Learning and Evaluation/Archive/Share Space/Wikipedia Education Program

This page is for sharing Wikipedia Education Program examples! Please post questions and comments on the talk page about each other's activities. Not a part of this group? No problem, just use the templates below to add your program experience to the bottom.

Team Program Leaders

Your program title (i.e. Wikipedia Education Program, University Loves Wikipedia)

Please do your best to be as detailed, yet to the point, as possible when describing your program. Feel free to add images from the program as well! You can share in whatever language you want.

Resources used

Explanation: In this section, in a bullet point list (*), please list the resources you used for your Wikipedia Education Program.
Examples: Money spent on program, travel time, volunteer hours, staff hours, supplies made

• Example
• Example
• Example...etc...

Programming activities

Explanation: In 2 to 3 sentences, please share what you did! The entire process would be placed here.
Examples: "Held first call for Campus Ambassadors, reviewed their applications and accepted 5 CA's" "Campus Ambassadors did workshops with their classes and developed on wiki resources." "We translated English documentation into Bangla and then distributed them to professors and students." "We analyzed what areas of Wikipedia needed improvement and reached out to professors at local universities."

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Participants

Explanation: In one sentence please share who participated in your Wikipedia Education Program activity.
Examples: 5 classes, 2 universities. We had 20 students in one class, 5 were women. We have 5 campus ambassadors, 2 never edited Wikipedia before becoming a CA.

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Goals of the program

Explanation: In a bullet point list (*), please share what the goals of your Wikipedia Education Program? What changes did you want to happen?
Examples: "20 articles on plant biology are improved on Catalan Wikipedia by 40 students in 1 biology class" "Students leave with better understanding of how Wikipedia works." "Each professor agrees to stay involved in the program into the next semester." "At least 2 out of the 10 articles become Featured Articles"

• Example
• Example
• Example....etc...

Any program evaluation strategy used?

Explanation: In 2 to 3 sentences please share if you used any program evaluation strategies for your Wikipedia Education Program.
Examples: "Survey was given to students and/or professors" "tracking participants on Wikipedia to see who is editing after the semester." "Tracking bytes added by students over semester." "Tracking quality of articles after semester."

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Any program results or highlights you were able to measure?

Explanation: In a bullet point list (*) please share any results or highlights from your program evaluation strategy that you used to evaluate your Wikpiedia Education Program. Examples: "Out of 20 students 15 responded to our survey, 10 of them said they intend on editing Wikipedia after the semester." "Survey participants said they would prefer to write a Wikipedia article over a traditional term paper in their classes." "I checked the edit histories of all of our students one month after the semester ended, 3 of them edited after the semester, the rest have not." "Our program produced 20 new articles, 10 of which have been edited after the event by students, and 2 are now featured articles!"

• Example
• Example
• Example...etc...

Are there any program results that you would like to measure?

Explanation: In a bullet point list (*) please share what type of results from your Wikpiedia Education Program would you like to measure?
Examples: "If students have an improved understanding of how to edit/use Wikipedia." "How many bytes each student contributes to know who were the most active." "How to determine what subject area in Wikipedia needs the most help, so I can reach out to professors who teach in those areas."

• Example
• Example
• Example...etc...

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Explanation: In 2 to 3 sentences, please share anything else about your Wikpiedia Education Program you'd like to share with other program leaders.

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Students write Wikipedia

Logo of our project

The aim of the program is to create a platform for interested wikipedians, motivated teachers and students to increase the participation of students on the Czech Wikipedia. Currently, several tightly or loosely attached projects – in at least three university cities in the Czech Republic - are running as a part of this program.

The idea of a program being more like a platform means that we do not push the teachers into one exact model of cooperation. We let them choose – and explain them the pros and cons of their approaches, if needed. Usually, teachers come up with a list of articles that would be nice to write, we approve them, students choose one and we oversee the writing process and give advice and feedback when necessary.

What we need is good e-mail availability of the teacher in cases when we need to consult something, willingness for discussion, and a project which enriches the Czech Wikipedia with novel articles or otherwise improved content.

We struggle for as little bureaucracy as possible; no formal agreements or anything like this. We give opportunity to everyone who wants to help Wikipedia become a more reliable source of information.

The Czech Education Program has repeatedly been featured in educational and whole-country press and is becoming fairly well-known among the university community. A voice of support is expected to come from the highest places of the Czech university hierarchy soon.

