Expert outreach/Jisc Ambassador
From July 2013 to March 2014, Jisc and Wikimedia UK are jointly supporting a project to encourage a range of audiences (librarians, teachers, researchers and students) within learning and research to engage with Wikimedia UK and Wikimedia projects. The outputs of the project will be events, case studies and other documentation.
Dr Martin Poulter is acting as an Ambassador between the two communities, with the support of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law at the University of Bristol as well as the two partner organisations. He will be employed part-time alongside his two other jobs at the University. See elsewhere for Martin's past publications about Wikipedia and his Wikimedia-related talks and presentations.
Background
This project overlaps the cultural partnerships, expert outreach and education projects areas of Wikimedia UK's work. Among the many projects supported by Jisc are collections of digital content; research in areas such as Digital Humanities and Virtual Research Environments; and the UK Open Educational Resources programme. Jisc promotes open access to research as part of the UK Open Access Implementation Group and promotes the use of Open Source Software by funding the Open Source Software Advisory Service. Jisc also influences practice in Higher and Further Education through its work in innovation and change management. See the blog post for more about the collaboration project's rationale.
Before this project, Wikimedia UK's work with Jisc has included the World War I editathon, the Digital Infrastructure team workshop and workshops at the Changing the Learning Landscape Strategy Implementation Programme event. Two of Jisc's programme managers spoke at the EduWiki Conference 2012, as did staff from Jisc TechDis and Jorum. Wikimedia UK had a presence at the Jisc-sponsored Open Educational Resources 2013 conference. Wikimedia UK's Martin Poulter and Jisc CETIS' Phil Barker collaborated on a help sheet for developers about Wikimedia Commons. In March 2013, Wikimedia UK's blog ran an interview with Oxford University's David White about his Jisc-funded research into use of sources by school and university students.
Activities
At the moment, the project is in an initial phase of planning and contact-building to see what activities to focus on out of the hundreds that are possible.
To send queries to Martin, it is best to use email at martin.poulter
wikimedia.org.uk , but Talk pages on the different Wikimedia projects will be watched.
Major project activities and outcomes will be announced here and on the affected Wikimedia projects. You can follow the project in greater detail on the dedicated user page, User:MartinPoulter_Jisc.
Martin will continue to take part in Education Committee meetings and will report on major developments in those meetings and their minutes.
Media coverage
(latest at top)
- 1 July 2013 Bristol Wireless blog post
- 30 June 2013 Wikipedia contributors 'should be proud' Times Higher Education web site (not in the paper publication)
- University of Bristol announcement of the project
- Jisc announcement
- Wikimedia UK blog post