Wikipedia:India Education Program/Documentation

This page attempts to publicly document important information about the India Education Program that was conveyed off-wiki.

October 2011
Nitika sends email to the faculty
 * October 11

Subject: Wikipedia: Urgent Attention on Copyvios

Hello faculty members,

We've been having a lot of copy violations issues because of which your college lab/hostel IPs have been getting blocked several times. A lot of students are still continuing to do copy paste even after several warnings. Wikipedia community has zero tolerance level towards copy violations and they will continue blocking the IPs if they find more copyvio articles - the community is keeping a close watch on all the articles and students.

We understand that the deadlines are fast approaching and all the students want to work on their wiki assignments. We're working on getting the IP unblocked (again).

Once the college lab/hostel IP is unblocked we'd like the students to write only in the private space (sandbox) so that we make sure that there are no copyvios. We'd request all the professors to reiterate this point in the class and direct the students to edit only in their sandbox and make no more edits in the article mainspace. From this point onwards, we should encourage students to write only in the sandbox.

Campus Ambassadors will be reaching out to the students via mail, FB pages, through student's talk pages etc. but we'd really appreciate professors also to address this issue in class and make sure that students are writing only in their private space (sandbox).

Thank you for your continued support.

Nitika

Nitika sends the following email to the CA list:
 * October 10

Hey CAs,

The copyvio issue is now hitting the roof. Even after giving several warnings the students are continuing to copy-paste. The community is completely intolerant towards it and has been blocking SSE and CoEP IPs. We'll have to ask the students to stop editing on the mainspace instead write only in their sandbox. Once we are sure that the content is copyvio free that we will move the content to the main article space. But until any further notice the student should write only in their sandbox.

We'd request each CAs to reach out to your students and inform them about the same via mail, FB pages, class google group, CR etc. It will be great if you could also discuss this with the professors of your class (write them a mail or call them up personally) and request them to address the class and direct the students to write only in their sandbox.

I've written a small note below. Please mail it to your class students and use multiple channels of communications to let them know that they should edit only in thier userspace (sandbox) from now on.

Thanks Nitika

_______________________________________________

Hey everyone,

It seems that we've been having a lot of copy violations issues because of which our lab IPs have been getting blocked several times. We understand that your deadlines are fast approaching and all of you want to work on your wiki assignments. Please bear with us while we get your college IP unblocked.

We have one request for all the students - once your college lab IP has been unblocked please make sure that you're editing only in your Sandbox and not on the article mainspace. Your professors will grade you based on your sandbox. To get a feedback on your article, you can share the link to your Sandbox with your Campus Ambassadors - they will be willing to help you write a great article.

For those who have already written the article on the mainspace, please don't worry. The professors will go through your contributions on mainspace as well. But if you want to make any further edits please write in your sandbox only.

In case of any queries or doubts we'd encourage you to reach out to your campus ambassador.

Happy editing!!

Thanks


 * October 7

Hisham sends the following email to the CA list:

Hi Team

This problem is continuing and is fast approaching disaster proportions. Please see these comments

 and 

Please urgently do the following

a) Constantly repeat to every student that copy-pasting is not acceptable b) Monitor the work of your students - and make sure they edit in their sandboxes before they go live (and only go live after you ok it.) c) Please let's have the Campus & Online Ambassadors working closely with each other to do point (b) and to track, monitor and correct the work of your respective students.

In the next few days and weeks, the problem is going to explode unless we control it because many students' deadlines are approaching.

Please treat this matter with the highest urgency. The very future of our program is at stake.

Many thanks.

hisham

CA Wasim sends an update --
 * October 1

POINTS TO BE DISCUSSED WITH STUDENTS ON 1ST OCTOBER 2011.

--

1. Creating User-ID

2. Creating User-page.

3. Creating Sandbox. (Write summary about the changes made to their article)

4. Signing on Talk pages with edit summary. Importance of Signature.

5. Introduction to IRC Chat-room. (Give details of OA's) (http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-classroom)

6. Topic Selection & Finalization of topic.

7. Write the article as a stub/new article ( Do not write on user-pages) (Eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ishq2011).

