Grants talk:PEG/Keilana/Loyola Women in Science and Math Workshop/Report

Report Accepted

Thank you for the comprehensive report and great work! Your report has been accepted, but we have a couple follow-up questions and would appreciate your response.

1. What did you learn about what motivates college students to participate in workshops? AWang (WMF) (talk) 01:33, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Alex, to be honest, the jury is still out on what really motivates students. We did learn that lowering the barrier to entry as much as possible is a crucial factor, but don't think that this is necessarily specific to college students. (this includes things like avoiding teaching people about project-space, having sign-ups, and acquiring sources ahead of time) The preliminary data from our surveys (which I will post somewhere on Meta soon, as I need to finish up the analysis) shows that people are definitely more likely to come when there are refreshments available, and offering t-shirts and other promotional merchandise was enjoyable for participants. Given the number of participants referred from various feminist/activist groups on campus, I think the advertising language we used ("women are being erased from Wikipedia", framing systemic bias as an injustice) was a successful motivation. Many women also expressed that they enjoyed learning about women scientists who are not celebrated in their academic classes, something that I think is applicable to systemic bias in general and is something I will be including in the kit. Overall, I think we need more surveys to determine anything definitive but we have a fairly decent start. One other thought is the idea of writing for Wikipedia as a legitimate volunteer/service opportunity, an angle we will explore this semester. Another thing that will help is the planned beta testing of the kit, sometime in March/April at (tentatively) two other institutions in the United States. I hope this helps - I'm quite happy to answer any further questions! Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 21:33, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

1. Did you create any learning patterns? If yes, can you link to them from here? If not, it would be great to document the "prepare sources in advance" learning pattern with examples and how-to steps. AWang (WMF) (talk) 01:33, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Learning patterns are in progress, but I do want to refine them some more before we post them. I'm currently working on a workflow/worksheet for participants for our workshop Sunday and want to test it out before I post anything. If you'd like, I'd be happy to post the working draft I have. Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 21:33, 22 January 2014 (UTC)