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Policy for compensation from universities

Picking up from a point in the DYK discussion above, Gobonobo, what's your reasoning for saying that ambassadors shouldn't be paid by universities? If universities pay tutors, lab assistants, and TAs, why shouldn't they be allowed to offer compensation for Wikipedia ambassadors who may be expected to make a considerable time commitment depending on the design of the course and the student load that the ambassador agrees to support? It seems to me that this is a matter that should be handled between the university and the CA/OA, taking into consideration the expected amount of time and skill that a CA/OA will commit to a course. I wouldn't expect WMF to compensate ambassadors, but I don't see how it would be harmful to give universities the option of compensating ambassadors in a similar way to how tutors, lab assistants, and TAs are compensated. Pine(talk) 07:25, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

No, no, and no. There is no way that we'll ever get compensated for doing what we do, and I am quite happy about this. There is no way that my home university would ever get pay me, because they are fighting for budget help from the state that decreases yearly. Imagine the controversy and negative light it would bring to our program if it was brought to light that we were being compensated for our work. We are volunteers first, teachers second. Schools are increasingly being stretched thin and budgets are being slashed, and there is no way in hell that we should be insisting that we get compensation for our work. It would also create considerable controversy for the school itself, as people would be wanting to wonder why we are getting paid, but students are increasingly drowning in more debt because of radically increasing costs. I know this is a good idea, but it will never happen. If we are continue to keep a good light on this project, we should not be asking for compensation for something we have literally volunteered years of our lives to. A volunteer is a volunteer, but to have it any other way threatens their name. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 07:51, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
Uh, I think one issue is that not all CAs/OAs are perfectly trained for their task. If they were qualified rather than enthusiastic volunteers, then maybe there'd be less uproar; I suspect that as things stand there'd be far too many issues with requiring pay for sometimes absentee or mistake-prone, if well-meaning, ambassadors. Also, ten bucks says the community would riot, whether or not that's fair. sonia (talk) 07:54, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
My training for a paid TA position at my alma mater consisted of me being handed the book of homework answers and being told not to swear during tutorial sessions. I don't think training is an issue. Danger High voltage! 08:22, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, but you're not letting students loose on Wikipedia. Or unofficially representing the Foundation. sonia (talk) 08:36, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
Kevin Rutherford , you may be satisfied with not getting paid... but I'd like to know the number of hours you have put in with Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Personality (William Fleeson)? I can tell you point blank that no matter how well intention the ambassador may be, they have NOT done an adequate job. The DYKs students submitted were not properly formatted in many case. I do not think a single article submitted by William Fleeson's class had passed. I don't see adequate support material on the page for how to submit DYKs. When the articles sat unreviewed for 9 days, the campus ambassador did NOT step in and review the articles themselves. When the students received feedback and did not respond, the campus ambassador did not poke and prod the student to insure compliance or did not quick fail the DYK. Perhaps, if the campus ambassador had been better trained and paid to spend time on doing the DYK work, we could have greater classroom success and more competent people serving in this position. The foundation might not be paying but the university definitely should be paying. Any argument to the contrary, especially when a COMPETENT ambassador is fundamental to the success of the class, basically demeans the value of educators. This is not a case of free knowledge, but of paying for a teacher. Teachers and educators should not be required to be uncompensated, especially when others in the cultural sector are being offered opportunities for compensation through WP:GLAM opportunities. (This DYK situation with Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Personality (William Fleeson)'s class shows focusing on USAians does not solve problems there with India. It just creates different ones. Why is this project not learning from its failures?) --LauraHale (talk) 09:51, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
At first, I just showed up a few times to help orient them to Wikipedia. When it came down to the final weeks, I was putting in a good 6-8 hours a week just making sure that everything was formatted properly (this is on top of 5 classes, 7.5 hours a week on marching band practice, and my job as a Resident Assistant). In the end, it worked. My instructor didn't require a certain amount of words, but I was able to make sure that things lined up as much as possible and they ended up becomming the fifth-most expansive class of the semester. My instructor was a bit leery of having them be "recruited" for Wikipedia, but in the end it worked out quite well (He ended up even blogging for the foundation this semester, as he considers it quite valuable to do). I was unable to help this semester at UMass as I am interning down in Washington, but I am able to say that we have spoken about doing this next year and it will be better. The other UMass classes that we had were mixed. One was successful and was taught by a Campus Ambassador himself, and that class came in second in material added, although I am unsure of how many were submitted for DYK status. I attempted to work with another instructor as well in the form of a graduate-level course, but it flopped partially because the instructor was weary of involving Wikipedia on an official level (to this day, I have no clue what was expanded, and what I do know was because I bumped into someone by accident, and found out from Debaser what the other group did). To that issue, I am a strong advocate of keeping a close relationship with the instructor and getting things in person, because I don't like not knowing what was fixed for the better.
In terms of having the foundation pay, it might happen, but there will be considerable uproar over having us becomming paid to "edit." Home universities will almost likely all refuse, and it would be easier for the foundation to pay us than having us pay the schools, which would in turn pay us. I like my free status (and maybe that is because I am still a student), but I really do not see how being paid would better for us in the end. We should focus on perfecting the job before we are potentially controversially compensated. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 15:44, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I agree with Kevin and sonia about the potential for community uproar. A response for Pine: Having ambassadors paid by a university, for reviewing DYKs, to me seems awfully close to paying for DYKs, raising the potential for conflicts of interest or the appearance thereof. Being new here though, I would defer to the wisdom of experienced ambassadors. Has the lack of compensation been causing issues with quality or retention? Gobōnobo + c 09:59, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
