Setting up small pilot in Middle East/North Africa
Given learning points from previous terms, we decided to limit to one country: Egypt
Coordinating with Adel Iskandar
Concerns about current situation in Cairo with protests; but Frank and Annie will travel to Egypt on December 4
Talk with professors, meet with community
Community relations important, beginning with convening in Doha. Community members are doing translations of messages; communicating on village pump using Google Translate
Start Small! No more than 100 students in program, won't be mandatory assignment
Explore three different approaches:
Students write/improve articles based on course topic
Translations: based on Saudi Arabia course; students who are in translation courses will translate English/French/German Wikipedia articles into Arabic
Cooperation with students in U.S. program who are studying in Arabic.
Start in one city (good point from India program), just in Cairo
Campus ambassador community in Pune is very strong
More time exploring risks and hurdles
Copyright problem is present in other countries as well (Mexico, MENA region too); Annie and Frank will interview students by tabling on campus, will interview students and ask about past experiences with writing assignments, talk about their understanding of copyright, want to share results from this at the next meeting
Positives: raising profile of WMF in India, CA community
Negatives: scale, didn't do enough engaging with community, need changes to how we train CAs and students
Glancing through some student talk pages suggests that there were positives
Analysis:
Tory Read will be writing analysis based on interviews with students, Campus Ambassadors, faculty members, Online Ambassadors, WMF staff, India team members, and English Wikipedia community members
Looking for patterns across classrooms, articles, subjects, students
Use the analysis to inform the way forward
WikiConference India: Most comments were from students wanting to roll out next pilot to their region
Next pilot will be a much smaller scale and will be addressing the issues from the fall term
Don't forget the amazing community that has been built through the Campus Ambassadors
Hope to have an open, honest, collaborative process moving forward
Crucial time right now; students are starting to edit
Trying to determine how to move forward next term
Biggest learning point: program has exponentially grown; we want to make sure we can support community rather than grow exponentially
Next term: maintain same numbers but train more Campus Ambassadors, professors, OAs, others to support students better
Working to get that training together
Rather than geographically expanding, training more people at same universities we're already at.
Want to continue institutionalizing the program
Jami, Frank, and Rod went to New Jersey Institute of Technology to pilot program in spring that trains TAs to prepare university to incorporate required course for all freshmen to edit Wikipedia.
Five professors; everyone has enjoyed the experiences so far
Students working in sandboxes, a few are moving to mainspace
Professors are concerned about moving articles to mainspace before material is perfect, but they miss out on the community feedback aspects of the assignment if they work only in sandboxes
Quality of material is very strong in sandboxes
Also has strong Canadian flavor; articles are of interest to Canadians (Newspapers in Canadian Society, Canadian law, etc.)
Received considerable amount of press coverage in last month: University of Toronto campus newspaper, PostMedia wire services picked up by 6-7 newspapers across Canada, and coverage coming in Royal Mail coming out in next week or so)
Next term, expanding to 9 courses, thanks to Rob Schnautz (Regional Ambassadors who had adopted parts of Canada as well)
Suggestions:
Get students editing earlier in semester
Providing more feedback to students (Leaderboard, reports from WMF that include reflections on Canadian initiative, etc.) -- do better with what we already have, including giving feedback
