Grants talk:Project/Rapid/UG GR/Corfupedia/Report

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hi Magioladitis, and thanks for this well-written and thoughtful report on this project to engage students to encourage them to contribute to articles about their cultural heritage. Please accept my apologies for the delay in reviewing your report-- two reasons for this delay were because I was away for the past few months on parental leave, and our team has been somewhat short-staffed until very recently. Here are my comments and questions:

• Thanks for describing some of the details around students doing off-wiki writing and submitting a drafted article later. I have seen this sort of approach taken in other projects involving students for the very same reason you've stated in this report-- because they are accustomed to doing other kinds of school assignments in this way. I know that ideally, folks are working on-wiki together where the edit history is preserved. Leaving aside the issue of submitting under a single account representing the work of multiple people, do you see this kind of off-wiki preparation as problematic, or compatible with teachers/students learning how to develop articles?
• Thanks for making note of some learning patterns you found useful in the course of this project. You are welcome to edit these if you have anything else to add based on your experiences.
• Some of the teachers felt that they were going well with the project when their students were learning, covering their educational goals, and not paying enough attention to our own goals about creating articles and get Wikipedia training. - I think this point is a really important one, and I am glad you discussed it here. I've talked with some grantees who find themselves working with individuals who engage with Wikipedia in a way that satisfies some personal/professional goals of their own, but does not satisfy some of the community expectations or grantee expectations. I wonder if having a straightforward discussion with teachers about these expectations could be a way to help prevent some of these situations.
• It is spectacular to see the degree to which you have been able to represent this work amongst other professionals in education. Congratulations on the recognition and for teaching about this work broadly. What kind of reception did your work receive, and were you able to connect with others at these conferences?
• Is there a list of articles available that were improved or created for this project?

This report has been officially accepted. When you are able, please respond to my questions and comments. Thanks very much for your work. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 08:01, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

I JethroBT (WMF)

• I see many reasons behind this. Many students (and teachers) are afraid of failure. Moreover, they still do not feel confortable in presenting their work in public. I hope an advanced Visual Editor will solve the problem of writing in an enviroment similar to Word for starts.
• I'll review the learning patterns once again.
• We had regular meetings with the teachers once per month and we also provided tutorials via Skype. Still there is work to be done in the direction you describe.
• Statistics in the Greek part of the articles added/modified can be found here. It was not easy to gather metrics due to the number of participants and problems you described (one account uploading et.). -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:17, 4 December 2017 (UTC)