universities collect tuition from students taking the course, and they should use that money to pay all the instructors. The CA and OA are in those roles because they have valuable uncommon expertise needed by the university. Wikipedia benefits as well and should be paying both its headquarters staff (which it does) and the field staff. Rjensen (talk) 11:19, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
Please let me be clear that I'm not discussing in my proposal any suggestion for any non-ambassador people with titles on Wikipedia like administrators and checkusers to be paid, and I want to make sure that this discussion doesn't spiral into talking about comparing which on-wiki roles should be paid roles. That discussion would be better placed at the Village Pump. Here the discussion is only about ambassadors. Since universities are making money off of their students' tuition and any support from taxes or other sources of income, and since they pay instructors and various student staff like TAs anyway, the question is if there should also be the option but not the obligation for universities to pay ambassadors. It seems to me that we have trouble getting enough ambassadors with decent skills to make the time commitment to support classes, and giving universities the option to pay ambassadors that work for them seems to me that it's an acceptable way to address that problem. I think that the question of who should pay ambassadors, the WMF or the universities, is a good one. It seems to me that the universities should be the ones paying although Jami may be able to talk about whether it's more realistic for ambassadors to be paid through the WMF or through universities. I'd guess that any discussion of ambassadors being paid by the WMF would require approval from Sue Gardner and-or the board which makes it less likely to happen in the near future than universities paying ambassadors. I think it's reasonable for universities to be allowed to pay. Pine(talk) 06:18, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
What Pine said. I'm not saying everyone should be paid who assists classrooms. What I am saying is a good campus ambassador SHOULD be putting in the same amount of time as an on campus, in the classroom teaching/graduate assistant. Among the tasks that teaching/graduate assistants do include 1) teaching and 2) grading. In a Campus Ambassador sense, their job is to 1) teach students how to use Wikipedia and 2) assess student content through various assessment process on Wikipedia. There is very little difference in the tasks. The university should be paying for the teaching and assessing skills required because they are highly valued skills and they should be seeking the most competent people available. At the moment, the programme does not have this. There are some clear problems, including the fact that we have a Campus Ambassador who is guiding students through DYK who has only THREE DYKs to their credit, is not active in DYK by moving things to the queue and does not review articles. WP:COMPETENT for WP:DYK is a problem here and the ambassadors lack of competence (coupled with the ambassador programme NOT recruiting a highly skilled person in this area, and not discouraging the DYK thing to begin with) are causing problems for the rest of the system. Why should completely volunter T:TDYK contributors have to be burdened with non-voluntary editors who are required to contribute? The system was not designed with them in mind. The classroom stuff burdens a taxed system while getting nothing in return. Blah blah blah. Highly competent educators with highly valued Wikipedia specific skills doing that would lead them to getting paid as a TA/GA if on campus means they should receive compensation. --LauraHale (talk) 08:13, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
I see nothing wrong with getting the universities to pay ambassadors. This would certainly improve their motivation and hours spent. And the WMF is no stranger to getting people to do wiki-promotional work for $, consider all those Wikimedia Fellows and Wikipedians at [cultural institution here]. That said, I very much doubt that we will be able to convince the universities to pay us anything; that would be a hard thing to do at any time, and in the time of cutting costs left and right... fat chance. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 16:05, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I would certainly see this as something up to the individual universities, who will likely come to a range of conclusions, based on their own particular resources and learning environments.--Pharos (talk) 15:46, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Before pressing further on this "universities must pay for this service", I'd suggest that those supporting the notion of paying campus ambassadors consider how this fits in with the general concept of paid editing. I'm pretty sure that a sizeable portion of the community would take exception to this notion; as it is, there is a non-zero portion of the community that already views paid Wikipedian-in-residence programs to be unacceptable. I realise that Jimmy Wales does a fair amount of simplification of messaging for probably valid communication purposes, but for some time he's been putting forward in the media that paid editing of any kind is unacceptable. From the perspective of a university being approached to "hire" a Wikipedian in order to have a Wikipedia-based class, they'll probably see a pretty major clash in the messaging here. Further, we already know that there are plenty of examples of courses that are being operated outside of the ambassador program. Charging fees to the very many cash-strapped educational facilities that have incorporated Wikipedia editing into their programs will simply encourage them to skip the "ambassador" route. Risker (talk) 04:38, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
    • Not to rehash the debate here, but the community has consistently rejected the idea that paid editing is never acceptable (at worst it's merely a red flag). The fact that people may be confused by Jimmy's misrepresentation is Jimmy's problem - if they ask, we explain as you said that he was oversimplifying the situation. That said, I don't think paying ambassadors to support a single class makes a lot of sense considering the small time commitment, unless they're also acting as TAs (subject matter experts), or unless they're supporting many classes at a school. Dcoetzee 06:35, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Two quick points, I guess. The first is that I see a difference between paying someone to support Wikipedia's processes, and paying someone to edit an article. The problem with paid editing is that it may lead to significant problems with the articles concerned - NPOV, false references, copyvio and other concerns. However, if someone is paid to help teach how to edit Wikipedia, then I don't see an automatic conflict. Perhaps a better correlation would be between providing someone with some money to help out with a WikiAcademy, or to organise a program for the WMF. If it doesn't involve teh editing of an article, then I don't think the two issues are connected.
The second point is that I'd rather not see editors paid to be online ambassadors anyway, simply because it seems to go against the spirt of the volunteer project. For me, I volunteer my time because I believe in what we're doing, I guess, and I wouldn't want to loose that side of things. Plus I don't think that what we do as Online Ambassadors is any more important or complex than what people do helping out on CCIs; answering questions on the Help desk, OTRS or the Teahouse; or reviewing articles for GA - or indeed many other roles, so I'm not of a mind to argue that I'm more deserving of payment as an OA than any of those other people would be. I'm less convinced about campus ambassadors, as that is more in keeping with a tutoring position - when I employ tutors I pay them, and if the campus ambassador role is that of a tutor, I would expect to pay someone to do it. But I'm not sure of the extent that the two roles correlate, and I suspect that the answer is "not a great deal". - Bilby (talk) 07:09, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Bilby, I agree completely that there are other people whose work on Wikipedia is highly valuable and at one point or another might become a paid role, similar to Wikimedians in Residence. One reason I discuss paying ambassadors is because we can't seem to get enough of them with decent skills who will be reliable and make the time commitment to do a good job. We are not faced with such a dire shortage of copyeditors, checkusers, or arbcom members that we need to think about paying people in order to retain good ones. I think that the situation may be different with ambassadors. Pine(talk) 07:50, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
