Wikipedia:Education noticeboard

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This page is for general discussion of items that relate to student assignments and the Wikipedia Education Program. Please feel free to post, whether you're from a class, a potential class, or if you're a Wikipedia editor.

If you wish to report or discuss a specific incident relating to the Education Program or student editing that may require the intervention of experienced editors and/or administrators, please go instead to the Incidents page.

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There are other pages more appropriate for dealing with certain specific issues:
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See also
  • Special:Courses (a list of courses using the Education Program extension)
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Online Ambassador application: Iazyges[edit]

Iazyges[edit]

Iazyges (talk · contribs)

  1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?
    I would like to help people become members of Wikipedia, especially those with significant knowledge like those in college.
  2. In three sentences or less, summarize your involvement with Wikimedia projects.
    I work a lot with MILHIST, I have done some work with WP:Dacia.
  3. Please indicate a few articles to which you have made significant content contributions. (e.g. DYK, GA, FA, major revisions/expansions/copyedits).
    Iazyges, my namesake article, I entirely rewrote, it is a GAN right now, I brought it from Start class to B class as of posting (MILHIST standards.)
  4. How have you been involved with welcoming and helping new users on Wikipedia?
    I work at the teahouse, I also regularly go through the new users list and check out productive new members.
  5. What do you see as the most important ways we could welcome newcomers or help new users become active contributors?
    Make them feel valuable and heard, while it is in overrated answers, one of the thing that can be most discouraging, from my experience, is when you feel that others don't or wont listen to you because you are new or have a low edit count.
  6. Have you had major conflicts with other editors? Blocks or bans? Involvement in arbitration? Feel free to offer context, if necessary.
    None, somehow I have avoided it, except perhaps for the current (as of posting) case against DevilWearsBrioni, where I mediated for DRN and am vaguely involved.
  7. How often do you edit Wikipedia and check in on ongoing discussions? Will you be available regularly for at least two hours per week, in your role as a mentor?
    Constantly, I spend roughly 8 hours of the day away and check on it every hour or so from phone, and the rest either on computer or sleeping.
  8. How would you make sure your students were not violating copyright laws?
    Checking on them, while I will likely not be able to check on all of them at once, I hope it will work as a preventative method (somewhat like a real teacher that randomly checks homework)
  9. If one of your students had an issue with copyright violation how would you resolve it?
    Confront them as kindly as possible, ascertain as to if it is knowingly violated and try to resolve from there, either by explaining more clearly, or by intervening.
  10. In your own words describe what copyright violation is.
    Copyright violation is taking either someone's work or works, and not crediting them with it (Presuming they require only attribution).
  11. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?
    I have done some work in TWL, I am currently a coordinator for Fold3 and newspaperarchive.com.

Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 04:01, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Endorsements[edit]

(Two endorsements are needed for online ambassador approval.)

How to become involved in this project[edit]

I have been monitoring (and cleaning up) a rather large number of educational assignments recently, and through the course of a somewhat-related AFC discussion I realized that it might be beneficial for me to become involved with the Wikipedia Education section, if only to help new professors (such as this one) fully explain what is good (and bad) when it comes to student assignments. Should I be applying as an Ambassador, or is there a more appropriate way to become involved? I don't want to discourage the new editors by flagging all their pages for deletion (though some definitely need it), but I think this will only be accomplished by getting them to before they dive in over their heads. Cheers, Primefac (talk) 21:23, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

@Primefac: Hihi, thank you for all the work you've done cleaning up student assignments, I'm glad to see some editors going out of their way to help out students. The ambassador role has been somewhat discontinued/in a state of limbo per this discussion but do let me know if having the right would help you. I'm not entirely sure what it does anymore other than allow you access to the course extension backend here on the Wiki -- samtar talk or stalk 21:39, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
A quick ping to @Bluerasberry: who is the guiding force for the continuation of the role -- samtar talk or stalk 21:42, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
Primefac Personally, I do outreach to a lot of schools, and I stay in touch with other people who do also. There is no on-wiki documentation for how to do this because the people who do this each do it in their own way, and because the software tools which people use vary a lot.
I am unable to recommend any particular on-wiki documentation, but if you like, I can offer an off-wiki phone or video chat to share whatever I know and talk you through what you might do. You can write me at Special:EmailUser/Bluerasberry unless that is a problem; I see you have no associated email with your account. Your user page mentions the University of Glasgow - I am currently supporting a class program there.
Also - for any class in the United States, you can get support through the Wiki Education Foundation people listed at Category:Wiki Education Foundation staff. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:01, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Consider voting for reform of education tool set before 12 December[edit]

There is a fair chance that the Wikimedia Foundation could prioritize the development of the software which allows tracking of programs, including classes. Currently and till 12 December votes are being accepted in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey.

