are the better the class will go.

There are always gaps between any group of new editors and the long-term community here. I've found that most students are ambivalent about editing Wikipedia as a class assignment and my appearance in their classrooms provides only a small amount of enthusiasm. I have a perfect 0% retention rate. Believe me, citation templates aren't the problem. They don't discuss stuff on talk pages because they talk to each other on campus or over e-mail. None of the professors I've dealt with had significant history with Wikipedia and they typically refuse to engage with me on wiki, only over e-mail or in person. These people aren't here to be Wikipedians and their experience with our program doesn't win them over. I joined Wikipedia after the 2007 exodus so I don't know what this community used to be like, but I will say that the lack of outreach from the applicable WikiProjects hasn't helped. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:45, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

A 0% retention rate, and students and instructors who are "not here". Ouch! And it rings true to me, so I agree with you. This gets to what I think is almost an existential question about the Educational Program: to what extent is it the failure of established editors to make students and instructors feel "won over", and to what extent is having them here something that is destined to fail (from Wikipedia's perspective)? I don't think the answer to that question is a simple one, just one way or the other. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:54, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm coming late to this discussion with a few thoughts. First, I have never had the problem that Kevin Gorman expressed with students getting too many notifications. I communicated with my students on talk pages and pinged them, so they learned to pay attention to this. It sounds like Kevin had a somewhat unusual situation with the course talk page? Secondly, I agree that students tend to fill their talk page comments with compliments, but I don't think this is just related to getting a grade. This is the way students are taught to give feedback to each other (at least in the US) and the way they are used to receiving it. Whether students are getting too much praise has been the topic of several recent articles. The brief efficiency of WP talk pages seems rude and/or scary to most of my students. I required them to read a review for an article nominated for GA status, so they could see how their reviews of their classmates articles should be done in a positive and constructive manner, but without the fluff. I think this helps, but there will be a learning curve no matter what. Another reason for minimal use of talk pages is that most of my students have edited articles that are just stubs, so there are not many watchers and not much of a response when they have posted. Finally, an anecdote of a highly successful interaction: I had students who wanted to add more science to the page on Human cloning, which was mostly about ethical issues and laws in various countries. Since this topic can be controversial, I told the students to post their proposed changes to the talk page early in the process. They received an immediate response from an experienced editor (Jytdog), that they initially perceived as somewhat threatening. But this quickly became a very helpful and constructive interaction. His support and comments were immensely helpful when an article with new claims about human cloning hit the front page of the newspapers a few weeks before the end of the semester. I'm not sure if there is any way to capitalize on this experience, especially if most students are working on stubs. Biolprof (talk) 22:59, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

The idea of having students view good practices for talk pages is a good one, and one where we ought to think about more ways to make it easy to do it. As for getting editor feedback on little-watched stubs, one strategy might be to post at whatever WikiProject the stubs might relate to. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:20, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Tryptofish: Unless this got fixed and I didn't realize it, Jytdog will not have gotten a ping when you linked their username. Mentions only work for edits that also add a signature. (This is one of the things that makes it complicated to accurately explain how to use Mentions to newcomers.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:03, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi, ping received! not sure exactly what the topic here is. I will say that I found Biolprof's students very very well prepared to actually interact with the WP community and that I was grateful for that. Most times when I interact with students they seem surprised and even kind of offended... as if I sat down at their computer and changed an essay they were writing. I don't know if their instructors are giving them an active impression that they will be somehow "walled off" from the "real wikipedia" or if they just carry assumptions that WP assignments are like other schoolwork and so they don't hear warnings or instruction that when they edit, they enter the actual WP community. Jytdog (talk) 17:41, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

True. Student editors (and indeed many new editors, including me the first day that I edited) can be surprised by edits by other editors (at least once they move out of sandboxes and into the mainspace). I think it would be useful for the student training materials to draw their attention to the fact that they may encounter this, and hopefully should not be taken aback. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:33, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Jytdog, my students were, in fact, quite surprised and flustered by your first comments to them, even though you had a very positive tone. I think it is just so novel that no matter what I tell them they will be surprised. I encourage my students to get out of the sandbox sooner rather than later, so they aren't hit with lots of edits and comments from experienced editors at the end. Biolprof (talk) 15:00, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Request for Course Instructor rights Michaplot

