Expert outreach/Jisc Ambassador/Research impact and open education

"Wikimedia: linking research impact and open education" is a series of workshops given by Martin Poulter from October 2013 to March 2014 as part of the Wikimedia UK/Jisc collaboration. These will usually be given as part of an institution's existing teaching innovation seminar, or elearning seminar.

The intended outcomes of the workshops are:

1. a raised awareness among academics of Wikimedia, its different projects, and its relevance to their own goals as educators and researchers
2. a growing list of academic contacts who are interested in engaging with Wikipedia as educators and/or researchers, and who have realistic expectations about the opportunities and pitfalls.

This effort will be supported with case studies and other media, which will be linked from this page.

Contact Martin via martin.poulterwikimedia.org.uk to request a workshop in your own institution, or with any other query about this series of workshops.

Certificate issued by Oxford University IT Services for participation in the first workshop

Abstract

Wikipedia does not just aim to provide free knowledge to everyone in the world: it actively invites everyone to contribute. It sees the public not just as recipients but as potential creators and remixers of its text, images and other media. At the same time, it seeks credibility and expects to cite the most reliable sources in each subject. Educational assignments on Wikipedia, or its sister sites, are a chance for students to experience publication and to create their own educational materials. Dozens of universities are now setting assignments in which students improve Wikipedia, in effect creating their own textbook.

With a mix of activities, this workshop will show how learners are already creating and remixing material within Wikipedia, and take participants through some of the steps in designing an educational activity around the research resources in their subject area. It will look at specific examples, and realistically set out the advantages and pitfalls.

No previous experience of wiki editing is assumed.

Locations and dates

• The project plan specifies six academic-facing events, but the demand is such that more will probably happen.
• University of Oxford, 15 October 2013, 9.30-12.30pm 14 attendees
• EduWiki Conference 2013 (four sessions across two days)
• University of Sheffield (hosted by Humanities Research Institute), 14 November 2013, 1.30-3.30pm, 27 attendees
• University of Newcastle, 2 December 2013, 12.30-2pm
• Bath Spa University, 23 January 2014, 12-2pm
• University of Bath, date TBC
• Imperial College, London (hosted by medical faculty), date TBC
• University of Bristol, date TBC

Coverage and reactions

• "Wikipedia: Learning by Sharing Knowledge" (guest post on Bodleian Libraries' 23 Things blog)

Reflections and lessons learned

Oxford

• It feels like it was a good first attempt. Some in-person feedback was extremely good and there was clearly some enthusiasm generated for further work. There are definitely aspects that should be changed now that it has been tested in a "live fire" situation.
• Audience was ideal for this project: many geeky but not tech-geeky; some academics, some elearning/support staff, at least one museum staff
• Audience had a very informed and nuanced understanding of Wikipedia compared to audiences I'm used to; less so of how it fits into the group of Wikimedia projects, so they did learn new things.
  • One exception to this was quality: learning that Wikipedia has different quality ratings, and actually demanding review processes, significantly changed the perception of Wikipedia for at least one audience member. I had an exercise connected to this, but didn’t explain the topic as thoroughly as I normally do. In future I will spend a bit more time on the basics of Wikipedia's quality review processes.
• Everybody contributed. Framing a problem and then asking for each person’s perspective on it was a useful exercise and everybody had something interesting to say.
• Energy in the room was hard to maintain over a 3 hour session. There was a point in a middle where the energy definitely sagged, and this suggests that what I was talking about at that point wasn't as interesting as I thought it was.
• The different examples I talked about maybe didn't cohere into a narrative. I could perhaps make a virtue of this by presenting a “menu” of different engagement opportunities and asking the audience which they want to discuss.
• Although the goals of the workshop were detailed in the publicity and first few minutes of the talk were scene-setting, it would have been good to have clear learning goals set out at the start and to revisit these
• I thought I was presenting Wikimedia in terms of the opportunities offered to academic or librarian contributors, yet one of the questions was "I can see what I can do for Wikimedia, but what can Wikimedia do for me?" so I need to strengthen that point.
• Oxford has a regulation that any material assessed for a degree must exist on paper, not be purely electronic. This presents a difficulty for directly assessing Wikipedia contributions, but we discussed some ways around this.
• For my handouts, it wasn't obvious which was the "front" and which was the "back".

