Program guides/Education/Participant Support

Educator support

Many educators decide to do a Wikimedia education project because they have been offered one-on-one support to plan the course and teach students. Educators who do not want to or are not able to work with a Wikimedian should follow guidelines below when planning and preparing to teach students to contribute to Wikimedia projects as part of a class activity. Spending a few hours learning about best practices for course planning, teaching and using tools to monitoring student work will help educators and students have a positive and productive experience using Wikimedia in the classroom.

"We try not to make ourselves indispensible so that after one or two years, they are able to do it without us. Training usually takes one morning, but engagement with professors also includes course planning, follow up throught the semster and a final debrief to get feedback on how things went. We want them to know that their experience is important to us."-- Vojtech

Course planning: Planning a course involves choosing an assignment, creating a course page, developing a list of topics for students to work on, setting timelines for student work and deciding how contributions will be evaluated.

Create course page: Keep assignments, student user names and other important information organized on one page that is accessible to everyone. Each class or group of students in an education program must have a course page.

Monitor student work: There are several simple tools educators can use to monitor student contributions, either to correct mistakes or learn about how and when students work on assignments.

Training for educators: Educators do not need to know how to use wiki markup give students an editing assignment, but it does help to learn basic skills and complete a short assignment before they begin teaching their course.

Evaluate student work: You may only need to evaluate student work if you plan to give them a grade, mark or credit based on their Wikimedia assignment.

End of course evaluation: --learning pattern needed--Talk to educators after a program has ended to find out what went well and what to change in the future. Educators may want to give students a brief end of course survey to find out what they liked about the course. This can help both program leaders and educators improve the program in the future.

Get additional help: Find out where to ask questions and get help from an experienced Wikimedian.

References

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