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Name Michael Plotkin Institution Mt. San Jacinto College Course title and description I teach a non-majors general biology course, called Topics in Biology (BIOL-115). This is a one semester survey of biology with emphasis on currently controversial or notable developments in biology. I teach the class both online and face to face, and in both versions, I emphasize information literacy along with science. Assignment plan I currently use the Endosymbiotic Theory page as a case study in the following manner: I have students read the page, and write a response addressing how verifiable and reliable they think the information is. Students generally respond negatively as they have many misconceptions about WP and their professors have nearly unanimously instructed them to mistrust WP. Student frequently claim that the information in WP is untrustworthy because anyone can say whatever they want, even if it is wrong. I then have the students find what they think is clearly a better source of information on this topic. We look at the materials proposed as better and compare them to the WP article, which, upon careful analysis, is revealed to be clearly better than most other available sources. Students quickly realize that the WP article is supported by an excellent set of sources on the topic and the claims in the article are largely supported by the sources given. My idea for a more active WP based assignment is to have my students find WP articles (or substantial sections of longer articles) on particular biology topics of interest to them. They will then analyze the sources supporting the claims in the article in two ways: 1) they will look at the quality of the sources (reliability, verifiability, representativeness of consensus (not fringe), etc.) and, 2) they will check, whenever possible, whether the source actually supports the claim in the article. In working on this project, the students will research the topic using the standard library and online databases, journals, books, etc. They will attempt to find the sources given in the article as well as any high quality sources not given. The students will then assess the overall quality of the sourcing for the article they chose and add any additional sources they find to the article. They will also submit (to me) proposals for revising the article based on their identification of four potential problems: unverifiable or unreliable sources that should be removed; missing information that should be included in the article; inaccurate information that should be corrected; NPOV, undue weight or skewed emphasis issues. I will review all proposals for article edits before approving students to make the edits. This may be a collaborative project (i.e. students may work in small groups). Students will complete the Wikipedia:STUDENT training before beginning the project. I hope this gives an idea of what I would like to do. Any ideas on how to improve or expand this project will be much appreciated. Number of students Approximately 120 students over the academic year (30 per class/2 sections per semester). Start and end dates 18 August to 12 December, 2014; 20 January to 20 May, 2015 Michaplot (talk) 09:51, 27 June 2014 (UTC) This looks good to me. OhanaUnitedTalk page 19:09, 27 June 2014 (UTC)  Done Established editor, support of a course coordinator. Should your setup require bulk account creation, please drop a note at WP:PERM referencing this discussion, and it can be added. — xaosflux Talk 21:12, 27 June 2014 (UTC) Fantastic. Thanks for the quick response. I now have the rest of the summer to set this up!Michaplot (talk) 21:50, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

please help test new instructor onboarding workflow

Hey folks. Following up on the improving instructor onboarding workflow discussion above, I've now made some changes to the process instructors go through before requesting rights. In particular, I:

• made a revised version of the course page wizard that instructors can now use to create a detailed course page in userspace *before* requesting rights, which includes a "request rights" button at the end;
• revised the course pages module of the training, so that instructors complete the training and then immediately use the new course page wizard to document their assignment plan before requesting rights;
• added a training completion page, which instructors will automatically sign right before they launch the course page wizard; and
• reworked the instructions atop Wikipedia:School and university projects to emphasize the training and the new option to use the course page wizard before requesting rights.

I'd really appreciate some testing and feedback of this new setup. Pretend you are an instructor, and go through all the steps (either starting at WP:EDUCATOR or WP:SUP), and report anything confusing, broken, or otherwise in need of improvement.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:22, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Feedback from Tryptofish

Thanks, Sage! I've gone through it very carefully, and here is my feedback:

1. Opening page: Change "ecstatic" to "delighted" (otherwise it sounds a little over-the-top).

    Done

   Thanks, although per another comment below, I laughed at the suggestion, instead, of "ambivalent". --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

2. Pillar 2: About "Please note: All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy", it might be clearer to change the end of that to "verifiable sourcing in published material".

   reworded.

   That's better than my suggested wording. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

3. NOR: Let me suggest simplifying it, to make it more obvious how Wikipedia is very different than typical academic writing: "Typical academic writing requires students to do original research, have a point of view, and argue it. Wikipedia, however, is a tertiary source of information—based on a collection of secondary sources writing about a primary source. Simply put, Wikipedia is not a place to publish original research, but rather is a summary of what has been written in reliable sources about the original topic or research."

   Nice.  Done

   Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

4. Copyvio: This is so important that I would add a little more after the last sentence, pointing out that students editing under their real names may leave behind a permanent Internet record of the plagiarism, that may come up in future job searches.

   added something like that.

   Good, thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

5. Creating an account: In that first bullet point, I'd like to see more information about whether or not students should use their real names. At a minimum, in addition to the link to the username policy, I'd like to see a link to Wikipedia:On privacy, confidentiality and discretion.

   amended

   Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

6. Visual Editor: On my display (Firefox), the screen shot at the right looks peculiar, with the bottom half of the page title letters truncated.

   Fixed. I'm not sure why I thought it was a good idea to crop it like that initially.

   Yes, better. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

7. Talk pages: I think it would be helpful to have a visual (as at My sandbox), to show where to click to get to a talk page.

   The video includes a segment that highlights the Talk tab. I'd rather not add another visual to the same page.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:22, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

8. Same place: I'd like to tell instructors that they should watch talk pages where students edit, to see if other editors are commenting to the students, and to make sure that the students respond to those editors. I think that's important!