I guess I'd ask you to put up any evidence that people who are paid to carry out what is traditionally a volunteer role are any better at doing the role, or that paying for the role would attract the kind of candidates you're looking for. As well, much as I don't have much truck with the "COI" comments being made on this page, once someone is actually being paid to "teach" someone how to use Wikipedia, it's pretty unlikely that the colleges and universities will hand over the cash without some pretty clearcut evidence of an ambassador's "success" - what percentage of the ambassador's students passed the course, what their average mark was, how many dropped out, etc. When one's livelihood depends (in part, at least) on the ability to keep edits on Wikipedia, we're into some pretty grey areas. "Oh, we know X is a good editor so it's okay" doesn't really cut it. Risker (talk) 15:50, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm a bit uncomfortable with disagreeing with you, as I am opposed to paying OAs. However, I don't feel that COI is the correct comparison. The problem of having a paid COI is that it inclines editors to write POV articles. They may want to see those edits stick, for obvious reasons, but their primary goal is to slant the article.
But that isn't the risk here. "Stickiness" doesn't come from POV, but from meeting requirements. So if an OA wants edits to stick, the OA would need to ensure that the edits meet policy, and there is no gain to the OA or student if those edits are POV - only an increased risk of losing the edit. The fundamental goals are different. That doesn't mean that I don't think there are problems attached to paying OAs, but simply that the problem isn't the same as we have with COI paid editors.
I guess I should also add that if an Ambassador helps students break Wikipedia's policies and guidelines in order to get a grade they didn't deserve, then that OA would be guilty of academic misconduct. I'm not sure that would fully address anyone's concerns, but it is worth noting. - Bilby (talk) 16:36, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Risker: in every university setting I've ever seen, the problems you suggest, if they occurred, would be FAR more likely to result in the ambassadors/professors bending or changing the grading guidelines of the class, not trying to break Wikipedia's rules. The number of students who fail a USEP class doesn't directly depend on how many of their edits stick on their articles - WMF/ENWP doesn't dictate grading policy - it depends on how the professor (and TA's) of a course choose to grade. In most courses in most universities if 90% of the students blew the main assignment, the professor/TA's would change the grading system rather than fail 90% of the class. Changing the way you grade is a lot easier than shattering a bunch of Wikipedia's rules - and has no potential for embarrassment. In the university system of my state, evaluation of people in such a compensated position would be done primarily through anonymous student evaluations filled out at the end of the semester and through the instructor's impression of the success of the ambassador - and I think both of these things would not be easily fakeable by taking action to keep bad edits on Wikipedia. It wouldn't just be like "okay, your students got an A on average, clearly you're good at this, you're rehired." How grades play out has little to no effect on compensation/getting rehired, except in situations where the same class has multiple TA's with multiple sections whose students do substantially differently on the same test. (So I guess I could maybe see a problem if the same course had four or five compensated ambassadors, but I doubt we'll have to deal with that anytime soon...) Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:36, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I have, to be clear, never been compensated for educational work. And I would of course not support a policy requiring universities to compensate ambassadors - that would defeat the point of the program. But I've thought previously about seeking compensation for classes where I take on a greater-than-MOU role, and I may do so in the future. I don't think it would be hard to successfully do so - it's pretty customary at my university for a course to have one or more teaching assistants or graders/readers. If a course used a major Wikipedia-based assignment and I handled its design, implementation, and grading, I would be doing equivalent work to a TA or a reader, and I think professors would have no problem funding me for it. I don't see a COI problem, and it would allow me to put more hours in to it than I could if I was not compensated. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:36, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Pine has requested a comment from me, so I'll do my best to respond to some of the suggestions you guys have brought up. I can't truthfully comment on the issue of whether paying editors is rejected on Wikipedia, as you guys are more of the experts on that. However, I can at least try to give you some insight I've had that may or may not contribute to what we're talking about here. In analyzing some of our most successful ambassadors and classes (at least at the Campus Ambassador level--we have never explicitly recruited ambassadors who support DYK, so I have no experience there), I do believe that, in a sense, payment is a logical motivation. However, the way we've, up to this point, gone about making this work is actually recruiting ambassadors whose jobs can easily adopt the role of Campus Ambassador. In other words, Institution X is already paying Ambassador Y to help professors use new media in the classroom. We then train Ambassador Y to come on board with the Education Program, and now the role fits into the pre-existing job. That has certainly seemed successful, as it does make sense to find someone whose job they're already doing aligns with our goals.
As for that motivation for Campus Ambassadors, I've always thought an alternative approach could be to work with a university to get internship credit or class credit to serve as an ambassador (in a more formal setting: with multiple teachers and office hours somewhere on campus). This would be similar to paying ambassadors, and I certainly don't think that'd be a bad idea.
Pine asked me to comment on whether the Foundation would ever pay Ambassadors. I certainly can't speak to what the WMF will ever do, but you guys should all know by now that the Wikimedia Foundation is actually making efforts to hand the program off to the community by next May, so I'd guess the answer would be 'no'. However, this sounds like a great place, to me, for someone to propose a new structure that not only employs some full-time staff but part-time campus liaisons or maybe even traveling consultants. I don't know--that would be up to the new structure about how they want to continue to scale the program. I will put my own opinion out there that I think it would be better for Ambassadors to try this on a case-by-case, local level. Wikipedian-in-residence type of thing at a university learning center or library? JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 22:55, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Personality, again