Relevant to this board is

If this were passed, then my personal opinion is that a little effort in that almost-ready-to-go tool set would relieve almost every problem with class and event tracking. I have been a big fan of the meta:Programs & Events Dashboard. I personally use it, and I would like it better adapted for all kinds of classroom use.

The survey rules say, "A reasonable amount of canvassing is acceptable. You've got an opportunity to sell your idea to as many people as you can reach. Feel free to reach out to other people in your project, WikiProject or user group." I am sharing this here because I think it is relevant. The entire list is interesting, and I would recommend browsing it to anyone interested in seeing a list of big technical problems in wiki. This education interface is one of my favorite proposals. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:06, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: The link to meta doesn't work. John Carter (talk) 22:09, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
John Carter Thanks, resolved. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:13, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Articles being created as class projects[edit]

Recently, I've come across a number discussions regarding drafts/articles being created by students for some type of class project. I'm all for Wikipedia being used by students to further their education and even Wikipedia being used as a learning tool, but after reading some discussions at places like User talk:Graeme Bartlett#Hello, User talk:Graeme Bartlett#Non-free images, WT:CHEMISTRY#Essays for a class project, WP:MCQ#Umatilla Indian Reservation article and User talk:SwisterTwister#Request on 14:56:46, 8 December 2016 for assistance on AfC submission by Jfevans1987, I am wondering if it's a good idea for instructors to be grading students on their contributions to Wikipedia. Anything these students add/create can be basically undone with a single click at anytime so their so no guarantee that the version they are banking their grade on is actually going to be the version their instructor is going to actually see. Moreover, after looking at a few course pages and the contributions of the teachers in charge of the project, it looks like quite a few of these teachers are new editors themselves and therefore not very familiar editing Wikipedia's and its various policies and guidelines. So, it seems we've got some students being "instructed" to create Wikipedia articles which will impact their final course grade by teachers who have very little understanding about what Wikipedia is all about. I'm all for helping these students become productive editors who are here to help build Wikipedia, but some of the posts I've seen indicate that they might only be interested in getting a good grade. If that's really the purpose of these "class projects" and really the only thing that most of these instructors and students are interested in, then maybe they should be encouraged to keep their work in the userspace as a WP:USD or maybe a new namespace could be created specifically for school projects. Doing such a thing might not solve all of the problems involving WP:COPYVIO (images and text), WP:PLAGIARISM and WP:CWW, etc., but the students might have a little more leeway to work on their projects outside of the article namespace. Has this type of thing been previously discussed? Was anything resolved if it was? -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:46, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