   Added this to the watchlist page, rather than here.

9. Also about talk pages: Instructors or students should put Template:Educational assignment on the talk pages of articles they edit, to make it easier for other editors to help student editors.

   The course page template includes a section with instructions for adding that template (with code for the specific course), but I'm not sure it'll do much good adding it to the training as well. (I'm also not too enthusiastic about that kind of template in the first place, just because it's a tedious and clunky way to keep track of which articles student editors are working on.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:25, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

10. Stubs: I think it can be a problem to recommend DYK, unless there is an ambassador who is going to get very involved, because DYK reviewers may not work on the same clock as the class schedule.

    Per comments by other editors, maybe I'm wrong about that. Not sure. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

    In my experience, DYK is often appropriate for student editors. It's one of the trickier things to include in a course, but if instructors follow the advice for how to do it right (ie, selectively, for the articles that look appropriate for it), and use the detailed printable DYK handout that's available, it's usually worth it.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:13, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

11. New articles: Similarly, it seems to start by saying that AfC is good, but then says it's a problem, and that's confusing. I think students are usually better off not getting involved in AfC.

    I agree. AfC has at times been worthwhile for students, but on balance, we probably shouldn't be pointing students to it any more. I rewrote that page. Could probably use some more improvement.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:13, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

12. Watchlist: I think it is important to also tell instructors that, by watchlisting their students' articles, they can monitor whether other editors revert what their students do, and that instructors should want to find out what the issues are, and advise their students accordingly.

    I added some advice along these lines to the educator and Ambassador versions of this slide: Wikipedia:Training/core/My watchlist 1 educators.

13. WP community: First sentence: "The English...".

     Done

14. BRD: In the "revert" part, I'd link "edit war" to WP:EW, to remind readers what it means.

    I don't think that's necessary. It's not essential to know the exact definition of edit war, and the current text already makes clear that simply reverting is not the right way to go. It's also self-evident in context that an edit war is bad.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:37, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

    OK, then how about pointing out the consequences: "...that's the beginning of an edit war, for which you can get blocked from editing."? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

15. Choosing articles: In the second bullet point, link "WikiProject pages" to Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.

     Done

16. Syllabus Week 9: Instructors should guide their students to make constructive, critical comments to peers, and not just to praise one another.

    Added something along those lines.

17. Syllabus Week 10: I'm uncomfortable about encouraging GA, because of the time it takes. There needs to be some caution about that.

    Few classes now do GA nominations, but there are plenty of times when individual student editors are doing good enough work to make the GA process worthwhile. The caution bit is something we've been taking seriously for the last several terms, but at this point I think we've found a good balance -- encouraging GA nominations on an individual basis when it seems like a good fit and there's enough time left.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:22, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks again! --Tryptofish (talk) 20:08, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Fixed some of these. More to come.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:01, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Phew! Thanks for the excellent feedback, Tryptofish.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:22, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

You are very welcome! I've gone back over each point, and I'm satisfied with everything I had raised. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:25, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Feedback from Victoria

Thanks Sage, I've gotten about two-thirds the way through and will have lots of comments. Generally I think it's very good and excellent work, but like any of our pages, with collaboration and feedback will be better. Unfortunately I've got a bit of a family emergency going on and so won't be able to post comments for about a week, if that's okay. I'll respond then, too, to the questions above that I never got to. Thanks for putting this out - it's awesome to see. And I'll use it this year! Victoria (tk) 21:18, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Sage, I'd hoped to be able to do more, but I'm completely tied up with real life issues at the moments, so giving you a very stripped down version in broad strokes now. If I can, I'll try to get back to it. Also, haven't had time to read any of the other comments, so pls ignore anything that's redundant.

Basically, what seems to be lacking is something along the lines of a "Elements of a Wikipedia page" (with an image of a page!), so as to set up some of the explanations. I.e, I had to stop to think why it's important to explain how to bold, but for a new page, of course, bolding is required in the first line. I think, also, it would be helpful to explain how to create a section (or at least define a section) before mentioning - it's mentioned in the part about creating a section for references - and maybe explain the difference between user space and article space. We use a lot of jargon here, but I think it's probably okay to introduce some early on (i.e, "article space" and "user space") so as not to confuse when/if students/professors find the jargon thrown at them in the midst of trying to get assignment up; but other jargon, such as "templates" might need a parenthetical explanation (something along the lines of "wiki mark-up" maybe), and I'd also suggest add links throughout so as to bring attention to all our MoS pages and such.

As part of an "Elements of a Wikipedia page" I'd suggest mentioning that each page has an associated talk page (I think you mention this, but it should be all in one place); in my own mind, I think of each page as having a front and back - the front with content, the back for discussion. And then explain that user space works essentially the same and that sandbox pages too. Also, it would be useful - if not already done - to mention redlinks. A lot of new editors don't realize that their own user page is red because it doesn't have content - the concept that any page without content is red, is an important concept, imo. Maybe we could design a template for each student user page to greet them with, something along the lines of this "This editor is part of …" such and such class?

