Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Marshall Miller]

Hi everyone --

I'm Marshall Miller; I'm the product manager for the Growth team at the WMF
(https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth).  Our team is working on increasing
the retention of new editors in mid-size Wikipedias.  I wanted to chime in
because of the interesting things some of you are saying about what is
working and not working for new editors who are trying to learn.  Our team
is always looking for input and perspectives from all parts of our
community, and I hope that some of you could weigh in on our team's work.

Specifically, we have three projects in flight that we're looking for
guidance on.  Each of these projects is being piloted just in Czech,
Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias -- these are communities who have
volunteered to try out some new things.  We're hoping to start some
conversations on the talk pages of any of these projects, and we're looking
for opinions on any part of them, though some specific questions are listed
below.

   - Help panel (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Focus_on_help_desk):
   in which we deployed the "help panel" to our pilot wikis so that newcomers
   can get answers to questions while they are editing.  Our main open
   question here is whether it is better to help users to find their answer on
   their own, or to encourage them to make contact with a community member and
   ask for help.
   - Engagement emails (
   
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Personalized_first_day/Engagement_emails):
   a project that is still being designed that would use email as a way to
   engage newcomers and encourage them to return to the wiki.  Our main open
   question here is how best to use email as a communication vector without
   being yet another annoying presence in a user's inbox.
   - Newcomer homepage (
   
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Personalized_first_day/Newcomer_homepage):
   a project that is still being designed that gives newcomers a clear
   "starting place" to help them achieve their goals.  Our main open question
   here is where to put the homepage, and how to connect it to the rest of the
   Wikipedia experience.

You can also sign up for our team's monthly newsletter here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Newsletters

Thank you,

Marshall


On Sun, Feb 10, 2019 at 1:39 PM Juliana Bastos Marques 
wrote:

> I managed to get funding from my university for grants to students, for our
> outreach project. This was when the staff went on strike, from May to
> December [sic!]. The student was very excited to work and help me, but we
> couldn't have access to the computer labs...
>
> Juliana
>
> On Sun, Feb 10, 2019 at 9:36 PM Kerry Raymond 
> wrote:
>
> > I do it as a volunteer. There are no salaried staff at Wikimedia
> > Australia.
> >
> > Kerry
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:
> wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org]
> > On Behalf Of Piotr Konieczny
> > Sent: Monday, 11 February 2019 1:20 AM
> > To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with
> > Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?
> >
> > Thank you for the very detailed story!
> >
> > I don't know about US/Canada(?) where Wiki Edu operates, but recently I
> > heard the explanation for why there is almost no outreach to universities
> > in Poland despite (occasional) interest from the universities themselves:
> > no funds / will  to hire a dedicated person for this, and the current
> > salaried staff of the Polish chapter does not have sufficient time to
> > answer all requests.
> >
> > --
> >
> > Piotr Konieczny, PhD
> > http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
> > http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEJ
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus
> >
> > On 2/10/2019 3:16 AM, Kerry Raymond wrote:
> > > I supported a 2nd year Gender Studies course late last year. The
> > lecturer had heard about the Gender Gap in terms of content on Wikipedia
> > and decided that there would be a student assignment in which student
> could
> > singly or in a group write or expand a Wikipedia article. The lecturer
> had
> > broken the assignment down into a number of tasks to be completed by
> > various dates, which were roughly. 1. Pick a topic and explain why you
> > chose it. 2. Write an essay about the topic with citations  3.
> Write/expand
> > the Wikipedia article.
> > >
> > > The lecturer had no personal experience at contributing to Wikipedia,
> > but assumed it would not be hard to do as it's the "encyclopedia anyone
> can
> > edit" but was wondering if there needed to be a session to teach the
> > students how  to contribut

Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Juliana Bastos Marques]

I managed to get funding from my university for grants to students, for our
outreach project. This was when the staff went on strike, from May to
December [sic!]. The student was very excited to work and help me, but we
couldn't have access to the computer labs...

