Talk:Education/Archive/Wikipedia Education Collaborative

Coop?

So, do you still call this cooperative / coop? See mw:Groups/Proposals/Wiki_Co-op. --Nemo 07:34, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Nemo. That's a good question. I'm happy to clarify. No, our group is not still calling itself a "cooperative," and that's a good thing because there are now two other Wikimedia groups using that term: the MediaWiki Co-op, which you referenced, and and the Wikipedia:Cooperative that Jethro wrote about in this blog post. Our group had been called the Wikipedia Education Cooperative since March of 2012 when Frank Schulenberg started this page about it. But shortly before Wikimania this year, our members chose to rename themselves as a collaborative rather than a cooperative. Hope this helps! All the best, Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

#WMCON 2015 Berlin follow up - Belgium

Anna, Floor, and Kacie : Congratualtions on the education initiative, your abundant info, your patience with my newbee questions about things i should have read ahead of #WNCON, and Anna your contagious enthousiasm about education : I came with questions and locked " doors " in my projectplan ... you guys offered ways to get answers, keys to open my doors and open the pathways forward, I was hoping for course material instead I got a platform .
To write my message of thanks the size of my gratitude feelings, I need a banner the size of those dragged by an airplane so look out of your office window imagine this banner dragged before your window : THANKS Anna, Floor, Kacie the WMF education team and the Education collaborative group.

Hereby I would like to be a candidate to join the education collaborative, and be part of your next conference.

For the benefit of the collaboarative members that were not in Berlin i would like to introduce you to the education program plan for Belgium.

• OFF-Wiki volunteers training : the VPDI (volunteer personal development initiative)will be a program to allow volunteers to get training for the development of personal skills, competences that they also could use on their CV like : presenations, teaching, workshop facilitation, event organising, press-communications, programmanagement, financial (such as budgeting accounting) and chapter/usergroup management, etc...; the program will be both theoretical and allow the trainees to put the learned skills into practise in our chapter.
• Wikiducation Belgium : as the education roadshow -program will be renamed is a 2-pronged program for A) the regular education sector and B)the leisure and informal formation sector.
  • For the latter wikimedia volunteers will present to all kind of groups youth clubs, evening classes, or pensioner education initiatives courses about the use of wikipedia, editing and contributing, this will be in the form of edit-a-thon session(s) pilots will be developped in the short term.
  • For the benefit of the regular education sector the current education platform on offer is a door opener: we can offer teachers a practivcal toolset to work with the wikiplatform as en educational tool but also as en evaluation tool. I will be working very hard to have at least 2 but no more then 6 teachers that will want to help us develop pilots on the wiki-education paltform for the next term starting september 2015. I will propose those early adopters to find a number volunteer students from 1st and 2nd year to help develop the programs and to become wiki Ambassadors when the pilot is actually luanched which might be as early as january 2016.
    

It will be a lot of work and I hope that by the end of 2016 I will be able to report what we have accomplished and what lessons we have learned to the collaborative
BTW : belgium will need to do the work at least twice : in Dutch and 'rebelotte' in French Thnaks --DerekvG (talk) 09:51, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Dear DerekvG, thank you very much for your kind words. Our whole team is here to help education programs worldwide start, grow and improve, and I am so happy to hear that you feel we helped you as you are starting an education program in Belgium. Please feel free to reach out to us again as more questions arise. I am also glad to know that Dungodung is willing to help you out with more advice. As for your question around taking part in the Collaborative, let me clarify the Collaborative membership structure. As it says on the main page, they are a group of education program leaders who want to share their experience and expertise with others. So that makes you and the program in Belgium excellent candidates for being mentored by the Collab. Once you have more experience with the education program it would make sense to have you join the Collab as one of the members, and use your recent experiences as you mentor others. The Collab is here to help others, and you don't need to be a member yourself to benefit from their knowledge.

Thanks as well for the explanation of what Belgium's plans currently look like. The Education Toolkit has more information that you may find helpful as you are continuing to plan your pilot. One of the things we have often heard from program leaders is that doing one edit-a-thon with no follow-up has relatively little impact on Wikipedia and the sister projects. There will be some editing happening on the day of the event itself, but usually very little afterwards, with little editor retention. People have found a series of edit-a-thons or workshops to be much more effective in engaging with the audience and encouraging them to edit more than on just one occasion. You may want to consider a series of edit-a-thons rather than one-off events as you plan your outreach.

