Talk:Brazil Program/Education program/Learning/Brazil Pilot 2

Questions

1. Is the program too time consuming for a semester (actually, usually 4 months period) or in any case?
2. Is that because we make it "too complicated"? Would a simpler type of activity (such as analysis of articles or article writings with no edit) make the program more keen to be successful? Would that be worth it, since it does not produce and actual and direct improvement on Wikipedia?
3. Should we be working only with one year courses (usually high scholl and very, very few universities)? Should we be working with research/study groups (it is common on major universities to have research groups all fields of knowledge)?
4. Professors need to engage in activities to show productivity to the funding agencies (CAPES, CNPQ, FAPESP, FAPERJ etc.). Wikipedia assignments are not usually taken in consideration for carreer assignments, and when they could be, they worth very little in comparison to academic articles published on academic journals and books. Would be it possible/feasible and valuable to the project?
5. Some professors understand this program as a chance to develop capacities on critical readership, analyses on content, writing skills, sourcing skills etc., and they see editing as a possible and probable consequence of that (to name it, 2 professors said that clearly, even after submiting proposals for improving Wikipedia articles). Their main perspective and objectives are not to improve Wikipedia, but to use it as an educational tool. This is totally legitimate and I think it's ok to support it. However, we should probably invest different resources and less time on that. Those activities may be important to create different types of links with universities, but they won't necessarily bring us the results we're aiming at here.
6. Should we give some kind of bonus (books? expenses to Wikipedia Academy? Other?) for professors or groups who have shown a better performance on the improvement of articles or have developed activities, such as workshops, supporting Wikipedia? Would this be aligned with the grant system of WMF?

Meeting feedback

1. Most professors of the first group (7 - 1 = 6 - São Paulo) haven't been involving *students* on Wikipedia assignments as promised so far, although we have had some activities (mostly done by the trained CAs, not the students)

2.Trained CAs (TAs indicated by the professors) have shown few Wikipedia activities so far

Could you include some "requirement" for expanding their own articles? Maybe one or two sections. (this could be something you do at the beginning of next term) Jami

3. Some professors have felt insecure to use the trained new CAs and have ask us some experienced wikipedians to go to the class. Since we didn't have CA available during the class time, both contractors had to go to teach students

4. On classes we have some wiki activities, online ambassadors haven't pro-actively helped students, even when we explicitly asked their help

Why did they want to be OAs in the first place? How do you select the OAs? Jami

Re: OA recruitment (site notice + community commettee) = only a few applied on the wiki and most who subscribe on the form (~100) were newbies --Ezalvarenga (talk)

Would you be interested in working with a "central" OA model next semester? Rather than one-per-class, you could choose the eager OAs to work with students/profs when needed Jami

Re: We tried to centralized this training them to you the "Ask a question" (= Café dos Novatos) page, but no one has made a single quesiton so far (neither by e-mail, netiher using talk pages) --Ezalvarenga (talk)

5. A huge individual communication effort (phone, e-mail and talk pages) to professors and ambassadors is necessary to see some activity

Questions through the learnings

1. Is the program too time consuming for a semester (actually, usually 4 months period) or in any case?

The assignment is definitely more time-consuming than a traditional assignment (if only because it's new for professors and students). They (professors) can start small until they are used to the medium and appreciate the outcome of the hard work.

2. Is that because we make it "too complicated"? Would a simpler type of activity (such as analysis of articles or article writings with no edit) make the program more keen to be successful? Would that be worth it, since it does not produce and actual and direct improvement on Wikipedia?

I think this is not enough "bang for the buck" for actual Wikipedia. Could be beneficial in some ways to students but doesn't impact Wikipedia (you could imagine it would end up producing editors, but we've seen that doesn't happen with students in general)

3. Should we be working only with one year courses (usually high school and very, very few universities)? Should we be working with research/study groups (it is common on major universities to have research groups all fields of knowledge)?

I've seen a lot of university courses that only work for 5-6 weeks but only ask their students to add one or two sections to medium-level articles. That could be the model you promote?

4. Professors need to engage in activities to show productivity to the funding agencies (CAPES, CNPQ, FAPESP, FAPERJ etc.). Wikipedia assignments are not usually taken in consideration for carreer assignments, and when they could be, they worth very little in comparison to academic articles published on academic journals and books. Would be it possible/feasible and valuable to the project?

Can you clarify this question? Jami

5. Some professors understand this program as a chance to develop capacities on critical readership, analyses on content, writing skills, sourcing skills etc., and they see editing as a possible and probable consequence of that (to name it, 2 professors said that clearly, even after submiting proposals for improving Wikipedia articles). Their main perspective and objectives are not to improve Wikipedia, but to use it as an educational tool. This is totally legitimate and I think it's ok to support it. However, we should probably invest different resources and less time on that. Those activities may be important to create different types of links with universities, but they won't necessarily bring us the results we're aiming at here.

Maybe the "career path" of a Wikipedia Education Program professor could be to do that type of assignment the first semester and then have students actually edit/create articles/expand articles the second semester. Then you're still investing in them with a real output. Jami

6. Should we give some kind of bonus (books? expenses to Wikipedia Academy? Other?) for professors or groups who have shown a better performance on the improvement of articles or have developed activities, such as workshops, supporting Wikipedia? Would this be aligned with the grant system of WMF?