Juliana

On Sun, Feb 10, 2019 at 9:36 PM Kerry Raymond 
wrote:

> I do it as a volunteer. There are no salaried staff at Wikimedia
> Australia.
>
> Kerry
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org]
> On Behalf Of Piotr Konieczny
> Sent: Monday, 11 February 2019 1:20 AM
> To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with
> Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?
>
> Thank you for the very detailed story!
>
> I don't know about US/Canada(?) where Wiki Edu operates, but recently I
> heard the explanation for why there is almost no outreach to universities
> in Poland despite (occasional) interest from the universities themselves:
> no funds / will  to hire a dedicated person for this, and the current
> salaried staff of the Polish chapter does not have sufficient time to
> answer all requests.
>
> --
>
> Piotr Konieczny, PhD
> http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEJ
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus
>
> On 2/10/2019 3:16 AM, Kerry Raymond wrote:
> > I supported a 2nd year Gender Studies course late last year. The
> lecturer had heard about the Gender Gap in terms of content on Wikipedia
> and decided that there would be a student assignment in which student could
> singly or in a group write or expand a Wikipedia article. The lecturer had
> broken the assignment down into a number of tasks to be completed by
> various dates, which were roughly. 1. Pick a topic and explain why you
> chose it. 2. Write an essay about the topic with citations  3. Write/expand
> the Wikipedia article.
> >
> > The lecturer had no personal experience at contributing to Wikipedia,
> but assumed it would not be hard to do as it's the "encyclopedia anyone can
> edit" but was wondering if there needed to be a session to teach the
> students how  to contribute to Wikipedia. By sheer chance the lecturer
> happened to be chatting with one of the university librarians and mentioned
> this Wikipedia assignment and that librarian happened to have done
> Wikipedia training at UQ for groups of librarians and suggested that I
> might be contacted to do the Wikipedia training.
> >
> > So I did a Wikipedia training session with the students (because of the
> timetabling it was not possible to do  hands-on training but I figured,
> rightly, undergraduates would pick on the "how to" with the Visual Editors
> just with a presentation) but also addressed the policy side of Wikipedia
> (of which the lecturer was completely unaware). This occurred before they
> had to submit their essays so I got to talk about writing a good lede in
> advance of them doing it (for those planning a new article). I also attend
> the "edit-a-thon" afternoon where the student actually created or expanded
> the Wikipedia articles (mostly copying and pasting their essay text but of
> course had to re-do their citations in Wikipedia format) where I dealit
> with all the usual event problems (people who did not create their account
> sufficiently in advance, 6 user limit, shifting new articles that were
> created as Draft into mainspace etc).  The outcome was that the lecturer
> and students were all happy at the end of the afternoon, feeling that there
> had been some "real" achievement from the assignment.  The articles were
> not too bad (I kept them on my watchlist and all have survived and in some
> cases have been expanded further by others). I did a bit of MoS tidying
> afterwards of course and, as photos had not been part of the assignment, I
> also found and added some photos where I could. About the worst thing that
> happened was a "essay" tag on one of them.
> >
> > Like a number of edit-a-thons where I have been parachuted in
> mid-process, there is no doubt in my mind that having an experienced
> Wikipedian in the loop helps a lot as the known risks can be managed. I
> find undergraduate students (who are mostly young and digitally-savvy) take
> to the Visual Editor very easily (I gave them a one-page cheat sheet and
> most were fine with that, generally seeking "how to " help only to do some
> complex things they could see in other articles, "how do I make a table of
> contents" being the most common). When we hit the 6 new account limit on
> one IP address, they quickly grasped my expla

Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Kerry Raymond]

I do it as a volunteer. There are no salaried staff at Wikimedia Australia. 

Kerry

-Original Message-
From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On 
Behalf Of Piotr Konieczny
Sent: Monday, 11 February 2019 1:20 AM
To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with 
Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

Thank you for the very detailed story!

I don't know about US/Canada(?) where Wiki Edu operates, but recently I heard 
the explanation for why there is almost no outreach to universities in Poland 
despite (occasional) interest from the universities themselves: no funds / will 
 to hire a dedicated person for this, and the current salaried staff of the 
Polish chapter does not have sufficient time to answer all requests.