"Assignments should use course page within Wikipedia's administrative namespaces not the Main article namespace ......" Wikipedia:Course pages. They may be moved or deleted if needed be.--Moxy (talk) 06:53, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
Another option is to use a private wikifarm like the one I set up at Miraheze. This way, only the best efforts make their way onto a Wikimedia project. Also, students can clutter up their filespace with images and pdf files that might not be welcome on commons. This private wiki makes it easier for me to assign grades, and allows me to structure the course along traditional lines in which students cannot be constantly "peeking" at each other's work.--Guy vandegrift (talk) 07:33, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the responses Moxy and Guy vandegrift. Unfortunately, it seems that many of these students start out in the draft namespace or their user sandboxes and then move their work into the article namespace on their own or have someone do it for them. In one particular case (UV filters), this seemed to involve copying and pasting content from an existing article (UV filter) into a sandbox, rewriting/improving it a bit, and then moving back to the article space as a if it was a completely new article. Some of these things are being noticed by others, but there are probably many which go undetected. Moreover, the talk pages of some of these "articles" are being used as kind of forums by "project reviewers" (typically other students in the same class) to post comments/reviews of the work of the article's creator than addressed to the community as a whole. From some of the comments these students have posted, it's apparent they are not trying to be be disruptive; however, it is also apparent that many are just concerned with getting a good grade and might have been told by their real world teachers that "their" articles need to be added to the encyclopedia by a certain date for it to be graded. I guess it's not a huge deal in the overall scheme of things, but some of these students might not be aware of WP:OWN and end up pretty discouraged/angry when their work is deleted/edited/revised by others. Some of the articles being created are said to be well written and good contributions to the encyclopedia, but it also seems that many are not and probably should never get beyond draft status. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:10, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Some of the problems discussed at WT:CHEMISTRY relate to this course with instructor Norobello and content expert Ian (Wiki Ed). I have been participating in the discussion at Talk:Issues of the Evolution v.s. Creation Debate about an assignment where the premise raises obvious (to an experienced Wikipedian) WP:OR and WP:SYNTH issues, as well as being a WP:CONTENTFORK. Not surprisingly, the student involved (Gabriel Gonzalez19) has had a difficult time and I am disappointed with the treatment he has received, not because the policy-mandated outcome is unclear but because there is frustration about another course which has gone in unhelpful directions and content for the community to clear up. There were signs early on of problems to come, the aim of the course was described as: "Elements of Argument- students will learn art of Critical Thinking through argumentative styles such as Rogerian, Socratic, and Toulmin." Argumentation styles are not the basis for NPOV article development, especially in a case where the scientific consensus very much favours the evolutionary perspectives over the creationist. I am raising this here for two reasons. Firstly, it is worth trying to learn from what went wrong here, and certainly how this was not caught earlier. Secondly, in Gabriel Gonzalez, we have an unusual (in my experience) student editor who has persisted in polite discussion and can share with us the student's perspective. Gabriel may even stay contributing to Wikipedia. Perspectives from Ian and Natala are highly valuable too. I know things were worse before the Education Program, but to me this course offers a case study in what can still be improved. As I understand it, this was Natala's first Wikipedia-based teaching and so not knowing what is not known was a problem. Thoughts? EdChem (talk) 08:07, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

The talk about nonfree images on my talk page comes about from Education Program:University of Hong Kong/Regional Geology (Fall Semester 2016). This is a non Wiki-ed class, but the instructor has plenty of experience in organising this sort of thing and the students come up with writings that are almost all kept. Only one or two might be merged to broader topics. It is positive in that the student is talking about their problem, and hopefully learning about copyright. In fact they were seeking the image creators permission, but only got permission to use on Wikipedia, and no evidence thereof. You can be sure this is not the first time it happened.
The LSU environmental chemistry class has far more issues with their articles, and very few will be retained, due to them being original research and syntheses on topics related to disposal of various items. The UV filters guy does realize that he has to merge the content into UV filter.
Some classes definitely need to get the idea of what Wikipedia is, and what constitutes a suitable topic. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:00, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
To those replying above (too many to ping): I can certainly understand the frustration (see my "how to get involved" post above). I've moved/tagged/edited a large number of course pages recently. If the editors are OWNing a page, then either get it move protected (in their userspace) or AFD it. It certainly makes more work for us, but I found that contacting the course instructor on their talk page can be helpful (sometimes). Otherwise, letting NPR and other relevant WikiProjects to keep an eye on pages is a good way to go forward. Fortunately, I've seen so far that articles are either worth keeping or clearly not worth it. Primefac (talk) 12:47, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
@EdChem: - I was very clear to the student that the article shouldn't exist. But I can only advise. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:00, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi all. Thanks for opening this productive discussion. We're looking into these to see where we can help, but I wanted to respond with some context. To that end I'm going to migrate down here the response I had started to type up in response to Primefac's section above.

Basically, the Wiki Education Foundation (Wiki Ed) is a non-profit that supports classes at higher education institutions in the United States and Canada. Students in classes we support go through interactive training, have access to print/online editing handbooks, work through a structured timeline of learning/editing Wikipedia, and have staff support to answer questions and provide feedback. Most of the training takes place through our Dashboard tool. Quality control (and more practically, given this thread, minimizing trouble for the community) is a big part of why we've invested in developing processes and digital infrastructure, and if you see areas where it could be improved, by all means let us know.

You can tell which classes we're supporting by the banners on students' user pages and on the article talk pages they work on. It's automatically added by the Dashboard. If you encounter a problem with one of those classes, a good next step is to look at the course page linked from those banners and ping/leave a message for the staff content expert working with the class (Adam (Wiki Ed) or Ian (Wiki Ed)). It's worth noting that during the busiest time of the semester (roughly 11/15-12/15 and 4/15-5/15), it may also be worth bringing pressing matters here to ensure a response.