Resources

• Manypedia turned out to be a very suitable tool because it allowed them to investigate and ask questions rather than merely reading/watching.
• Confusing organisation of the Outreach wiki didn’t help. There is an "Education" page, but it's not the page that you get when you click on "Education" in the navigation bar. Note: This has been fed back very strongly to Rod Dunican at the Foundation.
• Finding the uses of a Commons file was not at all obvious to newcomers, particularly the fact that once you click on a thumbnail in Wikipedia, you must click again on the “description page” link to be taken to another page that looks almost identical to the one you were just on.

Evaluation

• Awaiting results of Oxford's online evaluation

EduWiki

• Not the standard workshop approach, because I had to fit into the conference format, but managed to work sections of the workshop into 1) an opening overview about the crowdsourcing approach; 2) a session explaining Wikimedia as an ecosystem linking research impact, free culture, and open education; 3) a brainstorm about the practicalities of Wikipedia educational assignments, and 4) a "prescription pad" session where people commit to (and request support for) specific actions they are going to take.
• Lots of verbal feedback to the effect that the format was engaging, and that I was talking about stuff that was new to the audience. Will wait for conference feedback to see if my sessions are mentioned in particular.
• I still need to summarise in one line the goals or conclusions of each section so that everyone sees the overaching point and not just the facts supporting it.

Evaluation

• Awaiting summary of conference feedback forms: will include here anything that directly pertains to my session.

Request forms

This report focuses on HE-relevant requests. A fuller list of requests is documented at EduWiki_Conference_2013#Next_steps

Some "next actions" were reported verbally: 1) use ideas from this conference in presentations in universities, 2) submit a proposal to an information literacy conference, 3) invite Martin in to department to speak to colleagues, 4) various possibilities both in sharing content and studying the handling of controversial topics in Wikipedia

I'd like to:	But the main barrier I face is:	The help I want from Wikimedia UK/Jisc is:
Build on the knowledge I've picked up at this conference and share it with colleagues & customers	Keeping a grip on a very big, fast-moving topic	Easy signposts to appropriate resources; Jisc to communicate more internally (and externally) about its Wikimedia work
Edit more. Create educational assignment.	Time to organise the course page	Make a user's guide on how to 1) Get instructor's rights; 2) Set up the course page; 3) the various tools on the course page
Highlight HE projects across the disciplines	Time - but if it aligns with employer's agenda I can tie it in.	Discussion - invitation to meetings
Create an educational assignment / Contribute to Wikiversity or Wikinews / As part of a module assessment, online collaborative project, wiki-based	Institutional culture/ Lack of colleagues' awareness/ General ignorance and/or suspicion about Wikimedia activities, tools & resources	In conversation with WMUK already re: grant for educational projects