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
My mistake, these articles not a part of this programme at all. Apologies to all. Lankiveil (speak to me) 04:54, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Following on from the above discussion about poor quality DYK nominations as a part of the course on personality, taught by William Fleeson. User:LauraHale contacted me earlier this evening concerned that many of the same articles that were unsuccessful in getting DYKs have now been nominated for GA, despite most of them clearly not meeting the GA criteria, and asked for a second opinion. After looking at a few, I quickly came to the same conclusion. As such, most of them have been quick-failed.

Obviously, I'm aware that the problems we've been having with this particular course are not "par for the course" (if you'll pardon the pun), but I'm very concerned about the guidance that the professor is receiving in this case if he thought that it was a good idea to nominate these articles for GA at this time. These were not borderline cases that were eventually failed after careful deliberation, these were pretty clearly cases where the criteria were not looked at, and the ambassadors clearly didn't give them a quick once over to make sure that they were ready for GA review. I won't even get into the topic of how a lot of this flies in the community consensus for medical articles developed at WP:MEDRS.

To give some examples of the types of problems being encountered, I found that students from this course had:

  • Submitting an article for GA review which tried to use Wikia as a reference (Information cascade)
  • Submitting an article for GA review that had had a maintenance tag on it for over two years (Affect heuristic)
  • Submitting an article for GA review that was full of original research and not written in an encyclopaedic format (Group polarization)
  • Submitting an article for GA review that had massive chunks of uncited prose, after the article had also been failed from DYK (Gambler's fallacy)
  • Submitting an article for GA review which is written as an essay (admittedly, quite probably a good essay) when we are writing encyclopaedia articles instead (Psychic numbing)

I don't want to sound like I'm ragging on the students in this course, who when they've responded to feedback have for the most part been friendly and apologetic about the errors that they've made. I acknowledge that in some cases they've improved the articles they're working on (although not to our GA standard), and that getting Wikipedia right is hard. The problem is not with them, the problem is in my view with whatever advice they're getting because it's obviously wrong, it's causing a lot of cleanup work for other volunteers, and it's giving these students what is probably a fairly horrible first impression of us and what we do.

I'm not going to claim that this is a justification for closing the whole shebang down, but whoever is running the Ambassador programme needs to take a good hard look at what's gone wrong in this particular instance and see if there's ways that this sort of counterproductive mess can be avoided in the future. Lankiveil (speak to me) 14:04, 27 April 2012 (UTC).

The quick fail of most of the articles is appropriate as they do clearly do not meet GA-criteria. I believe that Mr. Fleeson was either not full enformed/misinformed as to what the GA process is. GA provides a review for qualifying articles that meet GA-criteria...these articles should instead be submitted for Wikipedia:Peer review. Please let your online ambassadors (myself) know what you plan to do so that we can provide some guidance/feedback...it's what we're here for.Smallman12q (talk) 20:36, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Just to clarify, none of the articles you've provided above are from Professor Fleeson's class. You can see the list of articles students worked on and see that none of them match these GA submissions. Thank you, JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Wow...er...should've checked. I thought those titles didn't look psychology related. My bad.Smallman12q (talk) 20:50, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Whoops, my bad. These seem to instead be a part of a class taught by User:Marie Helweg-Larsen. I could not find it listed at Wikipedia:United_States_Education_Program/Courses, is it even a part of this programme? Lankiveil (speak to me) 23:46, 27 April 2012 (UTC).
It looks as if this class is not a part of the programme. Here are the articles/students from Marie Helweg-Larsen's Dickinson College class:

I recall coming across another class that had created a class page in the USEP space, but had no assigned ambassadors and looked to be operating independently. I see that the professor put up some details on her user page and said the assignment is part of the American Psychological Society's Wikipedia initiative. The APS Wikipedia Sample Syllabus on that website has steps for nominating articles for DYK (in week 7) and GA (in week 10). I note that User:Elektrik Shoos has already welcomed most of the students. Gobōnobo + c 01:37, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Ambassador COI query

... at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive2#Several problems in one. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:47, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Simplifying semester spaghetti

I would like to propose that we simplify the mild insanity of the multifarious US academic term systems (with their many divergent starting times and lengths), by the ditching Q1/2/3/4 system, and going for classifying our ambassador classes by simple A or B semesters, for terms that start in the months of January-June and July-December respectively.--Pharos (talk) 22:53, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I support this idea. Currently there are 2012 Q1 and 2011 Q3 classes running concurrently, which is rather confusing. Gobōnobo + c 23:36, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

DYK nominationsfrom one education program are flooding DYK

  • Articles about the Big Five personality traits in the DYK queue now. Presumably these articles are all new or recently expanded 5x per DYK rules. These articles include Hierarchical Structure of the Big Five, Big Five personality traits and culture, Change in the Big Five which is most of the article named Change in personality over a lifetime, Five-factor model which is the only model described in Dimensional models of personality disorders and Personality and life outcomes - basically about the Big Five — all these nominated for DYK right now. And maybe more. I haven't checked them all. Isn't this unusual for all these new articles on the "Big Five" to be written recently, as others have said it is a well known personality theory. The MMPI which really has been around for a long time only seems to have one article (others, like MMPI-2 redirected to it).
  • Carps11 has replied: "They were all nominated for DYK as part of a graduate class in personality psychology. As part of the course requirement, all our articles needed to be relevant to personality psychology research, which is why so many of them are related to the Big Five."[1] Looking at his course Article banners, it can be seen that these article on the Big Five were course requirements.
  • Surely some online ambassadors, or whoever supervises these programs should step in, yes? I don't think the course professor understand DYK requirements. Why is this particular personality theory being promoted now, when other personality theories are not?
    • Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I have contacted the professor, Campus Ambassador and one of the Online Ambassadors (looks like one of the Online Ambassadors has become inactive on Wikipedia for a bit). I am looking into exactly what the problem is and how we can help fix it. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
      • Looking more carefully at the course's timeline/assignments, it does look like there's a misunderstanding of DYK and requirements/qualifications. I'll let the professor know, but is there anything we can do about the articles being in the DYK queue? Can they just be removed (I'm not sure how that approval process works)? JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
        • If they don't meet DYK reqs, the nominations can be closed by any community member. Kevin (kgorman-ucb) (talk) 18:50, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
          • Update: professor responded that he does think he understands the minimum requirements and thought these met them. I glanced at one so far, and it looks like someone created an article that should actually be combined into another article, so maybe that's the problem? I hope people who are concerned about this issue can tread lightly with the students. They seem to be smart graduate students who are adding quality content and could be good editors with a little more guidance. It certainly isn't their fault that we had a miscommunication with the class about requiring DYK submissions (which was common during the PPI but is not anymore). Hope you guys agree! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
            • I am the professor of the course. The question is whether the big five merited multiple articles about topics related to it. In my opinion, yes. However, I and my students are certainly open to suggestions for change. The Big Five is a major topic that occupies massive amounts of scientific effort. It is a dominant model in personality psychology (and not my model, to be sure). In fact, I believe it is woefully underrepresented on Wikipedia. A quick search revealed 342 scientific articles published on the big five in 2011/2012 alone, and 2424 articles published since just 2000. If you look at the specific traits within the model, you add thousands more scientific articles: extraversion (9189), agreeableness (2860), conscientiousness (3636), emotional stability (2493), openness to experience (1917). Each of these traits alone could itself possibly merit multiple pages. I would guess it is no smaller in scope and importance that Positive Mental Attitdue (1 C, 38p) in social psychology, Tissue Engineering (12 pages) in biology, Acoustic Fingerprinting (15 pages) in physics, and Stink Bug (7 pages). We went through a careful procedure of article selection, following the recommended syllabus by the Wikipedia course program. Over the course of several weeks, students first explored the content area, then they listed about four possible articles to write and elicited feedback from the community. They modified their selections based on feedback from the community and me, and then selected one of the four to write on. They then wrote a sandbox draft and elicited feedback on that. They responded to the feedback from the community, the ambassadors, and from me, and then finally posted their article and nominated it for DYK. All along, they read guides, files, and wikipedia pages about article selection and DYK. We had multiple course discussions about the selection. It is possible that one or two of these articles are not distinct enough, or that they need to be modified, but my judgment is that each of these topics is potentially distinct enough, and this judgment is based on careful investigation and following of Wikipedia policy. William Fleeson (talk) 20:49, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