8. Importance of citing valid references. NO VANDALISM !!! NO COPYVIO !!!

9. Finding the Culprits - Who have written the article on their user-pages. Have not created their user-pages/talk-pages/sandbox etc.

10. Importance of links in Wikipedia (Students don't know how to link articles/user-pages etc.)

11. Catch hold of the students running away from Wikipedia. Let them know it's easier than Engineering.

12. Catch the Professor and show him the right path to Wikipedia. (Brief him about what he is supposed to do other than travelling)

13. Discuss the Probability of giving some marks to all the students based on their current status.. (To improve competition & make the        students jealous among themselves)

Let me know if anything else needs to be added.

Cheers !!! Wasim Mogal

September 2011
CA Wasim sends an update
 * September 19

Hey guys,

Hope you all are doing well. The wiki season seems to have heated up with the copyvios. I have created a small Help Centre for the students of Software Testing & Quality Assurance at COEP. I would like you to help yourselves by using it for your students as well.

Here goes the link. Help Centre for students...

I am open for any kind of Suggestions/Criticism....

Happy Editing !!! Thanks & Regards, Wasim

Nitika emails Campus Ambassadors
 * September 18

Hey everyone,

For SSE CAs: On Monday & Tuesday (19th & 20th) I’ll park myself at SSE – 4th Floor Ishita’s room. Please let all your students know if they have any questions regarding Wiki assignment (fundamental, technical, copvio, etc., etc.) I’ll be available to offer them help whole day long. They can just walk into the room and catch me there. I believe Ishita has already sent a mail regarding this, but I would really like if you all could spread the word in your classes. You could send them another mail, use facebook page, communicate one-on-one – but make sure your classes know please. I really want to make sure that we give every student an opportunity and option to get their queries resolved in person. I would highly encourage you all (SSE CAs) to come and join me in solving their queries whenever you have time in-between your classes. I would also like to meet the CAs of each class individually, so that we can have a closer look at the progress/problems of each class. I’ll be sending out meeting requests for the same, please let me know if you’d be available.

For CoEP CAs: Similarly I’ll be in CoEP on Wednesday & Thursday (21st & 22nd). Please let your students know! I am not sure where will I be sitting, but I’ll let you guys know by tomorrow. But please make sure you announce this open house via your mail network, FB network or any other medium. Once again, do join me in solving their queries whenever you have time in between your classes. I’ll also send out individual CA meeting invites to you guys.

For ALL: There are few classes for which we could not arrange the copyvio session last week. Please make sure to speak with the profs of those classes, schedule the in-class time and share it on the Google calendar (preferably- on 19th/20th for SSE & on 21st & 22nd for CoEP) so that I can also come and join you in these sessions.

Keep the good work going and see you all soon.

Nitika

CA Pratik sends an update
 * September 18

Dear all,

I am glad to inform you that there has been some progress in the STQA course. I had identified the students who had not made their entries on the course page itself. I've bombarded them with mails, text messages and even asked the CR to send them a message. We have also posted welcome templates on their talk pages. Result : 5 / 8 students have made their entries to the table.

Problems:


 * Some of the ones who made entries to the table haven't made their user pages.


 * Two students are using the same user-id.


 * Students are changing their topic-names every now and then and are not linking them properly.


 * Students are yet to start with their articles. Some have started but those have been either copyvios or have been nominated for speedy deletion!

Solution:


 * I called up Prof. Waychal today and have fixed up a meeting with him tomorrow afternoon. I will be discussing these problems with him(mainly problem no. 3 & 4), will get to know the plans he has in his mind regarding the evaluation and will also put forth my own ideas.(I think that there should be a 10 mark evaluation soon. This will force the students to at least start with their articles ).


 * If possible, I'll visit their class and give them an idea about the current scenario and what all needs to be done.


 * If any session is required, I'll get in touch with Wasim and plan out soon.

Note:We are having our mid semester exams commencing from 22nd Sept. So that also needs to be kept in mind.

Well, I'll let you all know about the things we discuss in the meeting in the next update.