If it looks to be a class in the US/CA that isn't currently working with us, drop a line here at the education noticeboard and we'll try to reach out to the instructor to see if we can provide support. In addition to the support I just mentioned, we have some best practices for assignment design that instructors agree to when they work with us, and occasionally discourage instructors from having their students write articles. For example, if a class has hundreds of students, if they're responsible for writing original research, if they're being graded on what content "sticks" on Wikipedia, if they're having first year students write about advanced topics, etc., we push for the instructor to not do the assignment. Sometimes they opt to edit Wikipedia anyway without our support, and sometimes there's no such red flag but the instructor would simply prefer to do their own thing.

If it does not look to be a class in the US/CA, you may want to ping TFlanagan-WMF, senior manager of the global education program, who may know people who can help in different parts of the world.

Ultimately, students and instructors on Wikipedia shouldn't receive special treatment (whether positive or negative) that any other new Wikipedian wouldn't get, so if there's someone to reach out to or a way to preserve content, then great, but editing for a grade is never a good reason to e.g. edit war, restore a copyvio, retain a duplicate article, etc.

So coming back to the question of how to help... For us, staff fill a similar role that ambassadors played in the past, and the Dashboard has taken the place of the course page extension. Where there are existing ambassadors (like university librarians), we're happy to work with them, but we don't actively use the ambassadors program. The ambassador program is still active elsewhere, and I don't want to give the impression that it's been terminated on enwiki. It's just that with the majority of classes in the program being in the US/CA, supported by Wiki Ed, and without more engagement with the education program/extension on enwiki by WMF, the community around the program has gotten quite small. Also, with the rollout of the Programs & Events Dashboard at WMFLabs, available to anyone (not just Wiki Ed classes), there's less of a need to use the course page extension. As a big reason for the ambassador, etc. user groups has to do with the extension, there's, again, limited need. There are plenty of people who help students, however -- they just don't always call themselves an ambassador. There was some activity in the community to revive the online ambassador program with a different scope here, but it has not yet happened. If there's a class working on something you're interested in, then by all means check out the course page and see if there's a way to help. As you may have gleaned, the biggest opportunity is probably the non-US/CA classes and/or secondary education (which we do not support or encourage, but which I do see regularly).

TL;DR - As with any other editor, students make mistakes. And as with any other editor, students are subject to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If you sense a problem with a student/class, and it's one of the ones we support, ping the content expert helping the class or bring it up here. We don't want classes we support to be a drain on community time/patience, and will work with the instructor/students to resolve issues you point out. If it's in the US/CA and not one of ours, bring it up here or ping one of us and we'll try to get them on board. If it's outside the US/CA, see if you can connect them with someone in the education program where they are (or ping TFlanagan-WMF to see if he can do so). There are plenty of ways to help out these classes yourself, but the coordinated programs for doing so aren't so active. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:27, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