There is a concern that the material presented is redundant. However, the articles are not yet completed, and while there is some redundancy, the topics are the subject of ongoing research and have numerous publications. Wikipedia allows for specialized articles provided that the topics are notable, and introduce material not covered in other articles. If the wiki didn't have coverage in this area before, that doesn't preclude new and improved coverage. Content forking is allowed, especially where it helps to more thoroughly present the material. These are knowledgeable pysch grad students who are editing the wiki for the first time...we should be more friendly when it comes to their first article and DYK.Smallman12q (talk) 22:41, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

  • William, thank you so much for more information about the assignment! It does seem like the articles in question present more of a "redundancy" issue than whether the content is qualified for DYK. Do those at DYK have any more constructive comments about what we can all do to fix the situation? Thanks for everyone who has provided more information so we could all be on the same page! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 00:37, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I am glad to see an instructor engaging the community. I think William makes a very good case for the subjects being notable. Five or six noms are not a flood of a DYK page, but if there are concerns, I'd suggest that the students/instructors/ambassadors may want to review five (or whatever number noms they sumbit) of DYKs, thus making their effective impact on the DYK page neutral. This is already required of all experienced DYK contributors, and it is a good policy when dealing with GAs (when my student submit a GAN, I always review another GAN in exchange). On a wider note, I highly suggest that we make such reviews a requirement of DYK/GANs; this will help alleviate the occasional "edu assignments are flooding the DYK/GAN" complaint we get now and then. This should be coupled with a required exercise in which students review a DYK (or perhaps a GA) before submitting their nom. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 16:23, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
The problem is the articles were all on the same subject (regardless of the article title) and contained basically the same content. MathewTownsend (talk) 23:16, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Then they should've been gathered into one hook (a single DYK hook can feature numerous new articles). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 22:45, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Success metrics

I am very unclear as to what metrics are being used to declare this program a success and, in turn, to so strongly advocate for its continuation and expansion. From what I am gleaning, the metrics principally being used to indicate success are:

  • number of students participating
  • number of edits made by the students
  • percentage of edits made by students that "survives" to the end of the course

Better metrics for evaluating the success of the education project, from the perspective of Wikipedia, would be:

  • percentage of students who continue to be productive, active editors 3 months and 6 months post course
  • comparison of results for classes led by professors with significant successful Wikipedia experience vs those with no or limited Wikipedia experience
  • ratio between students and Wikipedians actively supporting a specific class (does not need to be limited to ambassadors)

I cannot help but notice the number of Wikipedians who have turned a cold shoulder to this project, or are actively disputing its value. In particular, I notice a significant number of editors who have a respected history of working with students, professors and classes to meet educational goals and objectives now saying that this isn't working any longer. In reflecting back on earlier successes before the advent of this specific project, it is apparent that the "classes" that succeeded were almost uniformly organized by professors who were already committed and knowledgeable Wikipedians, and the ratio of students to supporting Wikipedians was never greater than 10:1 and more often closer to 3:1.

It has become increasingly obvious that there's a significant divide between what the Education Project considers its objectives to be, and what Wikipedians thought the objectives were. Wikipedians thought that the Education Project was going to help develop structures to support useful class projects in a way that best utilized community resources without overburdening them; part of that was finding ways to actively discourage class projects that were going to be too resource-intensive or had little prospect of adding value to the encyclopedia. The reality is that there does not appear to be any advance consideration to the impact of individual classes on the encyclopedia, and it appears that several classes have proceeded without having sufficient ambassadors (and/or other Wikipedia volunteers) specifically tasked to them. There simply aren't enough community resources to continue with this level and type of engagement with colleges and universities. It seems that what the Community was aiming for was new editors who were willing to learn our editing expectations, strove to improve content within those rules, and were likely to stick around; what they got was goal-oriented users with only a superficial interest in the project, and with no intention of continuing their engagement here. In other words, there's no rationale to invest any more time and energy into this particular group of new users than there is in a random selection of new users. Given the number of researchers and educators involved in this project, I think it essential that the Education Project actually start assessing its value to Wikipedia in terms that Wikipedia itself considers important. Risker (talk) 19:56, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