Regards, Pratik Lahoti.


 * September 15

CA Debanjan Bandyopadhyay sends the following email to his students, with the subject: "Plagiarism Copyvios and a whole lot of headaches"

Hey Guys*,*

So how is it going?? I had a lovely discussion today in Shirin ma'ams class. Hope those of you attended know now how to create your own sandbox. If you still have any issues feel free to contact me or any of the other Campus Ambassadors.

Ok, so since all of you have a lot of questions over paraphrasing as to how to paraphrase and how not to paraphrase. As well as what constitutes a legitimate Paraphrase, and what is a close paraphrase, check out the passages below. Hope that helps.

I've also attached a small video from http://www.howcast.com/videos/273986-How-To-Avoid-Plagiarism regarding plagiarism. Go through it. Hope it helps. If not, then please revert back to me so that I may improve myself to help you guys better.

Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes. Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. (1976): 46-47.
 * "The original passage:*

In research papers students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester 46-47).
 * A legitimate paraphrase:*

Students should take just a few notes in direct quotation from sources to help minimize the amount of quoted material in a research paper (Lester 46-47).
 * An acceptable summary:*

Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes."
 * A plagiarized version:*

~ http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/619/01/

P.S. - Please do attend Wikipedia sessions if we are able to conduct them. I understand that they might be a tad boring esp since you guys are already over-stressed by college. Believe me, its equally challenging to give the presentation after a long and tiring day. So, just come over next time, if you find it boring, leave, no one will ask you to stay. But do not give any Campus Ambassador to haul you up. Ask as much questions as you want. We want to make sure we do our job alongside you. Ask us any issues that are preventing you from editing so that we may help you better.

P.P.S. - Shirin ma'am, your knowledge of Wikipedia is astounding. Happy to have you on board. I hope this and subsequent emails help the students understand the concepts of paraphrasing. Feel free to contribute as you like.

access to the sum of all human knowledge" ~ Jimmy Wales*
 * "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free

Regards,

For those who are already on Wiki, hope to read your awesome articles soon,

For those who are not, we are missing you, do join us soon,

Your friendly neighborhood Campus Ambassador,

Debanjan Bandyopadhyay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Debastein1

Nitika sends email to Campus Ambassadors
 * September 14

Subject: Copyvio Sessions & CA Meet

Hey everyone,

I'll be in Pune tomorrow and day after. It will be really nice if we all could get into the classes and speak with students about copyvio issues. It's necessary that we address this repeatitively in front of the students and make sure they understand that they cannot copy-paste in wikipedia.

I have written to the CoEP and SSE faculty requesting for in-class time with the students. As I hear from them, I shall add the time slots in the google calendar and share with you all. It will be great if you could join for a couple of sessions.

I am also sending a CA meet-up invite: CoEP CA meet on Thursday 5.30pm and SSE CA meet on Friday 5pm. Please let us know if you'd be available for the same. I would recommend we all get together for at least 2 hours for the CA meets, go to our respective class pages and figure out the usernames that have done copyvios. We should reach out to these students individually and explain the gravity of this problem. It will be great if you guys could get your laptops to work individually or else I'll see if comp labs can be arranged.

Thanks Nitika

Hisham sends email to India Community list:
 * September 12

Hi Folks

(Some) students in the Pune pilot have copy-pasted copyright material onto their articles. We are taking these copyvios extremely seriously and here's a summary of the action that we have taken.

a) Conducted classroom sessions in all 3 colleges where the program is running and conveying the importance of not making this mistake - and the fact that they will be caught - and that too quickly. Between Nitika and I, we've conducted sessions in at least 10 separate classes last week (along with Campus Ambassadors.)

b) Conducted meetings with the directors and faculty members to convey the gravity of the issue and asking them to pass on the message to their students in the strongest possible terms.

c) Almost doubling the number of Campus Ambassadors to provide more on-ground support for students. We will be sending out an update on this soon.  The issue of copyvios was taken up specifically during the training for these Campus Ambassadors.

d) Started work on establishing an Online Ambassador program (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-September/...) to provide additional support

e) Disabled the leaderboard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Leader...) so that we make sure that recognition is given only to deserving students.