Resources used

Brochure

Poster

Human resources:

• A decentralized team of 2-5 main coordinators who mainly work on their assigned projects (workload a few hours/week, usually much less)

Financial:

• brochures with descriptions about project and examples of university working - 3170 CZK (123 Euro)
• postal services, travel tickets, 20 posters - 2160 CZK (84 euro)
• Big A2 poster for Wikiconference 2013

Programming activities

We created program page on czech Wikipedia, logo and own name of project. For presentation we made brochures and posters. We had public presentation about project at Wikiconference 2013 and two workshops also for public.

Participants

Lecture at Faculty of Science, Prague 2012

To this time we had 28 classes, 7 universities and one high school participating in our program. One class have approximately 15 to 60 students. We have 7 ambassadors and 6 potencional ambassadors. Number of all students is not known (difficult to count), but ca. 750.

Goals of the program

• Only for first year of our program (2011/2012) students contributed with 2 milions of text characters (ca. 1300 standart pages).
• Students created or contributed to tens articles about Protected areas of Czech republic.
• In our program are involved ca. two-thirds of all universities of our state.
• National Heritage Institute (Národní památkový úřad) is involved.
• 5 professors managed their classes only with little help.
• the myths about Wikipedia are disappearing.
• our program was in several newspapers.

Any program evaluation strategy used?

We are not using some special strategy, only watching last changes and helping to students. Learning by presentations. For motivation, comunicating, presenting, news and also helping we are using social media (Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus).

Any program results or highlights you were able to measure?

• ca. 5% of all students continued to edit Wikipedia
• 2 articles at least are now featured articles, some was not still nominated
• 24 students responded to our survery in year 2011/12
  • 10 students responded editing Wikipedia was enjoying, 7 very enjoying.
  • 11 students was satisfied with explanation, 7 very.
  • 11 students responded editing Wikipedia was too much time consuming, 8 students didn't know exactly what to do or who to ask for help.
  • 9 students need better text help and 7 need instructional videos.
  • 9 want contribute to Wikipedia in future
• 23 students responded to our survery in year 2012/13
  • 7 students responded editing Wikipedia was not that enjoying, 6 enjoying.
  • 10 students was satisfied with explanation, 6 very.
  • 12 students responded editing Wikipedia was too much time consuming, 5 students didn't know exactly what to do.
  • 7 students need better text help and 11 need instructional videos.
  • 6 students want contribute to Wikipedia in future, 10 students don't know.

Are there any program results that you would like to measure?

• We don't know. Number of active students?

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Propably nothing special.

Sophie (Sweden)

Lecture for around 500 teachers on teachers' conference

Wikipedia i utbildning

At the moment, we're slowing down the education programme to around 0,1 FTE for the rest of 2013 (pending external funding).

Resources used

The Swedish case-study brochure

• Full time staff October - May (about $47700 and 1280 h)
• Several volunteers at conferences, workshops, as ambassadors (do not know estimate of hours)
• Extensive travel around the whole of Sweden
• Brochures with case-studies in Swedish with some from the case-study brochure from WMF and some from Sweden
• Two online-courses at Wikiversity
• One video about the programme
• Two workshop layouts at Wikiversity
• Three videos explaining Commons, how to upload a photo and how to upload a movie.

Programming activities

• Educational broadcasting radio Joint work with Wikiversity to have teachers who teach Swedish to immigrants share their ideas about how to use digital resources in education.
• SFI Educating teachers who have immigrant students in how to use Wikipedia as a language learning tool.
• Workshops and lectures at high-schools Plenty of interest here. Some classes around the country have used Wikipedia as their assessment tool.
• FlipKlipp A portal on Commons for teachers who utilise the flipped-classroom idea.
• Universities A few classes at university who use Wikipedia in education but a greater interest for the fall term.
• SLU The first university to employ a Wikipedian as Wikipedian in Academy. He is supporting researchers and doctoral students in how to contribute their knowledge to Wikipedia.
• Ambassadors We have six ambassadors at the moment at the education programme in Sweden.
• Wikimini We just got a small grant from an educational oganisation to support us in setting up WikiMini in Swedish.

So as you may see, we've worked to build momentum around the idea of using Wikipedia in education which has led to various invites to large teacher conferences, think-tanks' seminars and such. We have moreover tried to broaden the scope into using not only Wikipedia but also Wikiversity and Commons.

Participants

• Six ambassadors (i.e equivalent to the campus ambassadors in the US/Canada)
• Hundreds of teachers have listed to seminars and/or lectures
• 3 university courses have used Wikipedia
• At least 3 high school classes have used Wikipedia

Goals of the program

The very fussy goal of Having Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) as accepted tools for teachers to use in education in Sweden.

Any program evaluation strategy used?

Specific workshops have been evaluated by Google forms or by asking teachers afterwards. But the general programme has not been evaluated as such but will probably be now as it is to be slowed down.