Sorry, this is all I've got time for, and hope it's helpful. Oh, one last thing: maybe not for this year, but in the future, perhaps consider presenting as a WP page. Educators generally wade through quite a lot of lengthy documents and reading a WP page is basically a walk in the park. I'd think it might be easier to explain some of the concepts if presented on a type of page being discussed rather than a tutorial with buttons (which personally I dislike), if that makes sense. I realize this is a little (!) confused, so feel free to leave questions for clarification on my page and I'll get to it when I can. Victoria (tk) 15:36, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Feedback from Xaosflux

I just ran through the process with a dummy account Xaosflux_ep to see what it was like fresh. Check out that users contributions to see all the pages created during the process. Some feedback:

1. On Wikipedia:Training/For_educators/Grading_tips Section 2, regarding anything that gets 'turned in', perhaps reference our versioning system and the use of Permanent Link utility that could be used to turn in specific versions.

   I did something along these lines, without going into much detail.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:57, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

2. Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Setting up your course 2, suggest removing the links to the noticeboard there, may make it seem like you should just go there and figure out how to request access.

    Done

3. Continuing, rights requests should wait until the initial userspace course page is drafted

   That's how it is now. Did you find somewhere that prompted the user to make the rights request first? I was trying with this reorganization to make sure instructors could set up a course page draft before the rights request (although I might have overlooked something).--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:56, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

4. Rights requests should be moved to a new, dedicated page. I suggest Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Education; it could be transcluded on the noticeboard if we find that convenient, with edit protection to auto-confirmed.

   Why? Have we had a problem the rights requests happening here? The volume doesn't seem to be overwhelming, so it makes sense to me to keep the rights requests on this page. Also, many instructors make the rights request as one of their first edits, and we've not seen instructor-related problems on this page that would merit semi-protection. (We've had inappropriate ambassador requests from new accounts, but I still have no idea where those users are coming from.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:56, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

   Would keep in line with most of the other perm request pages across wikipedia, wouldn't have to have any protection, and the entire page could be transcluded on the noticeboard, but if it ever gets busy would be seamless to move later. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:33, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

5. Instead of naming all the subpages "course wizard" prompt for a course name and name them after that

   I had gone this route initially with an inputbox (like here), but removing that step made it possible to use the guided tour to automatically post the course wizard template... making it a bit simpler to get started. (Wiki Education Foundation will be working on an off-wiki tool for drafting and customizing assignment plans, which should be ready for the beginning of 2015. But in the meantime, this should make it a little bit easier.)--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:56, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Hope any of that is helpful. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:02, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Feedback from Chris Troutman

I just went through the educator training, too.

1. I agree with Tryptofish, you probably ought to downgrade ecstatic to something like ambivalent.

   I went with Tryptofish's word.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

2. In the intro it references "Wikipedia assignments" when none exist. Also, this might be a good time to emphasize that educators are changing their curricula to help Wikipedia; Wikipedia might not really be a tool for them to use.

   Which page are you referring to?--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

   It's in the "about" section. I would re-word from "It can be used as a starting point for Wikipedia assignments" to "This module will help you to design assignments for your students to complete within Wikipedia." Chris Troutman (talk) 20:39, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

3. I also agree with Tryptofish about NOR and "avoiding advocacy." While it is covered later I think beating the drum about Wikipedia's style as "absent a thesis" could be explained more. I still get students writing in essay-like fashion.

   Does Tryptofish's wording above, which I added to that page, satisfy?--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

   Yes. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:39, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

4. I would cut back the discussion of Visual Editor further; it's in Beta and I hope it never returns. I don't want to confuse new editors with it.

   It's important to have some mention of VE just so that newcomers don't get confused if they end up with VE enabled and don't understand why the interface isn't what the training describes. At some point, VE will probably become the default for new users (again).--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

5. I tell my students to skip AfC because it's always backlogged and many times they'll get declined, anyway. I would replace this with instructions about moving pages into main namespace. You have a line "If your submission has not been reviewed, go ahead and create your article" and that sounds problematic.

   I've removed AfC from the recommendations. The backlog has improved in recent months, but it's too much uncertainty in this context.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

   The backlog improved in part because a couple editors worked extreme overtime to reduce it. AfC returned to backlog status in just a week. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:39, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

6. I'd recommend switching the order on students choosing a topic to write on versus choosing from a prepared list. Students picking their own topic is a mixed bag. I'd prefer providing the professor a list of articles in need of work.

   I changed the order, and added a caveat to the choose-your-own option. diff.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

7. In week 7 you have them going live into main namespace. It think this is critical. I had one professor have his students keep their work in sandbox the entire course because they didn't want to grade a live article. There was no outside editor input and no student interaction with the community. All those sandboxes remain where they are save one.