Sheffield

• 27 in audience (two Humanities Research Institute staff plus 25 sign-ups from across the university). Didn't get exact numbers for gender, but women were somewhat in the majority.
  • One audience member said he would have to leave early, but in fact 7 or 8 left at 3pm and so missed the last 30 minutes. So I didn't get evaluation forms or prescription forms from these.
• Diverse roles of audience: based on a show of hands, a handful of lecturers, a handful of non-teaching researchers, several librarians, about a dozen Masters-level students in relevant topics such as public engagement or digital librarianship.
• About ten of the audience had edited Wikipedia in the past. I asked if they had "bad experiences" (like having material deleted) or "good experiences". Some response to "good"; no response to "bad". Around a dozen (a bit less than half the audience) had heard of Wikimedia prior to the publicity for this event.
• Two hours was just the right length for a session that isn't in a computer room, where there are fewer opportunities for online activities.
• Even though it wasn't a computer room, a great majority of the audience had mobile devices that could access Wikipedia, so we did manage to have an activity where we looked at featured articles, although the instructions for those on smartphones had to differ from those on laptops.
  • One participant- a psychology lecturer - was surprised at how few FAs there were in psychology compared to other subjects.
  • The FA exercise made Wikiprojects tangible: we could show that the Talk page of a FA was badged with relevant Wikiprojects.
• Having changed around the order of the slides, the first two-thirds of the workshop flowed much better and made more sense. The latter third, about educational assignments, made less sense and maybe the information in the slides was less relevant for this audience which had relatively few educators.
• Discussing the review process in somewhat more detail was valuable: one academic attendee commented that getting an article to Featured Article status involves more lengthy review, by more people, than getting published in an academic journal.
• One of the audience was a former schoolteacher and was interested in how to encourage a critical understanding of Wikipedia rather than the excessive reliance that school learners normally show. I hadn't prepared much about this for the workshop, but had a lot to say about it (talking about the virtue of open publishing and some of the ways of "lifting up the bonnet" on a Wikipedia article). In fact this topic oould be a workshop in itself, or a big chunk of one.
• People appreciate freebies (badges and booklets)! I was surprised at how keen even senior academics were to grab a little Wikipedia badge. When I handed out the "Welcome to Wikipedia" booklet, it interrupted the flow somewhat because people were so interested in the its content.
• The Humanities Research Institute venue was easy to access, modern, well provided for in terms of IT/AV, had a refreshment area, and a normal capacity of about 70 which could be expanded to 200 by removing a partition. There is a breakout room across the hall. As such, it struck me as just the right sort of environment for an AGM or future EduWiki conference.

Evaluation forms

Ten evaluation forms were handed in. Evaluation forms were separate from request forms because the latter included contact details and evaluation needed to be anonymous.

"I learnt new things today" (1-5; 1=Strongly disagree, 5=Strongly agree)

Mean: 4.4 (Nine chose 4 or 5; see later answers for why it was not all attendees)

"I learnt things that will be useful in my work." (1-5)

Mean: 3.6 (Four chose 4 or 5)

"I will do something new as a result of attending today." (1-5)

Mean: 3.5 (Seven chose 4 or 5)

"The most interesting thing in the session was

"

• Wikidata; also enjoyed audience participation
• Learning about diverse projects; energy of presentation!; education ideas; thorough; interactivity always appreciated. Liked the guessing games!
• Lots of things. Very informative & enjoyable thanks.
• Finding out the different ways Wikipedia is made/kept reliable
• Public engagement use of Wikipedia
• Discovering more about the inner workings of the site
• "Under the bonnet" features I wasn't aware of
• More ideas about open access; increasing reach
• (two answers left blank)

"One thing that would have improved the session was

"

• Interesting session only scored low because I already knew quite a lot about Wikipedia/use in academia. Well structured, audience participation broke long session up.
• Maybe address some of the worries people might have about editing Wikipedia?
• It became a little bit unjoined following the part where we went to the laptops/mobiles/tablets. Just needed something to pull us back together at that point.
• Nothing- maybe some demo of editing etc.?
• A little shorter
• Could of perhaps been said in an hour
• Was fine- enjoyed it
• (three answers left blank)