  • I agree with much of Risker's commentary. Like Risker, I am concerned about how limited volunteer resources are being used and the consequences of having demand that exceeds supply. However, I think that we need to be careful that we don't mix together problems that are occurring in two distinct types of classes, classes that are formally participating in the WEP and classes that aren't. The two types of classes seem to have different types of problems associated with them. The Working Group may be in a good position to do a top to bottom review of the US and Canada programs as they decide on a new program structure. Pine(talk) 20:27, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I would like to propose a more compelling metric: "percentage of students who continue to be general, productive, active editors, as measured by contributions to article-space pages outside the WikiProject covering their course at quarterly intervals." Stuartyeates (talk) 22:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Suggestion, let's move this discussion to the Ambassador talk page because this applies to more than just the US and Canada. The Education Working Group is only for the US and Canada. Pine(talk) 23:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
    • I agree completely. It's impossible to follow all the threads. This was a problem last semester. There should be one centralized place for discussion. There's also discussion on "outreach". Unfortunately, I don't know how to get to "outreach". I lost the link.
 Done with move. Pine(talk) 23:42, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I finally found the outreach page where I was getting some help regarding the Online Ambassador who didn't understand copyvio/plagiarism/close paraphrase. But that page has been shut down and redirected.[2]
  • Here's the info regarding posts on that page before it was redirected.[3] That page helped me out. MathewTownsend (talk) 23:53, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
  • While I don't mind that this post has been moved, I'm not convinced this is the place to move it, because the ambassadors don't approve which classes are accepted (to the best of my knowledge), nor do they manage the metrics. I would also dispute that this was just a problem last semester: it has been a perennial problem. The worst example was the IEP one, which required several hundred editor-hours to repair. Risker (talk) 00:19, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
  • The problem might be that there's no one in charge. I found this out when an Online Ambassador tried to pass and article twice at GAN, and both times it was failed because of close paraphrasing/plagiarism and other concerns. It was clear from her numerous comments that she doesn't understand these issues. That Online Ambassador is on the "Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering Committee". One of them admitted to me that they basically have no complaints department and no one in charge. MathewTownsend (talk) 00:48, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
(Hi Riskr.) Regarding metrics, I would dispute that "editor retention" is measurable, or to be precise, any measurement is likely to be naive. An initiative like this can only hope to plant a seed in someone; perhaps their interest is renewed when they visit Wikipedia a year after university has passed, and they start editing as an IP or under a different username. (I know I wouldn't keep the username that I had created for, and associate with, coursework—ick!) [rambling...] That being said, it is valid that preferential "support and encouragement" being given to one type of new editor over another appears inconsistent with how WP is supposed to work. (Yet that argument, by itself, seems like a poor reason not to try something different.) I presume the justification for focusing on student newbies is based on assumptions about their current ability and future yield over a random new editor. Yet, ironically, regular new editors are here because they want to be, and students aren't, so the question of where to invest friendly oversight and volunteer time is not as easily answered as the education project's assumptions imply. With the education project, though, you at least get a target and economies of scale (why am I sounding like a businessman?). In my limited experience with the informal Project of "Getting a new editor who did something useful to talk to you so you can encourage them", well, it wouldn't make for much of a Project. Riggr Mortis (talk) 02:20, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
Agree that trying to measure how successful the project is by editor retention is grasping at the wind: Some may return under a different user name; some may return a year or two hiatus, etc. Assuredly, most simply will not return... If this project continues, it should be thought of as a public relations project, with some hope (never verified) that some editors will be retained. Metrics for success, then, should focus on the administration of the program, rather than its outcome: are all projects receiving experienced mentors? Are all students getting their questions answered? Are they learning about COI, copyvio, etc.? ... and oh BTW, the best way to increase the odds of retention are to train some students as trainers rather than trainees. Then they will feel more ownership, greater feeling of accomplishment, etc. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 03:09, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
First and foremost projects must improve Wikipedia. There is some evidence that the education project has improved Wikipedia in certain areas and there is some evidence that the education has not improved Wikipedia in certain areas. What we need to do is figure out how what we mean by "improve Wikipedia" and than figure out how to consistently and fairly measure it. Once we are doing this we can than have data drive project. Stuff that does not work gets canned. Stuff that does work gets more effort / funding put into it.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:50, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
A thought. I've been studying the edit history of some major history articles (it's for a paper I'm giving at Wikimania on the war of 1812). Time and again it appears the major growth period in terms of new material and max rate of editing edits was in 2007-2008. Since then it's much lower edit rates. The initial burst of excitement is over, and we're at a new, mature stage of development. What academe can do is jump up the quality level to incorporate modern scholarship. (I find very few history articles cite ANY scholarly journals and few cite major books of the last 5 years.) Once the professors see high quality footnotes they will recommend Wiki to their students, and the eager ones will link the articles closer to the scholarship. Rjensen (talk) 08:05, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
You have a good point about the problem with recent (or simply just recently available) scholarly work not being incorporated into WP. I've been thinking about how much of the content I added 5 or 6 years ago is not up to my current standards. I am noticing more scholarly sources (journals and books) available on-line, and I am just starting to go back to some articles and rewrite them using better (more comprehensive and more reliable) sources. Students have an advantage over me in that they have access to more sources in school libraries than I do on-line and through my local public library. I haven't noticed any history or archaeology courses in the education program, which I thought was a shame. The basic problem, though, is the lack of enough experienced editors willing to work with classes. Indeed, I've recently quit as an Online Ambassador (for more than one reason, but my failure to have any real impact on student editing was one). -- Donald Albury 09:32, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
The goal of the program is and always has been to improve the quality of articles, not retain editors. Are we glad if students stick around? Absolutely. But as Doc James indicates, our goal is to show measured improvement to articles on Wikipedia. And Ling.Nut3, we absolutely agree with the trainee as trainer model; we've had a lot of great students become Campus Ambassadors for future terms. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

New research project

We're kicking off a research project to collect data we think may or may not have some impact on what makes classes successful. We have a list of questions available at Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Research, and I encourage anyone interested in research to take a look at the questions. We're trying to identify common markers across successful courses, so that we can be more selective about which courses to work with in the future, targeting courses that have markers that we have seen have led to success in the past. Please take a look at the questions and add anything you think we've missed that might contribute to the success or failure of a class. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:20, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks good. I left a comment at Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors/Research about one area that could be improved. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 00:04, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
I'm glad to see this initiative. I added the "Research" tab to the Ambassador tabs template, and made a number of comments on the research talk page. Pine(talk) 09:13, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Proposal for WAP template delete/merge

Discuss here. Pine(talk) 07:08, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikimania Education Meet-Up

Are you going to Wikimania? I'd like to arrange an Education Meet-Up while we are all in D.C. this year. Anyone from any country in the world is welcome to join -- Ambassadors, professors, students, program organizers, people interested in starting a program in any country worldwide, etc. We'll even provide T-shirts and some food! Here's where we need some input: when would be a good time for the meet-up, and what kinds of activities would you like to do at the meet-up?