Any program results or highlights you were able to measure?

• How many contributors we have from SLU as we've asked them to get a specific login and add themselves to a certain category of users.
• How many teachers have uploaded movies to Commons
• How many ambassadors we have
• How many have used our online-course for teachers

Are there any program results that you would like to measure?

In an ideal world, how much this impacts on students/pupils motivation in writing an assignment but foremostly, how much it develops their critical thinking and thoughs on not only passively taking in knowledge but also putting together and actively sharing it with others. What impact does that have on their future choices in education, in life, in living in a democracy? I would love to measure that! I would also like to see if they read texts differently after having been exposed to Wikipedia for a while. What do they think when they see tabloids? When they read a textbook at university? Is it the same? Do they look at it more critically now than before having used Wikipedia?

Is there anything else you would like to share?

What an amazing blessing it is to be able to work with Wikipedia in education. I had a workshop for high-schools pupils. One of them seemed to be a rather unmotivated and unsocial girl in class. After I've had the workshop she did though come up to me and simply said 'Perhaps Wikipedia could be where I belong'. Those moments make me realise how important and great Wikipedia is as a platform to bring people together who are padded on the shoulder not for wearing certain clothes or looking in a certain way, but simply by the knowledge they provide and by the joy which they do it. I'm so happy to be part of being able to provide that free platform to more people, in letting them know that they're amazing and whatever knowledge they have matters and is a gift of free knowledge to Wikipedia.

Wikimedia Eesti haridusprogramm ('Wikimedia Estonia's Education Program', not an official name)

Officially we don't have an education program yet. What we have done are some workshops and lectures in schools and in University of Tartu and assistance in some university courses.

In 2010 we went to 15 high-schools to give one or more lectures and conduct a survey ("Wikipedia in schools"). Summary of the answers is not finished, but we hope to repeat this survey someday and compare the results.

There have been a number of courses using Wikipedia article writing assignment in the University of Tartu, some of them assisted by someone from our chapter, but also some where the professor is a Wikipedian himself or acquainted with it enough to handle it well. One course in the Faculty of Science and Technology, "Estonian Orthography and Creative Composition", which is mandatory for all students, resulted in ~220 new or improved articles in 2011/2012 and ~270 articles in 2012/2013. For this course there were 5 people assigned to give feedback to students (mostly on their language as it was the main topic of the course, but also on some Wikipedia-matters).

Now we are discussing our possibilities of launching a real Education Program with the Ministry of Science and Education. They might give us finances to hire someone and also some valuable knowledge that will help us communicate with schools.

Resources used

• "Wikipedia in Schools"
  • Three volunteers
  • Costs on transport to the schools
  • Questionnaire for the "Wikipedia in Schools" survey
• University courses
  • Some volunteers giving presentations and workshops
  • 5 people giving feedback to students in the "Estonian Orthography and Creative Composition" course (small pay from the university)

Programming activities

For "Wikipedia in Schools" we made the questionnaire, made agreements with schools (not so many answered to our letters as we were hoping), travelled there, gave a lecture or more, let the students answer the questionnaire (questions were not about the lecture itself, but on their general knowledge and using habits of Wikipedia).

For university courses, we made agreements with the lecturers (usually the ones we personally knew or who came to us themselves), someone went to the auditorium and made a Wikipedia presentation during their lecture and introduced students their task. Afterwards we gave them feedback as they wrote their articles.

Participants

• "Wikipedia in Schools" 2010: 15 high schools, one 9th grade class and one 12th grade class in each school (number of students in a class varied and we didn't count them, but we assume that there were between 20 and 35 students in classes). Some teachers.
• Courses in the University of Tartu: ~150 (2010/2011), ~400 (2011/2012), ~270 (2012/2013 first semester)

Some of the students had several courses that used Wikipedia assignment so they have written more than one article.

Goals of the program

• Each student in the Faculty of Science and Technology in University of Tartu has written a Wikipedia article and with it improved his/her understanding of Wikipedia, different skills (especially writing), critical thinking and so on.

Any program evaluation strategy used?

Counting the articles students wrote.

I made a survey in Google Forms for the students in the "Estonian Ortography..." course. Goal of the survey was to give me immediate feedback on how they liked the task and what could be done better next time.

Any program results or highlights you were able to measure?

About 30 students in each year of the "Estonian Orthography..." course responded to the survey.

Are there any program results that you would like to measure?

If students who had to write articles because their lecturer said so made some contributions afterwards voluntarily. I suppose it can be measured but I don't know how to do it without consuming too much human-time.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

We are in need of proper planning, documenting, measuring, evaluating, reporting, but we seem to lack energy or knowledge for it.