   Yes, it's something we've recognized as critical ever since we put too little emphasis on it in the first semester of the public policy initiative. --Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

8. I'll disagree with Tryptofish about DYK. I think DYK is a reasonable goal for new articles. Nominating for GA is patently ridiculous. I would strike that suggestion entirely. I had a class do that and it didn't go well with the WikiProject.

   GA nominations have sometimes gone badly, but have also sometimes gone very well. It's not something we systematically recommend (any more), but if it's done selectively (based on an individual article, not at the whole-class level) it can lead to some of the most successful projects. It's something I hope we can offer more support and guidance for in the future.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

9. You do mention ambassadors but I would provide links (if WEF would generate their new content already) so the professors know that's a resource they can shop for in the ambassador list. Many professors either don't know about ambassadors, they are their own ambassadors, or they see no need for a teacher's assistant.

   A better system for connecting ambassadors and professors is definitely a big need. I'll think on it a bit.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

In conclusion, I would ensure all professors go through this training before they get userrights or set up a course page. I'm also concerned that this training is just a slide-show. Are we recommending professors with no Wikipedia experience learn the buttonology in the new users training? What about the Wikipedia Adventure? Professors don't have to edit on Wikipedia to lead a course but they won't be engaging on wiki. Chris Troutman (talk) 03:10, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Adding the interactive editing basics tours to the educator training (like the student training already has) is on my todo list. I'll try to get to it this week; should be a pretty simple copy-paste from the student version.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:05, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. My biggest pet peeve is getting instructors and students to use talk pages, Echo, and watchlists instead of e-mail. I think if you pushed it from that angle they'd spend more time on wiki and they'd learn the coding buttonology in the process. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:39, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

The intro-to-markup tours are now part of the educators training, just like the student version.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:41, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation job openings

Just a quick note that the Wiki Education Foundation has two new job openings: Classroom Program Manager and Communications Associate. More information is available at wikiedu.org/careers. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:59, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right

Urbanature (t · th · c · del · cross-wiki · SUL · edit counter · pages created (xtools · sigma) · non-automated edits · BLP edits · undos · manual reverts · rollbacks · logs ^{(blocks · rights · moves)} · rfar · spi · cci) (assign permissions)^{(acc · ap · fm · mms · npr · pm · pcr · rb · te)}

I will be teaching Arch 531L - Ecological Factors in Design at the University of Southern California this fall (August-December 2014). I expect to have 5-8 undergraduate students in the course.

Two course assignments will involve writing and editing on Wikipedia. First is the creation of a new article/expansion of a stub by each student on a topic relevant to the course. For this assignment I will be following the sample syllabus provided in the instructor training. The second assignment will be development of an annotated list of software tools for use in the practice of geodesign, and either incorporated within or linked from that page. Urbanature (talk) 22:48, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

I granted the user right and sent an email to set up a time to talk about assignment design details. @Sage (Wiki Ed): Did you get the new process set up for creating the course page before requesting user rights? It looks like it sent User:Urbanature to the right page, but did it create that after sending this instructor here for the request? Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:15, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Ok, we figured out what happened. I have reviewed the instructor's draft and am in the process of making some adjustments before helping him move it to the extension. :) Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:43, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Urbanature (talk)

Name

Travis Longcore

Institution

University of Southern California

Course title and description

Arch 361L - Ecological Factors in Design. Two course assignments will involve writing and editing on Wikipedia. First is the creation of a new article/expansion of a stub by each student on a topic relevant to the course. For this assignment I will be following the sample syllabus provided in the instructor training. The second assignment will be development of an annotated list of software tools for use in the practice of geodesign, and either incorporated within or linked from that page. I do not have significant Wikipedia editing experience but plan to gain such in the process of working with the students on these projects. This inexperience will be obvious in that I missed this template for my first request and saved two version of my previous post.

Assignment plan

I will follow the sample syllabus and each student will contribute one new article or expanded stub and the whole class will build a list of software tools in geodesign. My purpose is three-fold: 1) improve understanding of research and citation practices, 2) enhance the learning environment by having assignments be visible to the real world, and 3) contribute topic-level expertise to Wikipedia in a way that informs the public and leads my students to deeper mastery of course material.

Number of students

5-8

Start and end dates

August 25-December 17, 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Urbanature (talk) 23:00, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Help reviewing “Editing psychology articles” handout for student editors?

(Apologies for the cross-post.) Introducing myself for those of you I haven’t interacted with before — I’m LiAnna Davis, and I’m in charge of communications for the Wiki Education Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States and Canada. One of my goals this year is to create a series of discipline-specific support materials for students and instructors participating in our program. Given the challenges some psychology students have had in the past, I’m starting with psychology, and I need some help. I’ve created a page in my userspace explaining more about what I’m trying to do, and then added an outline of the preliminary content I’d like to include.