--

Piotr Konieczny, PhD
http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus

On 2/10/2019 3:16 AM, Kerry Raymond wrote:
> I supported a 2nd year Gender Studies course late last year. The lecturer had 
> heard about the Gender Gap in terms of content on Wikipedia and decided that 
> there would be a student assignment in which student could singly or in a 
> group write or expand a Wikipedia article. The lecturer had broken the 
> assignment down into a number of tasks to be completed by various dates, 
> which were roughly. 1. Pick a topic and explain why you chose it. 2. Write an 
> essay about the topic with citations  3. Write/expand the Wikipedia article.
>
> The lecturer had no personal experience at contributing to Wikipedia, but 
> assumed it would not be hard to do as it's the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" 
> but was wondering if there needed to be a session to teach the students how  
> to contribute to Wikipedia. By sheer chance the lecturer happened to be 
> chatting with one of the university librarians and mentioned this Wikipedia 
> assignment and that librarian happened to have done Wikipedia training at UQ 
> for groups of librarians and suggested that I might be contacted to do the 
> Wikipedia training.
>
> So I did a Wikipedia training session with the students (because of the 
> timetabling it was not possible to do  hands-on training but I figured, 
> rightly, undergraduates would pick on the "how to" with the Visual Editors 
> just with a presentation) but also addressed the policy side of Wikipedia (of 
> which the lecturer was completely unaware). This occurred before they had to 
> submit their essays so I got to talk about writing a good lede in advance of 
> them doing it (for those planning a new article). I also attend the 
> "edit-a-thon" afternoon where the student actually created or expanded the 
> Wikipedia articles (mostly copying and pasting their essay text but of course 
> had to re-do their citations in Wikipedia format) where I dealit with all the 
> usual event problems (people who did not create their account sufficiently in 
> advance, 6 user limit, shifting new articles that were created as Draft into 
> mainspace etc).  The outcome was that the lecturer and students were all 
> happy at the end of the afternoon, feeling that there had been some "real" 
> achievement from the assignment.  The articles were not too bad (I kept them 
> on my watchlist and all have survived and in some cases have been expanded 
> further by others). I did a bit of MoS tidying afterwards of course and, as 
> photos had not been part of the assignment, I also found and added some 
> photos where I could. About the worst thing that happened was a "essay" tag 
> on one of them.
>
> Like a number of edit-a-thons where I have been parachuted in mid-process, 
> there is no doubt in my mind that having an experienced Wikipedian in the 
> loop helps a lot as the known risks can be managed. I find undergraduate 
> students (who are mostly young and digitally-savvy) take to the Visual Editor 
> very easily (I gave them a one-page cheat sheet and most were fine with that, 
> generally seeking "how to " help only to do some complex things they could 
> see in other articles, "how do I make a table of contents" being the most 
> common). When we hit the 6 new account limit on one IP address, they quickly 
> grasped my explanation of what the problem was and that they should create 
> their accounts from their phones via their mobile data not the Wifi (older 
> people don't grasp this as easily in my experience). One student choosing to 
> use her USB mobile dongle as an alternative. There were some middle-aged and 
> older people in the group who tended to ask more "how to " questions but, on 
> the flip side, had generally followed my early advice about cre

Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Piotr Konieczny]

 to communicate with universities about both edit-a-thons and research 
projects and provide them with some entrypoints into our community so we could 
help them with such things to everyone's mutual benefit. Relying on serendipity 
and personal contacts (which is how things currently work) isn't an ideal 
solution.

Kerry



-Original Message-
From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On 
Behalf Of Jonathan Morgan
Sent: Saturday, 9 February 2019 4:07 AM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities 

Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with 
Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

Piotr,

I think this is an excellent topic, FWIW.

And I bet the Wikipedia Education Program would be interested in the outcomes 
of this research. And they might be willing to point you to potential interview 
candidates (tho, obviously, they have a strong US/EnWiki bias, so it wouldn't 
be the complete picture).

Best,
J

On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 8:43 AM Juliana Bastos Marques 
wrote:


I can add something to this, from my own experiences and from what
colleagues have told me. Here are some negative feedbacks to the
experience of teaching with Wikipedia. Not in any particular order:

1. Lack of support from the Wikipedia community (reversions, scaring
newbies - depends on the specifics of each language community) 2. Lack
of teacher's experience in editing and dealing with the community
(leads to poor management fo issues in 1) 3. Problems with
infrastructure in the university 4. Students lacking interest in
editing, doing everything in the last minute and not caring about the
outcome after the end of classes.

Piotr, I'm very interested in following your research. I'd love to
hear about studies examining these issues, and how they were/can be overcome.

Greetings,
Juliana

On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 4:04 PM Piotr Konieczny  wrote:


I am mulling over a new research topic: what researchers think about
teaching with Wikipedia type of assignment AFTER having tried it?
AFAIK we have a lot of papers on how to teach with Wikipedia, some
on effects on students and some about what instructors think about
Wikipedia in general, but correct me if I am wrong, nobody has
actually asked instructors about their experience with it? And from
my personal experience with seeing such projects on Wikipedia, I
think there's a lot of people who try it once and don't come back
and well, do we know why outside educated guesses?