Please fill out this Google Form if you're interested in connecting with other volunteers interested in education around the world at Wikimania! Hope to see you there! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 21:55, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Sub-standard articles nominated at WP:GAN

I, and others, have noted a recent increase in GAN nominations of sub-standard articles which you may wish to address. See for example WT:Good article nominations#Fishy GAN. Jezhotwells (talk) 02:13, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

there's a basic contradiction in the program: the goal of the project is a) to get lots of students started on their first Wikipedia article; and b) to make these articles first class in quality. Not many pursuits work that way--you can teach beginners to play the piano but we do not expect any of them to win the concerto competition at the end of the semester. Rjensen (talk) 02:29, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
But we may expect them to graduate through the grades. My point is that that those engaged in this program should be be cognisant of of Wikipedia standards. Jezhotwells (talk) 02:36, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I would seriously consider putting a strongly worded suggestion somewhere that students should not nominate their articles for Good status. Otherwise I fear we will have to institute changes their to block any new users from nominating. Good article nominations is bursting at the seams and the student nominations are one of the biggest problems. Many student nominations lack the knowledge of our processes to either get the article up to the required standard or to respond to reviewers concerns adequately. The topics are generally quite obscure meaning they are two technical for the average reader and of little interest to the average reviewer. Many are written as essays and use non-free content. The students don't stick around and therefore are unlikely to contribute to the review backlog in the future or in many cases will not even be available to respond to reviews of their own articles. There has even been a reported case of a student emailing a reviewer begging for a pass otherwise they will fail their course. AIRcorn (talk) 00:00, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
You are kidding right? Students trying to get their very first article up to GA status? In the time that a single college class happens? I wrote my first (and only) GA after editing for more than 6 months, and the process itself took a few months (including waiting and editing). Any GA nominated by a student in the ambassador program should be procedurally closed given the extremely high likelihood that the student won't be around to complete the process. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:36, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Not at all. Some let us know beforehand. We were reviewing them early, but that is not really fair to the normal contributors that can wait up to three/four months for a review. Others you don't find out about until you start the review and in many cases the school group has finished. Of those linked above only five (out of about 60) still have GA status and all but one of those were in classes assigned to Piotrus (talk · contribs), a regular at GA who knows and stays involved in the process. AIRcorn (talk) 03:41, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
I certainly don't think that students should be expected or required to submit work to any of the WP assessment processes - although my understanding of the aims was to ensure that students work to generate material of value to WP, rather than just write anything. If the work is to GA standard then it is likely to be of value, so that is a good standard to aspire to. I do think there some overstating of the difficulty of writing a Good Article, though. This isn't a case of a beginner being expected to win a piano competition. GAs aren't that hard to write, and a good senior university student has both the skills to write one and should have the topic-specific knowledge, (depending on topic and article scope - some topics need higher levels of expertise, and some are so difficult to write that a GA is a huge challenge). Not every student is a good student, and not every topic can be quickly turned into a GA, but the better students won't be lacking the skills. Whether they have the WP-specific knowledge about GA standards is a different issue, but I don't see it as impossible for a good student to learn about WP and write a GA quality article in three months, especially if the course was well set up and taught.
That said, flooding any process with substandard articles is going to be bad, and should be avoided if at all possible. I just don't want the assumption to be that a student can't produce something of the GA quality in the time frame. - Bilby (talk) 05:14, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
The odd Good article gets written, but they are generally drowned out by the sub-standard ones. Maybe the best solution would be to get the Ambassadors, or even an independent group, to submit articles on behalf of the students. Only those that have a decent chance of making it to Good standard should be nominated. AIRcorn (talk) 06:29, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
I certainly agree with that. If people running the courses would have the students check with the OAs first about appropriateness of submitting the article then that would be a nice step forward. - Bilby (talk) 06:39, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that part of the problem is that some ambassadors and some academics don't understand the quality processes or assessment criteria of English Wikipedia. This seems eminently clear from reading comments above. Jezhotwells (talk) 14:43, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I recommend if you spot any classes commonly using GA or DYK review, you direct them to Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Research/Article quality, where ambassadors are volunteering to review articles and have been doing a very nice job keeping up with the demand. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 17:05, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
I do not disagree with the idea that Ambassadors could submit articles for their students. I've talked to a few people about the idea to have a forum (similar to the Education noticeboard, though maybe the complement of that) but simply for Ambassadors to link an article that they think is good. The idea behind this is that there are definitely students out their creating good work, and it'd be nice to accumulate those somewhere. Since Ambassadors should be looking at their classes' articles anyway, they could just easily post them there. Anyway, this might also be an opportunity to find potential Good Articles out of "good" articles. And then we could let professors know about that forum instead of how to submit to GA. :) It could still motivate students to make it to that list but without overwhelming any editors. Let me know if this doesn't make sense. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Research/Article quality is perfect. Better than what I had in mind. I would suggest that only articles that meet, or at least are close to, the Good article score there be sent to WP:GAN. AIRcorn (talk) 09:15, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
That would be good if we could rely on the students to respond to the reviews, but (particularly given the delays in doing GA reviews) I think it's likely the students won't stick around. I'd rather look at that metric as indicating that the article has improved to the point where an editor could take it to GAN if they want to. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:29, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
As far as I know, there's no plan for future semesters for conducting similar research. Even if that comes to fruition, it's still only a sample size of articles/classes. So this wouldn't really act as a deterrent for instructors to talk to their students about submitting for Good Article review. Right? JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:24, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
Some courses have been using GA review and DYK review as a means for getting feedback, not feature. So it would at least deter the ones that aren't actually attempting to achieve the feature if we can find a way to develop this review process into something permanent. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 17:06, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Replacing the course pages

As many of you know by now, we're introducing a new system for course pages this summer that we think will be more intuitive and easier to navigate. A few weeks ago we asked for help testing it, and we're very grateful for all the help we got!

At this point, we're looking for criticism and suggestions. For example, if you think this new system violates core policies or see some other fundamental flaw with it, that needs to be discussed now. Also, we've set up a feature request page if there's something you'd like to see added to its functionality.

Please feel free to play around with our test copy - and don't worry, since it's a test copy, you won't break anything, even if you delete universities or classes! Once released, it'll be integrated with the Wikipedia interface, so you won't have to visit another website to use it then.

If you have feedback, please discuss below. Suggestions for new features should be submitted through the form on that site.