Since psychology is not my specialty, I would really like to get feedback from experienced content contributors in psychology to make sure I’m providing accurate advice to students. I’m looking for several people who’ve contributed content to psychology articles to review the advice and offer feedback — please help if you can! I need all comments by Monday, July 14. Please leave comments on the talk page rather than here so they’re all in the same place. Thanks! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:09, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Revised draft is ready for review. I'd like any additional feedback by July 23, so we can get it off to the designer and get it printed before the start of the term. Thanks. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 04:22, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: User:Terrence Bryant

Name

Terrence Bryant

Institution

East Carolina University.

Course title and description

Motivation 001 Bryant Undergraduate Studies/ School of Psychology

Number of students

20?

Start and end dates

ongoing

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Terrence Bryant (talk) 01:57, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

@Sage (Wiki Ed): Do you think there's a (simple) way to have the link to the instructor's course page draft link here when they request the user right from the training? If not, that's ok—I just almost sent an email to Terrence explaining the process to him before I realized he may have already drafted a course page (which he did). Just hoping that won't happen from other editors here, too! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:28, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Jami: That's how it's currently set up, but it appears to be confusing: the link got changed after it was posted.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:33, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I should have known you'd included that step already. :) I will shoot an email around when I get a second to make sure folks know about our awesome new on-boarding process (which I've already found super useful—thanks so much!) Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:38, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Just granted instructor rights to KatieBU

Some time ago, KatieBU put in a request for instructor rights on this page. At the time they weren't granted because, confusingly, someone was concerned that she was trying to conduct an unethical experiment on Wikipedians. I've spoken with Afamiglietti, the instructional designer she is working with off-wiki, and have reviewed the design of Katie's intended assignment. Although I made a number of comments/suggested improvements to it, I saw absolutely nothing wrong with the assignment's basic design, and would say that it was significantly better than the vast majority of initial assignment design attempts that I've seen. It certainly had nothing remotely unethical in it. As such, though I intend to monitor the class as it progresses, I have granted all userrights I saw as necessary to both Afamiglietti and KatieBU - and am rather thankful that they're sticking around after their initial reception.

I'd go ahead and take this as an opportunity to remind everyone that WP:BITE and WP:AGF apply to new instructors here just as much as they do anyone else. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:00, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Kevin. By working with the instructors and keeping an eye on the class, you are doing exactly the right things to address any of the concerns that were raised by the other editor. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

June Wiki Education Foundation Monthly Report published

Just a note that I've published the June version of the Wiki Education Foundation's Monthly Report today. June's report is available on Commons, on Meta, and on our blog. I'm (as always) happy to answer any questions. --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:00, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: tburress

Tburress (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I am currently an academic librarian, and part of my job is to provide research support to faculty and students. A number of faculty have an interest in contributing to Wikipedia via assignments given to college students, and in the role of campus ambassador, I would be in a great position to facilitate contributions to Wikipedia and at the same time teach students information literacy skills which are vital to their success in college and the workplace.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   New College of Florida in Sarasota, Florida

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   I have a B.A. in English, an M.L.S. in Library Science, and nearly 20 years of experience as a librarian in law, business, science, and academic libraries. I also have extensive experience editing and producing scholarly journal articles and government documents.

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   None.

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I currently have at least three New College faculty members who are interested in using Wikipedia in fall 2014 courses. I have begun by editing the Natural Hazard article (I most recently worked as a science librarian at USGS), and can see a number of related articles (such as coastal erosion, landslide, etc.) that I would like to improve. Because of my diverse subject experience, I expect to be able to make editorial contributions in the natural sciences as well as the humanities.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Tburress (talk) 20:35, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

• Seems reasonable enough --In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 20:47, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
• Support: new editor who seems competent with references. Welcome New College of Florida. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:55, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you! I'm looking forward to getting started. I've gone through the Campus Ambassador tutorial. Are there are other steps I need to take to get my account set up to start working with instructors on the courses? Tburress (talk) 16:07, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Reagle (talk) (course page draft)

Joseph Reagle

Institution

Northeastern University

Course title and description

Online Communities. A senior level course for undergraduates. Contributions to Wikipedia will be a graded exercise. Content will likely be related to online communities or suggested topics from NEU's special collections. While I have some experience, no experienced editors, WikiProjects, or ambassadors have yet been identified. The course and WP exercise is still a work in progress.