Right now I am just brainstorming this idea, so any thoughts, up to
and including suggestions for what questions to ask, etc. are appreciated.

Also, I am generally conducting solo research, and all my prior
papers on 'teaching with Wikipedia' have been solo authored (and my
goal is as always to turn this research into publishable paper), but
if someone really, really, really would want to join this project
because they love the idea, and would want to be a co-author of the
future paper, and/or present the results at a WikiSym or such that I
sadly go to every five years or so, feel free to send me a private
message. No promises, but I don't bite :)

--
Piotr Konieczny, PhD
http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus


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--
Jonathan T. Morgan
Senior Design Researcher
Wikimedia Foundation
User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)>
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Jonathan Cardy]

Different people have different favoured learning styles. Some will copy 
others, some will ask others, and some actually go and read the instructions. 
Presumably some pay attention to lectures.

In order to make Wikipedia open to all goodfaith editors it is helpful to 
support all learning styles. That means encouraging use of meaningful edit 
summaries to make it easier to learn by copying others, running wiki surgeries 
and informal meetups so people can ask each other how to fix things, making the 
help pages clear comprehensive and up to date, and yes having lectures 
available to attend or watch on the internet.

Those of us who favour some learning styles over others would do well to try 
and remember that others may favour different learning styles. And when I fall 
asleep in a lecture it is probably time for a live example, or a nudge from my 
neighbour.

Jonathan

Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>


From: Wiki-research-l  on behalf 
of Kerry Raymond 
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2019 2:20 am
To: 'Research into Wikimedia content and communities'
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with 
Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

Young people in particular don't tend to look for Help or Instructions. They 
tend to just jump in. They are more likely to want "live chat" help when they 
are in the midst of their problem.

Kerry

-Original Message-
From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On 
Behalf Of Jesús Tramullas
Sent: Saturday, 9 February 2019 8:39 PM
To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with 
Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

Dear colleagues:

I work with Wikipedia in classroom since 2015-2016 
(https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Proyecto_educativo/WikiDoc,_Universidad_de_Zaragoza).
Of course, I agree with the common problems about this kind of approach...

..but now I'm working on a specific area, asking the students: As new editor, 
What do you think about the help pages in Wikipedia? Have you used them? Are 
they helpful? Are they readable? Are they understandable?

So, my approach is to analyze the "technical documentation", identify problems 
and propose improvements.

Cheers,

Jesús
--
"Investigación básica es lo que hago cuando no sé lo que estoy haciendo."
"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."
Wernher von Braun (1957)

--#
Ph.D. Jesús Tramullas
http://tramullas.com
Dept. Ciencias Documentación // Dept. of Information Studies Universidad de 
Zaragoza 50009 Zaragoza (España)
#--

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Kerry Raymond]

Young people in particular don't tend to look for Help or Instructions. They 
tend to just jump in. They are more likely to want "live chat" help when they 
are in the midst of their problem.

Kerry

-Original Message-
From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On 
Behalf Of Jesús Tramullas
Sent: Saturday, 9 February 2019 8:39 PM
To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with 
Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

Dear colleagues:

I work with Wikipedia in classroom since 2015-2016 
(https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Proyecto_educativo/WikiDoc,_Universidad_de_Zaragoza).
 
Of course, I agree with the common problems about this kind of approach...

..but now I'm working on a specific area, asking the students: As new editor, 
What do you think about the help pages in Wikipedia? Have you used them? Are 
they helpful? Are they readable? Are they understandable?

So, my approach is to analyze the "technical documentation", identify problems 
and propose improvements.

Cheers,

Jesús
--
"Investigación básica es lo que hago cuando no sé lo que estoy haciendo."
"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."
Wernher von Braun (1957)

--#
Ph.D. Jesús Tramullas
http://tramullas.com
Dept. Ciencias Documentación // Dept. of Information Studies Universidad de 
Zaragoza 50009 Zaragoza (España)
#--

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Kerry Raymond]

I supported a 2nd year Gender Studies course late last year. The lecturer had 
heard about the Gender Gap in terms of content on Wikipedia and decided that 
there would be a student assignment in which student could singly or in a group 
write or expand a Wikipedia article. The lecturer had broken the assignment 
down into a number of tasks to be completed by various dates, which were 
roughly. 1. Pick a topic and explain why you chose it. 2. Write an essay about 
the topic with citations  3. Write/expand the Wikipedia article.

