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Here are the places where Regional Ambassadors can stay involved with the Wikipedia Education Program, seek advice from others, and respond to issues that may arise regarding new editors from the Education Program.
- You can mail the Wikipedia Regional Ambassador Google Group mailing list at wikipedia-regional-ambassadors@googlegroups.com or visit it on the web.
- The education noticeboard has become the main on-wiki location for discussion of the Education Program. You can post there about broad education program issues as well as issues with individual courses.
- The Ambassadors Announce email list is a very low-traffic announcements list of important information all Ambassadors need to be aware of. We encourage all Ambassadors (and other interested Wikipedians) to subscribe to the list; follow the instructions on the link to add your email address, and disperse this link to any new Campus Ambassadors you bring to the program.
Campus Ambassador role[edit]Campus Ambassadors (CAs) serve as local representatives of the Wikipedia community on college and university campuses. Here are some of the general roles that Campus Ambassadors can serve:
- Advise professor on designing an assignment that fits on Wikipedia as well as with their learning objectives
- Give in-class introductions about Wikipedia-editing
- Facilitate workshops outside regular lecture time to help students with Wikipedia-editing
- Answer student questions or direct them to someone who can
- Reach out to other professors on nearby campuses
- Train new Campus Ambassadors
Campus Ambassador recruitment[edit]If you are working with a professor who is looking for a Campus Ambassador, but one is not currently trained on their campus (or nearby who can travel), you should help try to find someone to support the students in the classroom. You may also just be interested in increasing the number of Ambassadors on a campus. Here are some tips and best practices for recruiting new CAs.
- Ask the professor to recommend a potential CA (e.g. Teaching Assistant, library faculty, past student, etc.) who may be interested in volunteering as a Wikipedia Ambassador
- Contact past professors and ask them to recommend a student who enjoyed the Wikipedia assignment.
- Post a Geonotice on Wikipedia to recruit an experienced Wikipedian within a particular geographic region.
- If you have convenient transportation access to the university, you might want to get permission to table on campus.
- Ask a department advisor to forward a CA recruitment message to any mailing lists they control (or ask the interested professor to do this).
Once you find a potential candidate, walk them through the on-boarding process.
On-boarding Campus Ambassadors[edit]As a Regional Ambassador, you have the opportunity to not only mentor Campus Ambassadors during their tenure but also to help them during the training and on-boarding process. Please use the steps below as a brief guideline to preparing Campus Ambassadors for this role!
- Whether a potential Campus Ambassador reaches out to you, you contact her/him, or a professor recommends somebody, s/he should complete the Campus Ambassador application and send it to you.
- Verify that the volunteer completed the Ambassador orientation by reviewing his/her feedback on this page.
- Meet with the volunteer for at least 30 minutes, either by video chat or in person (if possible).
- Approve volunteer as a Campus Ambassador if you believe s/he aligns with the mission of the Wikipedia Education Program.
- Grant the 'Course campus volunteer' rights to the new Ambassador.
- Walk the new Campus Ambassador through the tools needed to stay involved.
- Create a Campus Ambassador Profile.
- Subscribe to the low-traffic Ambassador mailing list.
As a Regional Ambassador, you will receive the 'Course Coordinator' user right, which a Wikipedia Administrator must grant. This will allow you to grant others the following user rights, which are necessary to utilize the Wikipedia Education Extension:
- Course online volunteer (for Online Ambassadors)
- Course campus volunteer (for Campus Ambassadors)
- Course instructor
These rights give different access levels to modify the courses in the extension. To grant a user's permission:
- Visit the page at Special:UserRights
- Type in the appropriate user name
- Check off the relevant box(es)
- Provide a reason (like an edit summary)
- Click 'Save'.
If you ever need to revoke the rights, simply follow the same process and uncheck the boxes. (Note: RAs cannot grant 'Course coordinator' to other RAs or any non-Course user rights, those still need to be done by admins).
These might be useful for you to consult, and for sending to interested professors and Campus Ambassadors.
For Campus Ambassadors[edit]- Student online orientation: An introduction to Wikipedia, editing basics, and the guidelines that help students have a better experience when editing
- IRC chatroom: where students can get live support on Wikipedia-related questions
- ManyPedia Side-by-side comparisons of Wikipedia articles in different languages (plus some translation). Built to compare linguistic point-of-view. Useful for language reading and composition activities and various language-based lessons.
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