Controlling the copyvio issue is the single biggest issue for the program and we will continue to do everything it takes to minimize it. Of course, some students who will still try and cut corners and the actions listed above should hopefully reduce the problem.

Having said all this, we must not cloud the fantastic work of many students by the errors committed by (some) newbies who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia. Do continue to support and celebrate the work of the good guys!

Thank you for you continued support on this.

Best

hisham


 * September 12

Hisham forwards CAs email he sent to faculty members at CoEP and SSE, reproduced below, and urges CAs to "Please take the matter of copyright violations very seriously and talk to your students about it at every stage."

Dear SSE Faculty,

I'm writing to urgently alert you to a problem emerging out of the Wikipedia program. A number of your students have been copying material and putting these into their Wikipedia articles.

This is in violation of copyright laws but also (even more importantly) goes against the grain of the teaching that you are trying to impart to your students.

I don't yet have a sense of the scale of the problem - but I'm hoping that these are in the minority. The following link highlights the issues identified from just one class by one existing Wikipedia editor (who's not even in India, btw): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fluffernutter/checks

Can I urgently request you to please send out a message in the most convincing possible terms to every one of your students that copy-pasting is wrong and that such entries will be deleted by other editors and this will happen in minutes and hours, not days and weeks. Knowing students, I'd also request that you send out this message as frequently as is practical. Copyright violations are taken extraordinarily seriously (as they should be) by the Wikipedia community and they will be ruthless (as they should be) in deleting them.

I am really sorry to also say that I've had to disable the leader board (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Leader...) only because I don't want a few copycats taking credit and recognition away from hard-working, high-minded, awesomely bright students. It's not fair on the good folks that they don't get the public applause they generously and fully deserve - but it's not right if someone else steal's their thunder by cheating.

In all this, I did also want to share a fantastic feature story in the latest issue of ToI Crest http://www.timescrest.com/life/you-cant-copypaste-this-homework-6226. It acknoweldges the amazing work done by Abhilasha - and Ishita speaks powerfully about the teaching and learning culture that makes SSE special! In the context of this email, the article's title is somewhat ironic but so is life sometimes! :-)

I want to reiterate that we are honored that you have let us into your classrooms and your lives and we will do everything possible to make sure the program works. I refuse to get cynical and stop celebrating the Abhilashas of this world.

Nitika will separately send you an update on a whole host of actions we are taking to provide additional support to your students.

Please do help us out and please do treat this with the highest possible priority. I thank you for all your wonderful support and I continue to remain convinced that we will work through this and build a wonderful teaching & learning experience

Many thanks.

hisham


 * September 11

CA Arnav Sonara (User:Rangilo Gujarati) sends a mail to the faculty

Hello Sir,

Its great to handle a class where all the ground work has been done :). Today I went through all of the articles selected by your students. There are few important things I would like to share with you. There were two serious cases of Copyrights violation by two of your students.

Mayur Kulkarni's Ternary Search Tree Apoorv Nayak's Constructor.

They directly copy pasted it from the source without editing a single word. Luckily I found it before anyone from the rest of the world could, so I immediately removed their content and posted a message to their talk pages which you can check any time. Also then Apoorv contacted me soon enough and got his doubt cleared. And also I left a message on Course's Talk page regarding this. So please ask students to not to do this again or else they ll fall in some serious complications which none of them want.

Also the other thing which I noticed was the fantastic support your student's articles are getting from the community round the world. There are many data structure articles which were not on Wikipedia but your students created them and now are getting support and thus working collaboratively which is really appreciable.

Also please feel free to call us. We are ready to come to labs and get student's doubts cleared. Thanks Arnav (ricku).


 * September 7

CA Abhishek Suryawanshi updates about blocked students.

(It was interesting Meet-up. I am adding few *important* points which we need to sort out asap.)

It was my 2nd day at SSE after my first introductory session in same classrooms. I was really eager to see progress. Specially 'cos they were so excited during very "first" introductory session.