The lecturer had no personal experience at contributing to Wikipedia, but 
assumed it would not be hard to do as it's the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" 
but was wondering if there needed to be a session to teach the students how  to 
contribute to Wikipedia. By sheer chance the lecturer happened to be chatting 
with one of the university librarians and mentioned this Wikipedia assignment 
and that librarian happened to have done Wikipedia training at UQ for groups of 
librarians and suggested that I might be contacted to do the Wikipedia 
training. 

So I did a Wikipedia training session with the students (because of the 
timetabling it was not possible to do  hands-on training but I figured, 
rightly, undergraduates would pick on the "how to" with the Visual Editors just 
with a presentation) but also addressed the policy side of Wikipedia (of which 
the lecturer was completely unaware). This occurred before they had to submit 
their essays so I got to talk about writing a good lede in advance of them 
doing it (for those planning a new article). I also attend the "edit-a-thon" 
afternoon where the student actually created or expanded the Wikipedia articles 
(mostly copying and pasting their essay text but of course had to re-do their 
citations in Wikipedia format) where I dealit with all the usual event problems 
(people who did not create their account sufficiently in advance, 6 user limit, 
shifting new articles that were created as Draft into mainspace etc).  The 
outcome was that the lecturer and students were all happy at the end of the 
afternoon, feeling that there had been some "real" achievement from the 
assignment.  The articles were not too bad (I kept them on my watchlist and all 
have survived and in some cases have been expanded further by others). I did a 
bit of MoS tidying afterwards of course and, as photos had not been part of the 
assignment, I also found and added some photos where I could. About the worst 
thing that happened was a "essay" tag on one of them.

Like a number of edit-a-thons where I have been parachuted in mid-process, 
there is no doubt in my mind that having an experienced Wikipedian in the loop 
helps a lot as the known risks can be managed. I find undergraduate students 
(who are mostly young and digitally-savvy) take to the Visual Editor very 
easily (I gave them a one-page cheat sheet and most were fine with that, 
generally seeking "how to " help only to do some complex things they could see 
in other articles, "how do I make a table of contents" being the most common). 
When we hit the 6 new account limit on one IP address, they quickly grasped my 
explanation of what the problem was and that they should create their accounts 
from their phones via their mobile data not the Wifi (older people don't grasp 
this as easily in my experience). One student choosing to use her USB mobile 
dongle as an alternative. There were some middle-aged and older people in the 
group who tended to ask more "how to " questions but, on the flip side, had 
generally followed my early advice about creating their account in advance and 
practicing on their user page (so all were autoconfirmed users and didn't have 
those problems). 

However, I can see that without an experienced Wikipedian in the loop that 
things could have gone very badly. And this is the problem for me. I can 
generally help out IF I know about the plan in the first place.

As you might have seen in Signpost recently, there was some upset over a 
proposed experiment over giving out random barnstars. As I commented there, 
instead of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes on in the Wikipedia 
community about such things, we would be much better served if we tried to find 
a way to communicate with universities about both edit-a-thons and research 
projects and provide them with some entrypoints into our community so we could 
help them with such things to everyone's mutual benefit. Relying on serendipity 
and personal contacts (which is how things currently work) isn't an ideal 
solution.

Kerry



-Original Message-
From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On 
Behalf Of Jonathan Morgan
Sent: Saturday, 9 February 2019 4:07 AM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities 

Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with 
Wi

Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Juliana Bastos Marques]

Jesús, I suppose the key to understanding effectiveness of help pages may
have big variations between language projects. As for the help sections on
WP:PT, they are simply overwhelming, and navigating through them can feel
like wandering through the Minotaur's maze.

