Talk:Expanding Wikipedia's Education Program: Key learnings from the pilot programs

These are all great ideas; now would you WMF people actually MAKE USE of them? Perhaps I'm a bit too cynical, but at least in the failure analysis of the IEP fiasco I'm not seeing many of these ideas being implemented, especially those regarding the community. Although we're constantly being told that our input is valuable, as of now I barely see any attempt to act on it at all. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:14, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Blade of Northern Lights--what specifically do you not see us working on? About India: the IEP is on hold right now; my understanding is the India team (Hisham and Nitika) are busy digesting Tory's report and all the talk page suggestions from editors and figuring out if and how they can develop a second pilot that will have a positive impact on Wikipedia. We don't have a concrete plan yet for India. We will make that plan based on all of the community ideas that have emerged already; we have received a lot of ideas, and I think the best next step for us is to have a more concrete project plan that we can then collaborate with the community on refining -- but it's on us to develop that plan based on existing suggestions. It's a waste of your time to ask you to repeat things you've already said. In other words: there is no India program right now, so what should we be implementing?

Maybe this will help: Comparing_the_Pune_and_the_Cairo_Pilot_–_what_we_are_doing_differently. Our focus right now is on starting a pilot on the Arabic Wikipedia. Our team has been working hand-in-hand with the Arabic Wikipedia community, posting on the Village Pump, and recruiting from the community for our Ambassador pool. Half of the Campus Ambassadors and all of the Online Ambassadors are from the community; we will have around 20 total Ambassadors and a max of about 90 students. The assignment is optional, and only the best students will participate. All professors and Campus Ambassadors went through a two-day training, and Online Ambassadors participated in a virtual orientation to the program. You'll likely recognize all of these items as suggestions that arose from the community based on the Pune Pilot. Unless you read Arabic, it's kind of hard to see all of this, but here is the portal if you're interested in seeing more: ar:ويكيبيديا:برنامج_ويكيميديا_للتعليم. The outcome of this Cairo Pilot will also deeply inform the next stage of the IEP, just as the learnings from Pune informed the Cairo Pilot.

I'd also like to point you to our new set of Wikipedia_Education_Program/Participation_Requirements which are in place for the U.S. and Canada programs this term (which are the only Wikipedia Education Programs working on the English Wikipedia this term). You'll see similar lessons -- an Ambassador:student ratio based on a talk page discussion with our U.S. and Canada Ambassadors, a mandatory professor orientation, and the requirement of Wikipedians as part of the pod of support.

Maybe we haven't been clear enough in pointing these out; but if you have seen them, I'm very concerned that you feel like we haven't made use of any of the community input we received. What do you feel like we haven't done yet? What ideas do you think we've ignored? -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 1 February 2012 (UTC)