User talk:Heather Adams

Welcome
Hello, Heather Adams, and welcome to Wikipedia! It appears you are a course instructor leading a class project. We encourage you to read our instructions for teachers and lecturers. It is strongly recommended that you add your class to our list of school and university projects. For more help about educational projects using Wikipedia, see our classroom coordination project which was created for the very purpose of assisting course instructors who use Wikipedia for their courses.

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Before your students create an article, make sure you understand what kind of articles are accepted here. Remember: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and while many topics are encyclopedic, some things are not. Unencyclopedic articles are subject to deletion.

We highly recommend that you place on the talk page of any articles you are working on as part of your Wikipedia-related course assignment. This will let other editors know this article is a subject of an educational assignment and should be treated accordingly.

We hope you like it here and encourage you to stay after your assignment is finished! Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 11:59, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Contact question
You might want to read my response to your "complaint" on Banaticus's talk page. Snowded TALK 07:27, 6 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I responded there as well. :) Banaticus (talk) 08:00, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Narrative inquiry
I responded to your post on my talk page. I said, 'Ok, I won't take any further action then, unless you'd like me to. You might look into Third opinion which is "a means to request an outside opinion in a dispute between two editors". Good luck. :)' After doing so, since that class is over, and my talk page was about 60 kB, which is usually around when I archive it, I archived my talk page.  If you'd like me to continue my involvement with the narrative inquiry article or any other article from the last class, please start a new discussion on my talk page and I'll be more than happy to continue.  Good luck, I hope everything goes smoothly. :) Banaticus (talk) 16:53, 16 October 2012 (UTC)


 * So, has anything come from my post at Talk:Narrative_inquiry? Have you corresponded further with Snowded or any other Wikipedians on that article or any of the other articles your students were recently working on? Banaticus (talk) 04:18, 1 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your contribution there. It does not seem to have made much of a difference on that page though.  The comments by at least one other user indicate that they agree with Snowded that Wikipedia should not be part of class projects.  As I explained there today (I have had administration work that possessed my time for the past few weeks), I think that different views of what is the appropriate interface between Wikipedia and education is at the heart of this conflict.  I provided the link to the site which contacted me and asked me to put up a course, but I do not know what difference that will make. The feedback on other pages is going well and the students should be back on within a week to work with these further (they have been designing a small study so they can gain some experiential knowledge as well).  One insight I have gained as I have been looking further into Wikipedia, the processes and the cultural norms - both those explicitly stated and the unstated ones that play out just the same -  is that if Wikipedia wants to continue this interface and not have periodic conflicts of this nature, there need to be additional activities for students and novice instructors, such as myself, to get into the grove of Wikipedia culture and communication norms before they are on to live pages. In retrospect, I can honestly see several mistakes we made, but I also know that I carefully read all the material that was provided.  Heather Adams (talk) 02:09, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I didn't say that Wikipedia should not be a part of a class project, but that students who contributed should be better prepared as they will be treated no differently from other editors. At least one other editor has also made the point that wikipedia entries are not really under graduate level when it comes to academic subjects.  Snowded  TALK 21:13, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * As I am not sure who you are (no signature) so I will reply generally - the attitude that students should not be on Wikipedia as a class project has been a strong tone. I am not sure what part of better prepared you are referring to. Do you mean more knowledgeable or more informed and practiced in Wikipedia format and culture?  Heather Adams (talk) 15:27, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry I forgot to sign it but starting with "I" and a simple check of changes would have listed the name.  Snowded  TALK 21:13, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. To help me understand your concern better, were you referring to lack of preparation in reference to student knowledge of topic or knowledge of appropriate Wikipedia interface? Heather Adams (talk) 22:40, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * In this case to knowing how to edit on wikipedia and what to expect.  Snowded  TALK 23:58, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * In that case, as you can see from my post above, I agree with you wholeheartedly that training needs to be incorporated into the education process, not just a review of information.  I have thought of several ways this could be accomplished and hope to put them together after the rush of this semester.  Part of my frustration in our conversations was that I had followed all of the recommendations (not just the requirements) and had even read more on my own, but I discovered that it was still not sufficient.  Dare I suggest that the tree of us, Banaticus, you and I, work on producing such a program?  I think we will each bring a different, but valuable perspective, which would contribute to producing a high quality product.  Rather than repeatedly "putting out fires" in Wikipedia, why not be part of something that reduces their likelihood and severity altogether for everyone? Heather Adams (talk) 15:16, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Happy to be involved. I think it would be a good idea to have a few mentors around to help them and possibly some teleconferences or similar when they get started.   Snowded  TALK 22:26, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of teleconferences, even if they are a bit canned. I was also thinking of setting up some form of exercises, where they could practice corrections, responding to feedback, etc.  These could be printouts the student complete in class (ie, some one changed your page content and left the following comment - how should you respond? What part of Wikipedia culture and regulations addresses this?).  This would require them to go looking for information ABOUT working on Wikipedia - I think right now they leap right into the content.  Instructor materials could be provided for novices such as myself.  I would love to make it more live, but am not sure how to do that without eliciting the frustrations you experienced.  I have some savvy multimedia instruction friends that I can take this project to for feedback, if we can first get an outline of issues and goals.  Would you prefer to start another Wikipedia page where we can continue this conversation, or would a dropbox be a good idea?  I lean toward a dropbox because we could Skype, record the Skype and then store it there. This is easier when you have a conversation that generates a lot of ideas that you then work off of the next few weeks.  Your thoughts? Heather Adams (talk) 22:48, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Possible pick off an example of a controversial page so they can have a look at how disputes unfold and are resolved - an interesting bit of anthropology in its own right. The great value of Wikipedia is that it is a true complex adaptive system regulated by behaviour not content adjudication.  Open to any medium.  It might be interesting to set up a three way plus a student and have a conversation about what happened - that would be valuable as an artefact?  I'd happily pop in and chat but the nearest I get to you on the next US trip is Columbus State  Snowded  TALK 23:14, 14 November 2012 (UTC)