Juliana

On Sat, Feb 9, 2019 at 10:39 AM Jesús Tramullas  wrote:

> Dear colleagues:
>
> I work with Wikipedia in classroom since 2015-2016
> (
> https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Proyecto_educativo/WikiDoc,_Universidad_de_Zaragoza).
>
> Of course, I agree with the common problems about this kind of approach...
>
> ..but now I'm working on a specific area, asking the students: As new
> editor, What do you think about the help pages in Wikipedia? Have you
> used them? Are they helpful? Are they readable? Are they understandable?
>
> So, my approach is to analyze the "technical documentation", identify
> problems and propose improvements.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jesús
> --
> "Investigación básica es lo que hago cuando no sé lo que estoy haciendo."
> "Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."
> Wernher von Braun (1957)
>
> --#
> Ph.D. Jesús Tramullas
> http://tramullas.com
> Dept. Ciencias Documentación // Dept. of Information Studies
> Universidad de Zaragoza 50009 Zaragoza (España)
> #--
>
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>


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Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Jesús Tramullas]

Dear colleagues:

I work with Wikipedia in classroom since 2015-2016 
(https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Proyecto_educativo/WikiDoc,_Universidad_de_Zaragoza). 
Of course, I agree with the common problems about this kind of approach...


..but now I'm working on a specific area, asking the students: As new 
editor, What do you think about the help pages in Wikipedia? Have you 
used them? Are they helpful? Are they readable? Are they understandable?


So, my approach is to analyze the "technical documentation", identify 
problems and propose improvements.


Cheers,

Jesús
--
"Investigación básica es lo que hago cuando no sé lo que estoy haciendo."
"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."
Wernher von Braun (1957)

--#
Ph.D. Jesús Tramullas
http://tramullas.com
Dept. Ciencias Documentación // Dept. of Information Studies
Universidad de Zaragoza 50009 Zaragoza (España)
#--

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Jeffrey Keefer]

I agree, this would be fascinating research. Having used Wikipedia with a 
number of my classes and conducted research in related areas, this sound 
fascinating. 

Happy to talk more about it or assist if you need anything.


-

With Incredulity toward Metanarratives, 

Jeffrey Keefer, PhD
User:FULBERT
fulb...@fulbert.org

> On Feb 8, 2019, at 1:07 PM, Jonathan Morgan  wrote:
> 
> Piotr,
> 
> I think this is an excellent topic, FWIW.
> 
> And I bet the Wikipedia Education Program would be interested in the
> outcomes of this research. And they might be willing to point you to
> potential interview candidates (tho, obviously, they have a strong
> US/EnWiki bias, so it wouldn't be the complete picture).
> 
> Best,
> J
> 
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 8:43 AM Juliana Bastos Marques 
> wrote:
> 
>> I can add something to this, from my own experiences and from what
>> colleagues have told me. Here are some negative feedbacks to the experience
>> of teaching with Wikipedia. Not in any particular order:
>> 
>> 1. Lack of support from the Wikipedia community (reversions, scaring
>> newbies - depends on the specifics of each language community)
>> 2. Lack of teacher's experience in editing and dealing with the community
>> (leads to poor management fo issues in 1)
>> 3. Problems with infrastructure in the university
>> 4. Students lacking interest in editing, doing everything in the last
>> minute and not caring about the outcome after the end of classes.
>> 
>> Piotr, I'm very interested in following your research. I'd love to hear
>> about studies examining these issues, and how they were/can be overcome.
>> 
>> Greetings,
>> Juliana
>> 
>> On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 4:04 PM Piotr Konieczny  wrote:
>> 
>>> I am mulling over a new research topic: what researchers think about
>>> teaching with Wikipedia type of assignment AFTER having tried it? AFAIK
>>> we have a lot of papers on how to teach with Wikipedia, some on effects
>>> on students and some about what instructors think about Wikipedia in
>>> general, but correct me if I am wrong, nobody has actually asked
>>> instructors about their experience with it? And from my personal
>>> experience with seeing such projects on Wikipedia, I think there's a lot
>>> of people who try it once and don't come back and well, do we know why
>>> outside educated guesses?
>>> 
>>> Right now I am just brainstorming this idea, so any thoughts, up to and
>>> including suggestions for what questions to ask, etc. are appreciated.
>>> 
>>> Also, I am generally conducting solo research, and all my prior papers
>>> on 'teaching with Wikipedia' have been solo authored (and my goal is as
>>> always to turn this research into publishable paper), but if someone
>>> really, really, really would want to join this project because they love
>>> the idea, and would want to be a co-author of the future paper, and/or
>>> present the results at a WikiSym or such that I sadly go to every five
>>> years or so, feel free to send me a private message. No promises, but I
>>> don't bite :)
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Piotr Konieczny, PhD
>>> http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
>>> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEJ
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ___
>>> Wiki-research-l mailing list
>>> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> www.domusaurea.org
>> ___
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>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jonathan T. Morgan
> Senior Design Researcher
> Wikimedia Foundation
> User:Jmorgan (WMF) 
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Jonathan Morgan]

Piotr,

I think this is an excellent topic, FWIW.