Last introductory session was ended with hope to have at-least few of them in TOP 50 - Leaderboard (at that time Leaderboard was not there, then also they were eager for that)

Today - Most of them are in TOP 10!!and remaining in TOP 50! I was happy to see that, but students are not happy at all...Most of them are "blocked" and two students who are still blocked after requests. (Others are active - editing but NOT included in Leaderboard, I think Frank is working on leaderboard, and currently its in beta phase only, hope so every student will be having their name in leaderboard)

Another serious thing : Most of students have added their name to wrong class page, which may lead to wrong class ranking on leaderboard. We have to make sure that students have registered themselves only on their "own" class project page.

With respect to blocked to Students -

I interacted with some of them today.

Wikipedia Administrators are ruthless and blocked us, and we may get less marks due to block.We are "indefinitely" banned.
 * Students Version :* We are trying hard to create articles and edit, but

I just checked block-list and reasons for blocking.

Real Administrator Version :

They had been warned several times in their respective user-pages, still they kept on copy-pasting.They were banned for several days, and ban was lifted, after that they again copy-pasted stuff - Which resulted in those students are also from India Education Program. All what he/she (admin) wants is to teach them Copy-rights issue, CA to write down same on blocked students talk pages, and ban will be removed.
 * indefinite*ban, and Administrator who banned is aware of fact that

It seems person who gets blocked (after several warnings) thinks this as "* Ego*" insult, and never reply back or stop contributing (thats what current blocked students doing). Same happened in this case, students were blaming administrators for blocking, but no one (no administrator) is going block students for time-pass, Its important to have special session in classes regarding same.

Along with copy-right policy
 * Points to share with students :


 * How Many Legs does a horse have?*
 * How Many Legs does a horse have?*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_many_legs_does_a_horse_hav...


 * Wikipedia is not about winning.*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_about_winning


 * Admitting You are Wrong!*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Admitting_you%27re_wrong


 * Drop the stick and back slowly away from horse carcass.*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Drop_the_stick_and_back_slowly...

If someone says - You Said! There are no rules, then how someone can revert back our work with rule?

Then This is for them


 * There is NO Common Sense (What ignore all rules mean)*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_%22Ignore_all_rules%22_me...

Please read all links carefully and share with your respective classes.

Keep Spreading Knowledge! Keep Inspiring!!

Regards, Abhishek Suryawanshi

CA Gurmeet mails the professors at SSE
 * September 3

Hello all, Hope you guys are able to go through your assignments well. While there has been considerable progress in the course on "Economics of the Social Sector", the courses of "Indian Banking and Financial Systems", "History of Economic Thought", and "Agri Business and Marketing" and yet to see good progress. Some of these courses dont even have the user names of the entire class updated on it. We would request you to guys to kindly buck up and update your usernames on to the pages for these courses as well and complete the steps of the assignments in time. Starting today, Gurmeet and me will post on your individual talk pages for any help you need from us. Please remember that meeting the various deadlines of the assignment is a very important part of completing the assignment on time. In case you have not met your deadlines, you may risk being penalised for the same. A quick update: Some of you have been facing issues with your contributions being reversed for copyright violation. Gurmeet had a session with Shirin Ma'am's class yesterday regarding the details on copyright violation and the way out. I am attaching here a presentation on the same for the benefit of students who were not in the group addressed, and for the sake of record for those who did Kindly get back to us for any queries/clarifications And while we are at it, check out this mind-blowing video on the sport of Solo Climbing and one of the best Solo Climbers! Weak hearts, dont climb this wall!!

CA Gurmeet Singh sends email to all of CA team in India with a slide deck that can be used for all of them. Can we upload this to Commons?
 * September 3

Hi All,

We just faced a issue related to copyright material being used in assignments. To address this following things were done,


 * Reached out to the concerned Teacher
 * Arranged a class room session (conducted on 2nd September)
 * RG sent this mail along with a brief presentation addressing this issue

Hope this helps the entire group in solving the same problem (if any) in other colleges.

