Learning patterns/Recruiting high school participants

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Recruiting high school participants

problemReaching out to high schools and generating interest.

solutionConnecting with administration to set up formal mentorship programs and ensuring that students feel this is a worthwhile program to develop their skills and add to their resumes for college.

creator• Ajc831

created on19:49, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

status:DRAFT

What problem does this solve?

When setting up a mentorship program, editing group, or recruiting participants for an edit-a-thon, it is especially important to consider the importance of gathering high school participants. Creating a new generation of editors should be a priority for Wikipedia. It can be difficult, however, to access that population and generate interest among a group that may have little to no experience editing.

What is the solution?

Reaching out to high school administration to set up a formal program is an ideal way to access high school students. It is important to make it clear to both the administration and to students that they will learn many valuable skills from learning to edit on Wikipedia: writing skills, web skills, etc. Also, we found great success by portraying our program as an asset to their college resumes. Early involvement with such a reputable organization will help them in the future, so we made sure to make this very clear in our outreach.

Things to consider

• Public schools are closed for the summer. Administrators are difficult to reach. If you are concerned with gathering a diverse student group from public and private schools alike, take into consideration the summer break schedule.

Endorsements

• This was a huge challenge for us! Jsm0925 (talk) 20:49, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
• Inspiring. Ixocactus (talk) 00:09, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

See also

Related patterns

Find Educators and Institutional Partners: Consult the education toolkit to learn how to connect with schools and administrators to start an education program.