Request forms

I'd like to:	But the main barrier I face is:	The help I want from Wikimedia UK/Jisc is:
Create an educational assignment & contribute to Wikiversity	Institutional policy & my nature (conservative & lazy)	materials & resources / an event in the workplace
Get all ugrads to come out with good digital info literacies	Academics who are unimaginative	(nothing requested on form but I had a face-to-face chat. this person saw the change as needing to come top-down from the funding bodies, e.g. career recognition for Wikipedia contributions)
Research/ get involved in development of secondary school information literacy curriculum (using Wikipedia as a source)	Does Michael Gove count? Confidence / Huge; don't have contacts enough experience / Relevance to Masters topic? (MSc Digital Library Management)	No idea!
Find out about Wikidata/ Wikimedia Commons + potential for use in research projects	Contacts / funding	Highlighting/ flagging up any current opportunities
Edit Wikipedia myself	lack of confidence	Received enough information in this talk to convince me to do it.
Edit myself	Previous experience of rudeness/ not helpfulness from other editors	Info on how to work editing etc. [All participants in this workshop received "Welcome to Wikipedia" booklets]
Edit Wikipedia myself	Lack of knowledge in any specific area	materials & resources
Edit Wikipedia myself	Lack of confidence & certainty of my knowledge	Case studies
a) edit myself b) try and get academics contributing in a serious way	a) nothing b) potentially apathy within the faculty	Organising events within the History faculty to persuade people to get involved
Edit Wikipedia. Maybe start articles. Think about linking to (own project's) resources	Lack of confidence	(blank)

An academic course leader expressed (verbally, not on a form) an interest in Wikipedia education assignments in the area of psychology. We have his email address and he received a case studies brochure.

Newcastle

• About 25 booked; about 5 no-shows; two or three came late and missed a substantial chunk. Seventeen evaluation forms collected. Only 6 request forms.
• This event was live-tweeted. The tweets (and photo) have been collected in Storify.

Evaluation forms

"I enjoyed this session."

Mean: 4.35. 16 out of 17 agreed (i.e. chose 4 or 5, meaning "agree" or "strongly agree").

"I had a good understanding of Wikimedia before this session."

Note that the lower the score on this question, the better.

Mean: 3.0. Four agreed.

"I have a good understanding of Wikimedia now."

Mean: 4.3. 16 out of 17 agreed.

"I learnt useful things for my work."

Mean: 4.0. 13 out of 17 agreed.

"I will do something new as a result of this session."

Mean: 3.9. 12 out of 17 agreed.

What is the most interesting thing you learned today?

• The use of Wikipedia as an interactive learning experience (for students); The 'Talk' reporting feature and for finding out the quality of the article.
• Writing an online encyclopedia; Wikipedia Educational Assignments; Encyclopedia article[?]
• Design of educational assignments (and page view metrics)
• About the student assignments to edit Wikipedia entries
• How it can be used in educational assignments
• Case studies for educational purposes
• That there are resources available to support use of Wikipedia in education.
• The scope for using it for educational assignments
• Hearing about Wikipedia educational assignments
• Local activities (mining museum) + ideas for student activities.
• A lot more detail about how the editing/ improvement processes work and extent of use for education assignments
• An overview about the review process of Wikimedia.
• How the review process for Wikimedia works; How to look at page views
• How all the parts of Wikimedia fit together; How we can use it academically
• Wikidata - need to look at this carefully
• The other interdependent wiki products and their relationship to Wikipedia.
• Plagiarism v Copyright issues on wiki

Tell us at least one thing that would have improved this workshop for you.

• Perhaps some more examples of how Universities are using Wikimedia to demonstrate impact.
• It would have been useful to see/ talk about more specific student & lecturer feedback / opinions
• Shorter lead-in about Wikipedia to allow a more dedicated focus on WP in education.
• More time + chance to look at the interface at a computer
• More demonstration.
• Demonstration of process of editing
• More interactive exercises?
• Finding out more about the motivations and barriers to edit from people in the room, but possibly just because of my own motivations. Event was great!
• Reduced lighting on the screen to increase the clarity of slides.
• Nothing really, given the length of the workshop. A longer session, including devising an assignment, would be great, but not possible in a lunch-time.
• Not sure- I enjoyed the workshop very much
• Nothing; all good
• N/A
• [four blank answers]