Regards, Gurmeet Singh

Nitika starts recruiting for Online Ambassadors.
 * September 2

Hey Guys,

I know how much you hate reading long mails so I'm going to make this a short and quick one. J

Your students at SSE & COEP have started editing articles in full swing. As you know, they've been facing some editing challenges (some of them basic and some more complex ones like copyright violations). As more and more students start editing we'll need to keep closer check on the articles and some will require intensive hand-holding. We'll need some support so that we can track their articles almost constantly so that we can inform students about things they are doing wrong before someone else reverts their articles - and make students lose confidence.

Hence we're planning to create a level of online support for the students through Online Ambassadors (OAs). Very broadly speaking, OAs help by:

.        constantly visiting articles that students are editing and making sure that the articles abide by Wikipedia rules

.        be available on IRC channel (http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-classroom) so that they can handle any issues/queries that come to them instantly. (right now, there's hardly anyone on the channel - students or people to help students.)

.        place welcome templates and other motivating message like WikiLove on student talk pages

.        provide feedback on students work on Wikipedia via articles discussions page etc.

Ideally we would like the OAs to take over these responsibilities fairly quickly because as soon as more students start editing there will be a flood of questions. We really don't want you to be over burdened with all the work and thought it would be nice to get more resources who can share your load.

Since OAs will be working remotely, they'll be limited to offer support only thru the internet and you'll STILL be the face of the Wikipedia foundation. And we would require you to continue with all your efforts, support, constant nagging to the students/faculty, regular class visits etc - for us to achieve success.

What do you guys think? Does the idea appeal? Please let us know your thoughts......

Thanks

Nitika

August 2011

 * August 31

New group of Campus Ambassadors, mostly recruited through students who are in the classes, are selected. Training scheduled for Sept 10-11.


 * August 29

Update email from Ram

Hey Friends!**

The following dashboards have been updated: COEP, Pune: Status Boardand SSE, Pune: Status Board. These spreadsheets will give you a fair idea of the % of students that have created usernames, selected articles etc. The deadlines for most of these classes have long gone but there is a large number of students who are yet to create their user accounts.

Very broadly, I think our priority this week should be:

1.     We need to divide each class amongst the CAs that are allocated to that class. For example, for Abhijit’s class at COEP 140 students should be divided amongst 6 CAs. So if roll numbers 1-25 are with me as a CA, I should be listed as the mentor on the course page.

2.     Making sure that every student has created a user account

3.      Every student has selected an article

4.      Every student has updated the class page

5.      Every student has submitted registration forms

Feel free to get into the classrooms and address the students, send them mails on their group mail accounts or individual accounts, call, speak with the professors etc.

I have inserted 2 more columns in the spreadsheet “To do list for CAs for the week of 29th Aug – 4th Sep” and “To do list for Profs for the week of 29 th Aug – 4th Sep”. I would highly recommend you all to go through these and let me know what you think. Please feel free to edit it as you like - any suggestions/recommendations are most welcome. We’ll be sharing a copy of this with the Directors and professors as well.

Let’s try and achieve these this week so that we can schedule a review sometime soon. Hope the students cooperate with us and meet their deadlines!

UPDATES

New Registrations in last week: 22nd to 28th Aug
 * SSE : 8
 * CoEP : 135
 * SNDT : 5

Sessions in last week: CoEP :


 * Course


 * Session Type


 * Date - CA(s)

Electrical Engineering / Second / Solid State Devices & Linear Circuits Laboratory / 85

Additional Workshop

22- Aug (Arnav Sonara & Alex James) 23- Aug (Arnav Sonara & Pallavi)

B.Tech(E & Tc) / Third / Computer Organisation and Advanced Microprocessors / 85

Editing

26-Aug - Mihir

Mechanical Engineering / Second / Machine Drawing and Computer Graphics / 180

Additional Workshop

25-Aug - Pallavi,Arnav C,Arnav S,Wasim,Ram

M. Tech. (Production Engineering) / First / Computational Methods in Engineering / 18

Introductory/Editing

26-Aug - Pallavi

B.E.(Computer Engineering/IT) / Second / Object Oriented Modeling and Design / 15

Additional Workshop

25-Aug - Arnav C

B.E.(Computer Engineering/IT) / Second / Data Structures and Algorithms / 160

Additional Workshop

27 Aug - Ram, Wasim, Arnav C



FUN Prof. Aghav found a new relation with Arnav, coz when he met him he said, "We have a relation", and Arnav C was amazed how? then he replied my son's name is Arnav :D, finally Arnav C met with Mr.Aghav's Arnav on Saturday!