  • There's also advice for students, instructors, and the editors who run across them, at WP:Student assignments. The advice there reflects much of the past discussions. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:20, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Ian (Wiki Ed) has stopped by my user page to talk about the creation / evolution case I mentioned above. I just want to make it clear, as I did to him directly, that my interest is not to judge or blame but to understand how the situation developed in that case to see what we can learn. I apologise to Ian for any suggestion I may have made of fault, I see that as both unhelpful to learning what can be improved and unfair to Ian, and such was not my intent – though I may have created that impression through my frustration. As an educator, I am very aware that what a teacher says and what a student hears can be very different because each interprets through the lens of their present understanding. I wonder how much of the advice to which Tryptofish refers is clear to the community as experienced Wikipedians but unclear to newcomers, especially those looking at writing through a standard academic lens. When I review student work in a university context, I want to see new ideas and arguments, supported by evidence, of course, but advanced in support of an overall interpretation of literature or data (or whatever is appropriate) that is original to the student and context – which is precisely what I don't want to see in a Wikipedia article. This advice, for instance, is true as far as it goes, but try reading with the mindset of a student... would it be clear to you that "The United Nations' stated objective is to maintain international peace and security, but since its creation there have been 160 wars throughout the world" (the example we offer at SYNTH) is not an example of "a summary of what has been written in reliable sources about the original topic or research" which is allowed / desired according to the training advice? If we can get Ian, the course instructor (Norbello) and a student (Gabriel) to all give their perspectives on the same assignment, maybe we can find areas where the support we are providing is not communicating effectively to the people we seek to assist. EdChem (talk) 00:51, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
  • FWIW, my comments about WP:OWN were not so much that students and their instructors were explicitly claiming ownership over an article and telling others not to edit it, but rather that they might not be aware that they do not have any ownership rights over their edits once they click "Save changes". A student could go to bed thinking they did something that was going to get them a good grade, only to wake up the next morning to find their work changed by others or tagged with maintenance templates, etc. The fact that other editors may edit the article in a good or bad way means that final version being graded by the teacher might not be truly reflective of the student's actual contributions. Also, comments made on talk pages like at Talk:Huangling Complex seem to suggest that these student feel that does exist some kind of ownership over article content held by the article's creator and that changes should only be made by the article's creator. I am wondering how many of these students and their instructors have read pages like WP:Student assignments and WP:YFA or have taken the WP:ADVENTURE. Maybe pages such as these should be "required reading" for the first week of any one of these "courses". -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:24, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
    • You've both raised the point of new editors not being aware of WP:Student assignments, and you are right to bring that up. Maybe some day we will elevate it to a guideline, but for now, it has limited "official" standing. I would hope that the Wiki Ed pages would include multiple mentions of and links to it. At least that would help make users who pay attention more likely to be aware of it. We do have Template:Welcome student and Template:Welcome medical student (as well as corresponding templates for instructors, and for instructors to send to their own students), and it would be great if more use were made of them. But of course, you can't get someone to read something if they aren't paying attention. When classes just show up, without the instructor having first worked with the system here, or even when students don't do what their instructor tells them to do, well, the likelihood of an unpleasant class experience increases a lot. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
      • @Tryptofish: The discussions and best practices that went into Wikipedia:Student assignments also went into the Wiki Ed training, editing brochures, instructor brochures, subject-specific brochures, etc. As something written for the community at large, the audience for WP:ASSIGN would necessarily be broader than people in the US and Canada, but for classes in those countries, as I describe above, the dashboard has taken the place of the training, course pages, etc. and the ambassadors program is in large part inactive. So while, as a volunteer, I may send someone to that page if I know they're not in the US/CA, and while it contains some good recommendations/explanations, for classes in the US/CA the processes are largely different and the guidance built into the rest of the dashboard system. I'd encourage you to play around with it and explore the training/materials -- we're regularly developing them and feedback is always welcome. It looks pretty different than the on-wiki version. I'd be willing to help update WP:ASSIGN, but we wouldn't want to have staff just jump in and start changing things on a community page (both because staff editing community pages is complicated and because we know that we're a subset of enwiki education activity rather than the whole program). --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:34, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
        • Sorry, but I don't understand the distinction you are making between US/Canada classes and classes elsewhere. Insofar as I understand, WP:ASSIGN is applicable to any English-speaking country. Are you saying that ASSIGN is built into the training materials but not into the dashboard, and the dashboard has replaced the training materials in the US/Canada? Anyway, staff should feel free to ask for changes in talk, at WT:ASSIGN. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:43, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
          • Wiki Ed supports classes in the US and Canada. We talk to instructors about their classes, get a course page set up on the Dashboard, etc. Then students enroll there, take the training there, receive editing brochures, receive feedback from staff, etc. They do not use the on-wiki training, the ambassador program, the course page extension, etc. and the principles behind WP:ASSIGN are built into the way we work with them and the content of our materials, so there's not a reason for us to point people at US/CA institutions there. Institutions outside of the US and Canada, however, fall under the WMF's global education program, and would still use the other resources discussed on WP:ASSIGN, though some of them are now using the Programs and Events Dashboard (a fork of the Dashboard, modified and hosted at wmflabs for anyone to use). Again, most of the advice/principles in WP:ASSIGN are valuable, and factored into the development of these other materials, but the audience is more the community and global education program classes. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:23, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
            • Thanks, now I understand. Even with those principles built-in, they may not always (or at all) be verbatim. I believe that the editing community would appreciate it if there would be "for more information, read:... " links as conspicuously as possible. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:49, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
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