Number of students

16

Start and end dates

2014 Sep-Dec

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr:

@Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911:

@Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman:

--Reagle (talk) 21:40, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

 Done. Reagle is a well-known and trusted user, so no worries here.--ragesoss (talk) 22:04, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Sage! Reagle (talk) 13:25, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Looking for a workshop speaker in Austin, TX

I teach a class on alternative and activist media at UT Austin. For the last couple iterations, I've had contributing to the Wikipedia page on "Alternative Media" as a class assignment. I'm wondering if you have any very active members in Austin Texas who might be willing to come and speak to the class, and maybe kick start this editing work around the first week in October. Do let me know. LauraLStein (talk) 02:54, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I had an ambassador that was active and knowledgable but distant. We were able to have him Skype in to class and that worked out very well. Students were more willing to interact with him on WP after meeting him via Skype. Biolprof (talk) 21:32, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Reporting of outcomes

a pdf of the outcomes

Last April I presented at a class and wrote up some outcomes of the result. I was just thinking that it might be good to share what I wrote here, so I am doing that now.

In thinking about metrics reporting and impact, I have sometimes thought that many outreach groups assume that all audiences are the same, when actually there are some big differences and competing interests in what works for different groups. Here is my summary of what I think groups want:

• Medical organizations - want pageview metrics for individual Wikipedia articles and proof of content quality checks, as well as unstructured (free text) layman feedback
• Wikipedia education program - wants content creation and class and student registrations
• GLAM Wikipedians - wants editor recruitment and retention and metrics about the engagement of new recruits
• community organizations hosting events - want in-person community attendance and pageview statistics

In this report I talked mostly about pageview metrics and community response, because that is what medical organizations want. This is out of line with what I feel the education program encourages or what GLAM organizers do. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:24, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Dustirain

Dustirain (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I enjoyed my work with Wikipedia for my course. I believe it is a valuable skill and would like to contribute to the Wikipedia community by educating students on how to contribute. I love the idea of Wikipedia's mission of storing information in a transparent way.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   Toronto, Ontario. University of Toronto.

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   I am a Library Technician with 5 years of library experience. I hold a certificate in Records Management from Mohawk College. I am currently a student and the University of Toronto, Mississauga in the Interactive Digital Media program.

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   Wikipedia edit for my course CCT110 on a stub.

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   I love teaching about new technologies and would like to get more people on campus involved in using/editing Wikipedia.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Dustirain (talk) 18:10, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Wow, University of Toronto is a popular place for Wikipedia. Leslie Chan is there and OhanaUnited is too. Dustirain, we usually assign the userright to people who are experienced Wikipedians just because it only gives a few unusual software abilities to users and we expect that almost everything you would imagine doing you can do with just a typical Wikipedia account. If you want to play with the tools then I would support you having them just because you have participated in the education program as a student in the past, but why do you want them? Is there something that you are trying to do that you are unable to do right now? You are welcome to contribute to Wikipedia as you like and any professor at your school could set up a course page if they want to have another Wikipedia class project. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:25, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bluerasberry, the other campus ambassadors were thinking of adding another member to the UofT team starting in September. A friend of mine recommended me for the position. After talking to the other ambassadors, I thought this would be a great opportunity. They encouraged me to apply and keep working on edits. This would help support the workshops they would be hosting in September. I believe they are ensuring there is support for the courses that have Wikipedia assignments once they graduate.––Dustirain (talk) 18:54, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Dustirain Okay thanks. The purpose of this board is to support people in doing whatever they want to do, so if you need the userright then you can have it. We usually give the userrights when someone has two people say it seems okay. Can you have any of the other ambassadors post here and say that they are supporting you? Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:57, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi User:Dustirain, I'm from UTSC. Could you let me know which individual recommended you? Thanks. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:46, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi OhanaUnited, I was recommended by Raiyan Khan, the ICCIT Council President, to Deneille Walters and Monico Santiago from UTM––Dustirain (talk) 03:11, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Ah yes, I do know Deneille and Monico (but not Raiyan). Everything seems fine and you know who to ask if you encounter difficulties so I'll grant you the tools. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:09, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Did someone change something in the code?

Why did a user create Education noticeboard? Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:45, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Not sure, but I added an edit notice to that deleted page to direct anyone to here. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:57, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Profmwilliams (talk)

Name

Monica Williams

Institution

Weber State University

Course title and description

Policing: History, Theory, and Practice

The course is a lower-division, undergraduate course that provides an introduction to policing in the United States. What role do police serve in contemporary society? How has that role changed over time? How and why do some police officers engage in corruption? What are the causes and consequences of police use of force? We will discuss the answers to these questions, focusing particularly on how race, politics, and the nature of police organizations contribute to modern policing. The Wikipedia assignment will be a major component of their grade and I'm currently recruiting an online ambassador (or two) to help with the assignment. I have written HTML code in the past, but I've never edited a Wikipedia page.

Assignment plan

We will follow the assignment outlined in the sample 12-week syllabus in the Wikimedia Foundation materials. Students will work in pairs (but each student will have an individual user name) and each pair will choose a page to work on from a list that I provide. This assignment will replace paper assignments that I've used in previous semesters. My goal is to have students take ownership of a piece of publicly accessible writing in order to improve their writing and synthesis skills. There are a lot of policing-related pages that need work on Wikipedia, so they'll be contributing to the community rather than writing a paper that only I will read.

