Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit/Feedback and questions

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Adding Documentation

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Feedback

… One thing that came out of our small-group discussion is that is is critical for instructors to think about what their particular goals are for a Wikipedia assignment. For the education page, you might want to think about categorizing these goals/motivations broadly. These might include: student excitement about an assignment that seems useful & relevant, exploring community values and working on teams, writing in a particular style, and accurate information sharing. There likely are other goals. If an instructor has a clear idea of goals, it will make syllabus/assignment/etc. much clearer. Wikipedia should be sure not to imply a one-size-fits-all approach.

…I would echo the caution that 'one size does not fit all.' Also just a note to fellow faculty to remember to stay true to your learning objectives when developing your course and lead with good teaching techniques. WP is a simply a new learning tool; there is no need to abandon your good (traditional) teaching techniques to implement WP.

… Glad to see the emphasis on assessment support tools. One simple action that might be made immediately and easily functional: Allow professors to submit their students' articles for fast track GA review to provide an immediate qualitative (vs quantitative) WP-generated metric assessing article quality (on 1-26 scale). Profdrew101 (talk) 14:42, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

... So far the conference has been great. The one thing i think is missing is a session for beginners on basic editing.

There indeed was basic session on editing, but it should have preceded the session on advanced editing. There should have been more time for hands on exercises on editing so that we could take off after going back to places.

Using wikipedia for higher education is a great idea. Discussions were very useful. There cannot be a single basket answer for all problems. Each faculty may have to evolve his/her own strategy.

Handling large classes is going to be a challenge, especially evaluation of assignments. Surely solutions will emerge over a period of time.

Although present policy of wiki does not allow original research contributions, this is a need of the hour because of commericalization of all international conferences, journals etc and voice of common man needs to be heard.

Wiki foundation needs to take a call on this issue whether now or in about 3-4 years time. Earlier the better.

... National archivist talk was great. How about soliciting and disseminating to ambassadors/sympathetic professors some high profile well-written testimonials affirming WP's value, to be used in our outreach efforts? Profdrew101 (talk) 14:56, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

... Maybe a discussion list for professors would be interesting. I sure want to keep in touch with everyone I met here. Domusaurea (talk) 16:06, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

... Loved the Governance/GA review workshop but wished I could have attend the Advanced Editing across the hall too. If it had been duplicated in the afternoon, instead of just the Simple editing offered, I would have attended. Profdrew101 (talk) 18:16, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

... It has been incredibly helpful learning more about how other faculty structure their courses and what works and doesn't work. It would be great to formalize a learning community for WP faculty across the country/world.

Questions

… Is anyone using collaborative/cooperative learning in conjunction with their wikipedia assignments? -Nate Vanden Brook.

At the "Integrating Wikipedia into the Syllabus" session yesterday, there were a few people who cited courses that used collaborative models. Namely, the Politics of Piracy class Max Klein and I ran used groups to collaborate, which were mandatory, but kept only the individual contribution as the graded component.

Mattsenate (talk) 13:28, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

… Now that the Public Policy Initiative is coming to an end, will there continue to be a space similar to the course listing page to post and share information about courses using WP in Fall 2011 and beyond? Maybe within the 'For Educators' area?

Will the Education portal list this? Domusaurea (talk) 14:18, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I think this page is the one that will be used. :-) Regards, Rock drum (talk · contribs) 17:17, 9 July 2011 (UTC)