Talk:Wikipedia Education Program/Participation Requirements

Comments

This looks very positive. Thanks. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:10, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. --Jbmurray (talk) 06:19, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

To clarify, if a professor "can serve as both professor and Wikipedia Ambassador", does that mean a class with 30 people can have only one Ambassador if that person is a Wikipedian? 129.100.92.177 20:33, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes; so long as the professor has undergone the same training as an Ambassador. Jmathewson (talk) 22:20, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Grandfathered professors clause

Just wanted to let anyone know that I had a bit of a copy-paste fail and neglected to copy over the grandfathered professors clause when moving it onto the Outreach wiki; sorry about that. It was always supposed to be part of the full requirements, as it is now. I hope this didn't cause any confusion in the interim. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:34, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Questions

Thanks for posting this, it is clearly a step in the right direction. I have a couple of questions:

1. What will happen to classes that breach this agreement while the semester is under way? I am especially interested in point #5 breaches.
2. What is the "Wikipedia Education Program faculty orientation" and what material does it cover? (This was mentioned but not substantially at w:WT:USEP#Instructor orientation and other ideas).

I'm a bit apprehensive that this may lead to an increase in "stealth" projects which proceed without community notification and with little transparency, given that some classes will be missing out. MER-C (talk) 05:56, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi MER-C, great questions.

1. Points 1-4 will be there from the beginning of the course, so point 5 and point 6 are really the only ones that could be breached on the professors' end mid-term. How exactly we would "remove" someone from the program is a good thing for us to think about, but I can say that it depends on what the policy is. Copyright violations, for example, cannot be tolerated, so we'd obviously ask that professor to stop the assignment. Essay-like content, for example, would be best moved to sandboxes, to give students a chance to fix the problems before moving it onto the article namespace again. Our hope is that the Ambassador:Student ratio and the greater emphasis on Wikiepdian involvement in the classes will head off these problems, however. As for point 6, we will simply no longer include a professor whose students didn't make substantive edits in our media about the program, nor give the professor a Wikipedia Teaching Fellowship.
2. The faculty orientation is based extensively on two sources: the talk page you linked to and the Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool brochure by Adrianne Wadewitz. We hope to have a draft of it ready to go in the next couple of weeks, I think.

Generally, I think a few professors may do a stealth project, but I think a lot of them realize the value of having Ambassadors (especially professors who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia editing themselves) and will wait until our support structures are such that we can support their course. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. Will the draft be posted on-wiki somewhere? MER-C (talk) 10:02, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes -- the whole training will be on-wiki. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 16:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

For future reference: Wikipedia Professor Orientation/Module One, Wikipedia Professor Orientation/Module Two and Wikipedia Professor Orientation/Module Three. I haven't had the time to look at these yet. MER-C (talk) 10:02, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Mer-C. I was just coming to post those links. I'm also sending it out to all Spring 2012 professors as we speak. Also know that, over the next few months, we will be making these much less text-heavy but wanted to provide this semester's professors with as many resources as possible. I also just wanted to remind any interested parties that we are sending this semester's students through the AfC process (if they are creating new articles rather than expanding stubs). This should also head off copyright violoations and essay-like articles. Jmathewson (talk) 01:54, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

• I notice that there are quite a few ongoing classes that don't have Ambassadors. What is the procedure for this (since the "Requirements" state one "Ambassador" for every 15 students)? I noticed one class with 70 students that doesn't have any. MathewTownsend (talk) 14:05, 11 March 2012 (UTC)