Request forms

I'd like to:	But the main barrier I face is:	The help I want from Wikimedia UK/Jisc is:
Help other academics to contribute to WP in their subject areas.; Edit Wikipedia; Share images; Contribute to Wikiversity	Lack of confidence; institutional culture	Help us design & deliver courses on Wikimedia + "all of the above"
Share images	[no answer]	Materials & resources
Create an educational assignment	Hostility towards Wikipedia amongst academics (and, indeed, librarians!); Institutional culture; Lack of colleagues' awareness	An event; materials and resources; case studies; I need to do some thinking/ reading first though!
Find out more about journal-to-wiki publication and the Vision of Britain project	time	Materials & resources; are the PPT slides available?
Edit Wikipedia	Lack of colleagues' awareness	Case studies
Edit Wikipedia; Contribute to Wikiversity or Wikinews	Lack of colleagues' awareness	In-person advice

One attendee approached me after the workshop to say that she hadn't filled in a form, but definitely wanted to do something in her work as a result of the workshop. She just needed time to reflect on the different activities that had been presented. Another attendee will soon be running a MOOC about Hadrian's Wall which will produce freely reusable content. She said and was "buzzing" with different ways the Wikimedia projects could be involved. We discussed, for a start, the possibility that learners could visit and photograph sites; uploading, describing and geotagging the photos in Commons.

Reflections

• The audience: 3 lecturers/educators; 2 librarians; 3 pure researchers, a lot of education-related staff involved in elearning, staff development, and so on.
• The previous two-hour workshop at Sheffield was just the right length. This was 1.5 hours to fit the format of the workshop series, and I adjusted insufficiently. I should have cut more content out to get more quickly to the educational "meat".
• I've been coming to these workshops prepared to talk in detail about the pedagogical advantages of Wikipedia assignments, and there is certainly interest and awareness of that. However, so far I've found that attendees' understanding of Wikipedia and how it relates to their work can be transformed simply by showing making them aware of the quality scale, or that all changes are stored in an article history.
• I used a conventional usability technique of bringing an article up on the screen and asking people where they would click i
  • Where would you click to edit the article? Obviously "Edit".
  • Where would you click to post a message to existing editors? No problem with "Talk"
  • Where would you click to find other language versions of this article? I got a correct answer: not sure if all the audience found it obvious.
  • Where would you click to find the quality rating of an article? No idea. We were actually looking at a Featured Article, but the Bronze star was not noticed (and means nothing to the audience). That "Talk" takes you to the rating is not at all obvious.
  • Where would you click to find page view statistics? Not at all obvious.
  • There could be a whole workshop session (or section in these workshops) about elementary wiki comprehension. In the past I have done workshops where I try to get newcomers to parse article histories, spot vandal edits, and so on. This can take hours: more efficient is simply to look at the Talk page, or look at the various tools at the top of the article history page.
• Learning from previous workshops, I announced explicit goals at the outset. I emphasised more than previously that the goal of the workshop was for each participant to find something that they could do differently in their work. So it's strange that there were so few request forms. Verbal and written feedback shows that the exercise was taken very seriously and that people felt they needed time to think about options. In the ten-minute section when the audience had to fill both the evaluation form and the request form, I was showing what can be done with Talk pages, which for some was most valuable bit of the session. So there may just have been too much going on.
• My examples of "What not to do" need to be more detailed so that the answer is less ambiguous.
• The evaluation is evolving as I go on. Last time, I asked the audience if they'd heard of Wikmedia before hearing about the event (yes or no) and half hadn't. This time I asked for an agreement on a 1 to 5 scale, and there were many "3" answers but no "1" answers. This difference may reflect that the Newcastle audience were just more informed, or it could be that a 1-5 scale makes people think of the question differently.
• It was a less energetic session somehow than Sheffield, for reasons that are hard to pin down. The audience were at least as friendly and attentive as any I've had. Partly my issue was the effort of fitting material in to the shorter time slot; partly it was that I had noticed myself "umm"ing while presenting at Sheffield, so was making a conscious effort not to "umm" when speaking. So perhaps I wasn't projecting out as much enthusiasm. Anyway, the feedback is broadly very good so this is more an issue for me than for the audience.

This page has been created as part of the 2013-14 partnership between Jisc and Wikimedia UK