User:Ldavis (WMF)/Spring 2012 kickoff blog post
Wikipedia Education Program kicks off another term[edit]
Students around the world have returned to classes this term to learn that they will be contributing to Wikipedia articles for their coursework. Now in its second year, the Wikipedia Education Program has programs running worldwide.
The Wikipedia Education Program is modeled from the learnings of the Public Policy Initiative pilot. Volunteer Wikipedia Ambassadors help students learn how to contribute to Wikipedia articles as part of the course assignments. Campus Ambassadors help students in-person with basics of Wikipedia editing, while Online Ambassadors serve as virtual mentors for students on-wiki.
Programs have already started in the United States, Canada, Egypt, Germany, Czech Republic, Macedonia, and Mexico, and programs will start in 2012 in Brazil and the United Kingdom.
- United States
The program in the United States is off to a strong start, with more than 40 classes participating. In both the United States and Canada, a new set of Participation Requirements are in place for this term. The requirements limit the Ambassador:student ratio to 1:15, and requires that each class has at least one experienced Wikipedian supporting the class. Although the new set of requirements has limited the number of courses who can participate this term, we hope they will ensure that every student participating in our program has adequate support to complete a Wikipedia assignment successfully.
- Canada
The Canada program is in its second term of a small pilot, with eight classes participating this term. Like the U.S. program, the Canada program is limited by the new Participation Requirements, meaning we've purposefully chosen to focus on quality over quantity.
- Egypt
The Cairo Pilot is our first venture into the Arabic language countries (see previous blog post for more background information). Local Arabic Wikipedians led a training of 10 new Campus Ambassadors in Cairo in mid-January, and another 10 Campus Ambassadors will be trained later this month. Another 16 Online Ambassadors have signed up to help students on-wiki. Seven classes are participating, and all of the professors participated in a faculty orientation in January led by two local Arabic Wikipedians and U.S. program professor Rochelle Davis. Only 3-15 of the best students from each class will be participating this term, limiting the number of students to a manageable number.
- Germany
Wikimedia Deutschland has trained "tutoren" to assist professors and students who are editing Wikipedia for the first time in their pilot program, with five classes participating.
- Czech Republic
The Czech WikiProject Protected areas ran in winter semester 2011/2012 in cooperation with Jiří Reif, university teacher at Institute for Environmental Studies, Faculty of Science at the Charles University in Prague. During the semester, 30 students were involved in adding content to the Czech Wikipedia. They had to visit one protected area of their choice, take several images of visited area, write an article for the Czech Wikipedia and give a public presentation for other students in the class. The project enjoyed high popularity among students, according to the results of a survey. A full report with results from this cooperation is available on Czech Wikipedia in English. And as a result Czech Wikipedia was enriched in 30 high quality articles about protected areas.
- Macedonia
Four universities in Macedonia are already on board with a Macedonian Education Program that began in 2011, including a class that is translating English Wikipedia articles to the Macedonian Wikipedia. The program is led by volunteers from Wikimedia Macedonia.
- Mexico
The program in Mexico began in Fall 2011 at ITESM-Campus Ciudad de México with a Club Wikipedia and several independent study students using Wikipedia as the base for their advanced English-as-a-foreign-language course (see this blog post for more details). It was shortly followed by the establishment of a second club at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). For the Spring 2012 semester, ITESM has started a pilot program with the International Baccalaureate program to allow these students to work on Wikipedia projects to fulfill their "CAS" or community service requirements. To date, these students have been working on articles related to the Teylers Museum Challenge as well as articles related to Mexican handcrafts and folk art in preparation for the upcoming edit-a-thon at the Museo de Arte Popular in Mexico City on 3 March. UNAM's Facultad de Letras y Humanidades has permitted student to opt to create six articles of "good" or better quality in order to fulfill Mexico's social service requirement of all undergraduate students.
- Other countries
Several other programs are planning for academic terms starting later in 2012.
- After a small pilot in 2011, the Brazil Education Program plans to expand the number of Campus Ambassadors and Online Ambassadors available to help a growing number of students who will be contributing to the Portuguese Wikipedia when the next term begins in March.
- Wikimedia U.K. is doing ground research to find supportive professors and potential Ambassadors for a forthcoming project. They're also planning a EduWiki Conference in September 2012.
- Get involved!
More programs around the world are starting every month. If you've started a program, add it to the Wikipedia Education Program page. Want to become an Ambassador or a participating professor in your region? Check out the Get Involved page on our program portal.
We look forward to seeing the amazing work students put out this term.