Hi Kerry, This research project was really conducted to examine a couple different things at once. This project was designed to provide data for researchers trying to understand learning with Wikipedia. Wiki Ed's dashboard was perfect for this because students participation was already were being tracked, so layering research on top of that data (and access to emailing them, cohorts of classes, etcetera) made it an ideal setting for educational research.
As mentioned in the research report, the questions were designed by multiple researchers from a variety of backgrounds, so there isn't really "one" research question, but many approaches to trying to understand what students are learning, including motivations, perceived value, and skills transfer, among other things. I think the confusion here might be coming from the fact Wiki Education works a little differently than WMF's Education Program - there is a lot of information on how they operate at their website here - https://wikiedu.org/ Wiki Education as an organization isn't a research organization, it is an educational organization with the dual mission of education and improving Wikipedia. They funded the research project but I conducted it through UMass Amherst. As for terminology, "instructor" is anyone who is an instructor for the class (sometimes TT faculty, sometimes adjunct, sometimes grad student, sometimes librarian). There are usually no additional Wikipedians in the classroom, unless the instructor has a specific contact that they invited in, unbenownst to me. "Program staff" are folks that work for Wiki Education and support the classes. In general, Wiki Ed has a "dashboard" and some support staff, but the students are not "taught" by a Wikipedian. I hope this helps! best Zach On Tue, Jun 20, 2017, 5:48 PM Kerry Raymond <kerry.raym...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks, Zach, for the explanation of these things. I realise the goals of > WikiEd was not to be a research project but achieve other goals in relation > to Wikipedia, in which it seems to be very successful from your data. > > > > I suspect part of my confusion relates to the terms “instructor”, > “faculty”, and “program staff” (noting that terminology in North American > universities is very different to Australian universities). Can you unpick > these for me? Are the “instructors” academic staff of a university or > college, or, as I interpreted it, people who would probably identify as > Wikipedians who are volunteering to work on the WikiEd program in their > local area? I assume “faculty” here means “academic staff member” (in my > world, “faculty” is an organisational unit composed of academic staff and > non-academic staff). Who are the “program staff”? > > > > Thanks > > > > Kerry > > > > > _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