Again, don't hesitate to contact us with further questions. FKoudijs (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi DerekvG. It seems like you have a lot of things planned and it's great to see so much enthusiasm about this. If you want to talk with me about some of those activities in more depth, we can set up a skype/hangout session, so do contact me via email. I'm especially interested in the specifics of the planned realization of the project. In any case, good luck with this endeavour and may it be fruitful for WMBE. :) --Dungodung (talk) 20:16, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

On "OFF-Wiki volunteers training", that's interesting. Wikimedia Italia completed the first day-long workshop and is now preparing for the second thanks to a demand much higher than expected. --Nemo 22:15, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Dear Derek, thanks from me, too, for your very kind words. I'm happy that our conversations in Berlin were helpful. I hope that WMBE's education program will be a great success! I'm very glad that you will be working with Dungodung; he is a wonderful mentor. I know that his advice will be very valuable as you begin your pilot. If you are planning to use Wikipedia as an evaluative tool, do take a look at the Evaluating Wikipedia brochure. It has not been translated yet into Dutch, but the French translation is 96% complete. (See here.) Please feel free to add the plans you outlined here, and subsequent updates, to Belgium's education program page here on Outreach wiki. And do reach out again with any questions as they arise. All the best, Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 23:07, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

About the vision

Is it an idea to also involve Wikiversity? Timboliu (talk) 15:39, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Timboliu, sorry for the delay in replying to your question. I think there is an issue in the watchlist notifications to my e-mail. I have just seen your post by coincidence today. As for your question, not exactly; the purpose of the Wikipedia Education Collaborative is to use the experience of veteran program leaders in Wikipedia Education Program to mentor, help, and train new program initiators in different places around the world. The activity could focus on Wikipedia, Wikiversity or any Wikimedia project. Please read the main Collab page for more information and let me know if you have any further questions. --Selsharbaty (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Dear Timboliu, I wish to append Samir's response to you above. Members from Wikiversity would be most welcome in this group. The membership criteria state: "Members of the Collaborative aim to represent a diverse set of programs, languages, and geographies..." As I noted in this post on the English Wikiversity Colloquium, Wikiversity should definitely be involved with the Wiki(p/m)edia Education Program, since it already is! :) And, if a Wikiversitarian, for example yourself, wishes to join the Wiki(p/m)edia Education Collaborative, they are more than welcome to request membership here. All the best, Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Dear Anna Koval (WMF), I requested membership. Thanks for providing this link. Regards, Tim, Timboliu (talk) 14:40, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately my membership request was denied. Here I asked how we could continue the discussion. Timboliu (talk) 21:36, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Membership criteria clarification

The first criterion and the second are providing different information: the first says that you could be not only program leader but also a volunteer who supports the vision, while the second limits the membership to only program leaders. I think it should be made clearer whether non program leaders are allowed to join. --Base (talk) 22:59, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi Base, thank you for reaching out and asking for clarification of the membership criteria. Members are preferred to be experienced program leaders who were successful in leading their programs. The member role is to convey this experience to newbies in the program. However, if someone has the experience serving the Wikipedia Education Program without being a program leader, e.g. serving the program as a Wikipedia ambassador or as a professor they can also join the Collab. We are trying to make the Collaborative as open as possible to everyone but the member still needs to have some experience in the Wikipedia Education Program or at least the use of Wikipedia in any educational activity. Do you have a candidate for the Collab membership and you want to check if they are eligible to join? If yes, please send me separately a summary of their contribution to the Wikimedia movement or place a request with this data on the membership page. I hope that helps answering your question. --Selsharbaty (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Dear Base, Thanks for pointing out this inconsistency. I agree that this language should be clearer. Please see also this related discussion: Talk:Education/Wikipedia Education Collaborative/Membership. Hope this helps. Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

How about revising the first one into"Membership is open to all interested program leaders and volunteers who support the vision for Wikipedia in education, from skilled veteran to only a few trials-made in educational Wikimedia project, and who want to contribute to the goals of the group"? --Liang_(WMTW) (talk) 00:08, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Meetings

Dear Collab,

There was a question on the Collab mailing list today from User:Base about non-members attending meetings.

Regarding Base specifically: personally, I would have no problem with him attending today's meeting. Just this weekend, he claimed and completed Collab tasks on Phabricator within hours of me creating them. I'm very grateful for his help. I'm glad that he is interested in the Collab. And I'm excited about his ability and willingness to support technical tasks, for example, updating/simplifying complex template and marking pages for translation. Translation markup requires advanced user rights, a right which few current Collab members have. For the record, I have asked Base offline this weekend about his interest in possibly joining the Collab. And Base is the reason that I asked asked here about staff nominations of new Collab members. I am considering nominating him for Collab membership, to work with User:Ата as representatives from Ukraine.

That said, I'm not the only one who should decide this, especially because it is not a question about only one individual, but about process in general. It is best if the group decides whether or not it wishes to include non-members in meetings. That consensus-based decision should then be messaged out on the public mailing list and included in the documentation on the wiki page. I have just added a new section about meetings. It would be helpful to list there what is the purpose of these meetings, who can attend them and why.

All the best, Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 16:25, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

• I want to document here that the Collab members discussed the question of non-members requesting attendance in November's meeting and there was consensus on allowing non-members to attend the online meetings. --Selsharbaty (WMF) (talk) 13:03, 4 January 2016 (UTC)