Thank you! Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 17:12, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. I can't see the ambassador profile pages. My bigger complaint is that the wiki doesn't seem to allow the use of HTTPS which means that I'd need to log into it using plain HTTP. Pine(talk) 21:21, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
You won't need to visit a separate website or log into anything other than this wiki once it's launched; this is just an off-wiki preview of how it will appear once it's added to the English Wikipedia. Also, you should be able to see a sample CA profile now; there weren't any up before, which is why you couldn't see any. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 16:07, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
I still get a permissions error when I try to view the CA profile. Pine(talk) 20:27, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
The test copy link doesn't work for me. What's the status of this? Was it launched? If so, where is it now? Klortho (talk) 12:01, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
It should be rolling out soon; we had a major bug that caused an article to get deleted, so it had to be rolled back and the bug fixed. My understanding is it's going through QA now and will be ready for professors to use within a few weeks. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 17:17, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

GA review

Sorry I couldn't post on a more specific talk page, only the talk-page banner for the article in question, text annotation, didn't give any details. Anyway, there were some fairly big concerns with the article (but nothing particularly unusual). The nominator hasn't yet replied or edited and I wondered whether anyone in the Education project had any ideas or wanted to do anything about that. I've placed the article formally on hold today. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 12:34, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

  • Hi, you could also consider posting this note on Wikipedia:Education noticeboard which I think may be more broadly watched than the Ambassadors talk page. Given that the school year may be finished, you may not get a reply from the student. If you don't get a reply within a reasonable time period, please do as you think best with the GA nomination. Pine✉ 15:48, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Posted there. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:50, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
No further developments on the review process mentioned two threads up? AIRcorn (talk) 22:51, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Responded to the first question at WP:ENB. Aircorn, the review process mentioned two threads up is making significant headway from what I can tell; Priority 1 review was just completed. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 18:51, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. Let us know if anyone from WP:GA can help. AIRcorn (talk) 05:18, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Absolutely! We'd love the help! Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 17:32, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Assessors needed!

Hi Ambassadors,

Are you interested in helping us figure out what classes produce the best content on Wikipedia, and how to target the best professors to work with in the future? We need some help!

We're starting a research project (see more at WP:Ambassadors/Research) to determine just *what* makes some classes more successful than others. Is it the class size? Number of Ambassadors? Wikipedia experience of the professor? Public or private schools? Age level of the students? We have some hypotheses, but we are doing this research project to prove or disprove our ideas. We will use the outcomes to determine which courses we want to work with in the future.

Defining "success" is really important here, and we have identified three main drivers of success:

  • Quality of content students contribute (this is where we need help)
  • Quantity of content students contribute
  • Sustainability -- we'd rather have professors return multiple terms

We need your help in the quality bit. Some of you may be familiar with the assessment metric we used for the Public Policy Initiative research, a modified version of the Wikipedia 1.0 metric. We're using this metric again, and we need a corps of volunteers to use this metric to assess both the pre and post versions of a random sample of articles students worked on. Mike Christie, James Heilman, and I have put this project together.

If you can put in 10 minutes or even a few hours in the next couple of weeks toward assessing articles, we'd really appreciate it! The work you put in here will go toward determining the best classes for you to be working with in the future, so we really appreciate the help.

Get started here: Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Research/Article_quality

Please let me know if you have any questions! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 00:04, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to add that reviewing the students' articles is actually a great way to feel positive about the work you're doing as an ambassador. If, like me, you had little interaction with your students this semester, it's great to see other articles that have had good input and which have been improved by students' work, as most of them have. I think most ambassadors have thought at one time or another that working with a single class restricts their view of the whole education program, so that it's hard to tell if things are going well globally or not. I highly recommend that you review two or three articles; nothing else will give you so definite a sense of how well a course is going.
It's a fairly quick process -- the first review will probably take you about five or ten minutes, and once you get used to the rubric it can be very quick, especially if the article is a stub. If you try it and have any questions, you can post them here, or on my talk page, or on the article quality talk page. Please do consider reviewing at least a couple -- it's high value for the Education Program, and I think most people will find it rewarding. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:21, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
using the metric may take only 5 or 10 minutes, but i've usually review the submissions according to the appropriate combination of what I would say for a term paper I was grading, and what I would advise for a WP article, and doing this and writing the appropriate personal comments take me about five times that long, even if did not need to check references. DGG ( talk ) 22:15, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Farewell!

This is my final post to this wiki as staff. It's been a pleasure serving as a community liaison between editors and WEP staff. I'll still be around as a volunteer regional ambassador, but will not have the same central communication role I've had for the last few months. Please direct future questions to User talk:Ldavis (WMF). Thank you! Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 02:52, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your hard work! bobrayner (talk) 09:04, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
Thanks indeed, Rob!--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello!

Hi folks! I've just [re-]joined the Wikipedia Education Program team at Wikimedia. My role will be a little bit different from Rob's, as now the main focus will be on this ongoing transition (from now until May 2013) to an education program with no direct Wikimedia Foundation involvement. But the community liaison role now falls to me, so please bring any concerns you have about the program and its goings on to me.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Discussion about the coming Education Program extension

Hi Ambassadors! There's a discussion going on about the user rights for the soon-to-be-re-enabled courses extension, which will hopefully be in full use in the coming term. The discussion also touches on issues of governance for the education program.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 12:43, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Request for Comment

I've just opened up a request for comment on whether to enable the Education Program extension for managing and monitoring courses, both within the Wikipedia Education Program, and potentially for other classes working independently as well. If it does get enabled, there are related technical (user rights) and policy (who should be able to use it, and how will user rights be assigned?) issues that will need to be sorted out. It looks like this wasn't ready soon enough to use this coming term for most classes, but if the community wants the extension, it should be ready to go for the next term.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:40, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Which resources for students have you found useful?

I'm trying to improve and streamline our set of help resources for students and professors. (See the new student orientation and the associated resources page.) So:

  • Which specific resources (handouts, tutorials, videos, whatever) have you actually found useful in working with students?
  • Campus Ambassadors, if you've used printable handounts, which ones? Did students read them and/or learn from them?
  • Are there specific help/tutorial resources for students that you wanted but couldn't find?

--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

  • The students found the video tutorials useful. The faculty and students liked having a Resources tab associated with their course for quick reference as well. -- BJC 00:06, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
    • Cheat sheet proved out to be pretty useful for students of IEP. After running into mess of Copyvios, several presentations were made explaining them Copyvio and Paraphrasing and Rewriting. Very few students in IEP understood Copyvios, so we had to do lot of sessions explaining them the same in detail. --Rangilo Gujarati (talk) 17:53, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

RfC on Future of US Canada Education Program

An RfC has been initiated Wikipedia:Education_Working_Group/RfC by the Education Working group on the future of the US Canada Education program. --Mike Cline (talk) 13:27, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

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