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Brazil Program/Education program/Learning/Brazil Pilot 1/Professor Feedback

< Brazil Program | Education program | Learning | Brazil Pilot 1

Introduction

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Each professor was sent a brief questionare which they emailed back responses. We had a 80% response rate on the five questions questions. Responses were from:

  • Prof. Pablo, USP
  • Prof. Heloisa, UNESP
  • Prof. Edivaldo, UFRJ
  • Prof. Juliana, UNIRIO

Questions

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(With the help of Google Translate!)

  1. What would you improve in the education program? What are your suggestions to do this? What are the main flaws of this phase pilot program that should be improved?
  2. Do you think this education program is beneficial to Wikipedia Lusophone and the Wikimedia Foundation should continue efforts to enhance the educational program in Brazil?
  3. Looking at the results, regarding the improvement of Wikipedia articles, do you think the outcome of the course was satisfactory? What are the positives and negatives of experience and what are the main reasons?
  4. Are you interested in continuing the project or develop activities involving the Wikipedia in their future courses? Would you recommend another professor to participate in the project?
  5. Training material: We are preparing a material adapted to online in Portuguese Brazilian context, like this one. What do you think? Any ideas how to improve?

Key findings

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The good
  • Everyone thinks the program is important for Lusophone Wikipedia!
  • All professors want to participate at some capacity next semester
  • All professors would recommend their colleagues to participate in the program
The areas for improvement
  • Communication needs to be improved: engage with professors via email where possible, and encourage CAs to do so too
    • Ideally, we'd develop a better method of conversation on wiki
  • Professors have varying degrees of commitment to the program, and allowing flexibility for this would be good so as to leverage more professors
  • Need better support materials for professors. Primarily, ones that really clearly mark for students how to edit
  • It is unclear to professors how to leverage the OA resources

1. Improving education program

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Key suggestions
  • Keep the design of the program simple! We want all the students to simply understand how their information can be inputted into Wikipedia, and over-complication of this can be confusing.
  • Communication is difficult over wiki: even eager professors do not have time to get on and read all the messages sent via wiki.
    • WMF could use more email communication with professors, and encourage the Campus Ambassadors to do so too
    • We could consider pulling in some new tools to the PT-WP for this, like the tools utilized in WP:Teahouse
  • More systematic distribution of support materials
  • Work better with Online Ambassadors
  • Clarify help materials, so that students know how to format articles

2. Should it continue

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An anonymous YES! from all the professors!

3. Outcome

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Key feedback
  • The content outcome was less than expected, but the great outcome is the increased knowledge of students regarding free knowledge and open collaboration.
  • PT-WP has gaps in highly specialized content, with a great need for improving quality in those articles, which the University program helps do.
  • For the optional course, the turnout is really low
  • The outcomes could be improved with better planning in incorporating the teaching tool into the traditional course.

4. Future participation and recommendation

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All professors also here answered that YES! they do wish to participate in some component of the program going forward, and that they would recommend it to their colleagues as well.

Some comments and suggestions:

  • Ran into problems recommending the program too close to the final deadline of the open call. Maybe consider opening up the application if a professor has a specific recommendation from a past professor we trust.
  • One professor noted she just wants to make the option of editing a part of her overall classroom dialogue, rather than the sole purpose of the class. This would be about educating regarding the importance of free information, and better understanding what encyclopedic content is. To do this well, she recommends creating simple, direct pages that explain to a student how he/she could participate.
    • This is an important sentiment that professors are not making Wikipedia the sole purpose of their class: just want to incorporate it into their philosophy

5. Training material

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Key suggestions
  • Make it MUCH simpler! Streamline all efforts, focusing on just the most important things.
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