Number of students

20 (working in pairs, so they'll be editing 10 different pages)

Start and end dates

August 25, 2014 through December 8, 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Profmwilliams (talk) 20:43, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Any responses on this? I'd like to get my course page set up as soon as possible. Also, does anyone have recommendations for online ambassadors? I contacted one but haven't heard back. Thanks! Profmwilliams (talk) 15:31, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Profmwilliams While you are waiting, you should be able to continue setting up your pages by resuming the Course Wizzard here: User:Profmwilliams/course_wizard. If you are an established editor and this is an alternate account you want to claim this may be able to be hastened. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:42, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm not an established editor, so I'll go ahead with the course wizard for now and await a response. Profmwilliams (talk) 19:09, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Profmwilliams I want to acknowledge seeing your request. We generally give the ability to make course pages to either people with ambassador partners or professors who have used Wikipedia at least a little. We do this because of many problems in the past. Unfortunately we have few volunteers on hand to support a huge demand for support. We are also still determining among ourselves when to give userrights to people who have no support, because if we encourage people to go alone that sometimes makes for frustrating experiences for professors, students, and Wikipedians. Thanks for your interest. Perhaps if you said a bit more about what you would do if you had a problem, then someone might flip the switch for you. I really appreciate your reaching out but I worry about this community's ability to support you. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:49, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Bluerasberry I appreciate the acknowledgement. I didn't know the informal policy and I understand the hesitation. In case of a problem, I would consult the Teahouse, the Wikipedia Help pages, and/or this Education Noticeboard. I will continue to search for an ambassador who could help as well. Profmwilliams (talk) 21:13, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Profmwilliams, wow, you already know where to go for help? That counts for a lot. What does anyone else think? Is committing to ask for help in the right places enough? Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:56, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

I too thought that was a very good answer. I'll just put in a shameless plug for reading WP:ASSIGN. Please make sure that you monitor the students' edits, and any responses they elicit from established editors, either if the editors revert anything the students do, or comments by the editors on the article talk pages. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:20, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, Tryptofish. I've bookmarked the page and will follow the advice on that page. I intentionally wanted to start this kind of assignment with a small class, so I'll only be monitoring edits to 10 pages. I know that's still a lot of monitoring, but I'm committed to making sure my students understand and follow Wikipedia guidelines. I want to make this work because I think my students will get so much more out of the class and they'll take away invaluable skills that they can use in their everyday lives. I also forgot to mention earlier that I joined the Law Enforcement Wikiproject and will use the talk page there for content-related questions. Profmwilliams (talk) 01:56, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

You are doing everything right! Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:49, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I have drafted a course page for further review of my request for instructor rights. Profmwilliams (talk) 03:14, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Profmwilliams I flipped the switch. You are a course instructor now. Thanks for talking here and check in anytime. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:10, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Announcement from Wiki Ed

Hi all, I encourage you to see this blog post about a reorganization of the Wiki Education Foundation. Effective tomorrow, LiAnna Davis will move into the Director of Programs role, and Jami Mathewson will move into the Educational Partnerships Manager role. Please join me in congratulating LiAnna and Jami on their promotions. --Frank Schulenburg (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:21, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Congrats from me to some WMF folk who are a pleasure to work with. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:22, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Leaving the WEF board

This is to let folks know that I have resigned from the Wiki Education Foundation board.

I’m leaving for a couple of reasons. The excitement of getting the project going has been replaced by the need to make it sustainable. I’ve been putting a lot of time into the WEF for the last couple of years, and now is good time for me to take a break – it’s been rewarding, but also time-consuming. The other reason relates to some board discussions we’ve had recently; I’d prefer not to be specific at the moment, since the board has still to make a final decision. From now on I’ll be following the WEF’s activities with interest, like any other member of the community.

The WEF has a great Executive Director in Frank Schulenburg, and I have a lot of faith in his ability. I believe it’s on track to be successful in its goals, and Frank is a big part of why that is the case. The organization is on a sound financial footing, and the board is doing a remarkable job in adding new board members with the necessary background and skills. I still strongly support the WEF, and I wish them the best of luck. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:40, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Mike Christie Thanks for everything you have given already. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:07, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Ninafundisha (talk) (course page draft)

Name

Kate Grillo

Institution

University of Wisconsin - La Crosse

Course title and description

ARC 312, African Archaeology. This is a course for advanced undergraduates on the archaeology of Africa from millions of years ago to the present. African archaeology is a growing and vibrant field, yet current Wikipedia entries that present African archaeological sites, information on Africanist archaeologists, and the significance of the African past are very sparse. My students will be required to edit/expand existing entries and to create new entries when appropriate. Although I am not an experienced Wikipedia editor, I will seek help from the Ambassador program as needed.

Number of students

20

Start and end dates

September - December 2014

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @Jami (Wiki Ed), Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Ninafundisha (talk) 15:34, 1 August 2014 (UTC)