And I bet the Wikipedia Education Program would be interested in the
outcomes of this research. And they might be willing to point you to
potential interview candidates (tho, obviously, they have a strong
US/EnWiki bias, so it wouldn't be the complete picture).

Best,
J

On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 8:43 AM Juliana Bastos Marques 
wrote:

> I can add something to this, from my own experiences and from what
> colleagues have told me. Here are some negative feedbacks to the experience
> of teaching with Wikipedia. Not in any particular order:
>
> 1. Lack of support from the Wikipedia community (reversions, scaring
> newbies - depends on the specifics of each language community)
> 2. Lack of teacher's experience in editing and dealing with the community
> (leads to poor management fo issues in 1)
> 3. Problems with infrastructure in the university
> 4. Students lacking interest in editing, doing everything in the last
> minute and not caring about the outcome after the end of classes.
>
> Piotr, I'm very interested in following your research. I'd love to hear
> about studies examining these issues, and how they were/can be overcome.
>
> Greetings,
> Juliana
>
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 4:04 PM Piotr Konieczny  wrote:
>
> > I am mulling over a new research topic: what researchers think about
> > teaching with Wikipedia type of assignment AFTER having tried it? AFAIK
> > we have a lot of papers on how to teach with Wikipedia, some on effects
> > on students and some about what instructors think about Wikipedia in
> > general, but correct me if I am wrong, nobody has actually asked
> > instructors about their experience with it? And from my personal
> > experience with seeing such projects on Wikipedia, I think there's a lot
> > of people who try it once and don't come back and well, do we know why
> > outside educated guesses?
> >
> > Right now I am just brainstorming this idea, so any thoughts, up to and
> > including suggestions for what questions to ask, etc. are appreciated.
> >
> > Also, I am generally conducting solo research, and all my prior papers
> > on 'teaching with Wikipedia' have been solo authored (and my goal is as
> > always to turn this research into publishable paper), but if someone
> > really, really, really would want to join this project because they love
> > the idea, and would want to be a co-author of the future paper, and/or
> > present the results at a WikiSym or such that I sadly go to every five
> > years or so, feel free to send me a private message. No promises, but I
> > don't bite :)
> >
> > --
> > Piotr Konieczny, PhD
> > http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
> > http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEJ
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus
> >
> >
> > ___
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> > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
> >
>
>
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>


-- 
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Senior Design Researcher
Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it?

[Juliana Bastos Marques]

I can add something to this, from my own experiences and from what
colleagues have told me. Here are some negative feedbacks to the experience
of teaching with Wikipedia. Not in any particular order:

1. Lack of support from the Wikipedia community (reversions, scaring
newbies - depends on the specifics of each language community)
2. Lack of teacher's experience in editing and dealing with the community
(leads to poor management fo issues in 1)
3. Problems with infrastructure in the university
4. Students lacking interest in editing, doing everything in the last
minute and not caring about the outcome after the end of classes.

Piotr, I'm very interested in following your research. I'd love to hear
about studies examining these issues, and how they were/can be overcome.

Greetings,
Juliana

On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 4:04 PM Piotr Konieczny  wrote:

> I am mulling over a new research topic: what researchers think about
> teaching with Wikipedia type of assignment AFTER having tried it? AFAIK
> we have a lot of papers on how to teach with Wikipedia, some on effects
> on students and some about what instructors think about Wikipedia in
> general, but correct me if I am wrong, nobody has actually asked
> instructors about their experience with it? And from my personal
> experience with seeing such projects on Wikipedia, I think there's a lot
> of people who try it once and don't come back and well, do we know why
> outside educated guesses?
>
> Right now I am just brainstorming this idea, so any thoughts, up to and
> including suggestions for what questions to ask, etc. are appreciated.
>
> Also, I am generally conducting solo research, and all my prior papers
> on 'teaching with Wikipedia' have been solo authored (and my goal is as
> always to turn this research into publishable paper), but if someone
> really, really, really would want to join this project because they love
> the idea, and would want to be a co-author of the future paper, and/or
> present the results at a WikiSym or such that I sadly go to every five
> years or so, feel free to send me a private message. No promises, but I
> don't bite :)
>
> --
> Piotr Konieczny, PhD
> http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEJ
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus
>
>
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> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>


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