Expert outreach/Jisc Ambassador/Summary 18 November 2013

Events

Research Impact and Open Education, Oxford

This was a three hour workshop with fourteen attendees that generated 9 requests for further help. Reflections here. Oxford IT services have their own online evaluation form and I'm trying to get them to share any evaluation from this session.

Women in Science editathon, Oxford

This had 22 attendees, very nearly all female and all but 6 entirely new to Wikipedia editing. Many of themm expressed an interest in editing beyond the workshop. An initial statement of outcomes is available on Wikipedia itself. A subsequent evaluation will assess ongoing impact and will look at contributions beyond the event. Some of the articles created on the day were featured in the Did You Know? section on the front page of English Wikipedia.

Jisc Digital Media webinar

I had a small slot in this webinar (now archived online) to talk about Wikimedia Commons as a tool for finding and sharing audio and video. The webinar also included some discussion of the merits of freely licensed content.

Research Impact and Open Education, EduWiki Conference

I gave a version of the workshop spread across four sessions of this two-day conference. When not presenting, I was chairing other sessions. Additional Jisc presence at the conference included Terry McAndrew from Jisc TechDis who ran a workshop on inclusion, Lis Parcell from RSC Wales who interacted and tweeted prolifically, and the well-received keynote from Oxford University's David White about his Jisc-funded research on learners' use of resources.

There were around fifty attendees each day (with some differences between the two days). There were 8 requests for further help which are now being followed up in email. Wikimedia UK have an intern going through feedback forms and I will share any evaluation.

Research Impact and Open Education, Sheffield

This was a two-hour workshop at the Humanities Research Institute. There were 27 attendees; 11 commitments to further action (e.g. "I'll edit Wikipedia myself"), and 5 specific requests for further help (some of the audience left at 3pm to go to another event, so didn't get evaluation forms or request forms). Evaluation and reflections here.

"Spotlight on the Digital" meeting, London

I was one of seven speakers at this day event about how scholarly and educational projects could make their content more discoverable. I used the speaking slot, informal chat and the Twitter discussion to promote sharing agreements with Wikimedia and my flowchart tool. The main point I took away was that many of the projects being discussed are small ones with very little staff time, so any sharing needs to be lightweight. I also noticed that people generally interpreted "contributing to Wikipedia" as adding external links to their projects (which can easily misinterpreted and lead to conflict with Wikipedia editors) rather than uploading content or contributing to the meat of an article. I will follow up with a written submission to Sero Consulting.

Brian Kelly of CETIS wrote up some thoughts about the session at "Spotlight on Wikipedia: the opportunities and risks".

Meetings

I had a face-to-face meeting with Rod Dunican, Wikimedia's Director of Global Education Programs, about how the new Wiki Education Foundation could help the UK HE sector. I fed back about how to adapt printed and online material to be more relevant to the UK HE context, about the trouble new users had had navigating the portal of online education materials in the Oxford workshop, and about the Courses module in Wikipedia.