How to give presentation if you don't have a laptop?

Simple get a desktop from lab; that's what our "Awesome Mihir!" did in one of his presentation coz he didn't have a laptop, he directly went to lab, dismantled a system and took to the class room and started his presentation, everyone was amazed till the presentation started ;)



Cheers, ~Ram


 * August 24

Update email from Ram

Hi everyone,

As we know that our very own PJ went back to US last Sunday, and now it's my turn to share some quick updates and next action steps with you all.****

UPDATES

1.      Gurmeet, Hisham and Nitika held 2 sessions at SSE last Friday. The main idea was to invite CA applications. A lot of excitement and interest was created amongst the students by telling them “What’s in it for YOU!!!”.

2.      We have received an overwhelming response – 13 CA applications in just 2 days!!!

3.      At the sessions, they also reminded students about upcoming deadlines, tackled any issues they were facing, etc. Less than 2 minutes were spent reminding them how to create an account and 3-4 minutes on  how to create user page. *Since then, we've already seen an increase in accounts created and updates on class pages.

4.      PJ, Hisham and Nitika also had a faculty review with CEOP’s & SSE’s Director. Overall the review went well and we shared with them some success stories and also gave suggestions to professors on how they should be more actively involved in their students' efforts.

5.   Last Saturday, PJ took "Train-the-Trainer" session and Ram(me) and Seva attended it. Current batch of trainers are me, Seva, Pallavi and Parag, but unfortunately Pallavi and Parag didn't able to make it because of their prior commitments. We worked on the existing presentation deck to include our leanings from past training and making it more India centric.

6.   Arnav Chaudhary has started working on a tutorial for students, which includes step-by-step sort of instructions. I would like everyone to come together and review/modify and make it available to our students(by putting it on either help page or simply linking it or creating a tab), Arnav is also very much excited about creating set of video tutorials for students. All I would say is "Great Work" buddy, keep it up!

Here goes the link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arnavchaudhary/tutorial

7.      A lot of students have already started working on their articles and they have been doing a brilliant job...

a.      User: Abhilasha369, started a new article Robinson Crusoe Economy – it’s pretty well written. Check it out!

b.     User: purplesky91 , created his SSE class page, edited several articles and has been writing on talk pages of his classmates. (Don’t forget to leave them a note of encouragement!)

NEXT STEPS

1.   Mails to the professors:

Let us *send 1 mail per week to the profs* giving them a brief overview about the progress of their class during the previous week and actions they can take in the coming week. We should also share the faculty review sheet (PJ created one for COEP: "College of Engineering, Pune: Status Board") which outlines few numbers like percentage of students who have created usernames, selected articles etc. We should create another one for SSE and send out these dashboards to all the professors every week - maybe Monday.

2.    Mails/Meetings with the Director:

It will be great if we could also *share this Dashboard with the Directors*. Formalising this process as a faculty review will make sure that the professors have enough pressure from the Director to work proactively.

3.   New CA Applications:

Since we have new CA Applications, we’ll try and schedule Skype interviews sometime this week. It will be great if *you guys could also be part of the the selection process. *Do let Nitika know your time availability for this Thurs/Fri if you're interested.*

4.    Regularly check talk pages of students:

It's a great idea to *leave words of praise on students’ talk pages* - as some of you have started doing. This will be a good way to motivate students and get them to start using their talk pages regularely. CAs *should pick divide the class amongst themselves and follow the progress of those students* only. Let’s say Abhijit’s class has about 160 students and 6 CAs indicating that each CA could take a set of 26 distinct students and track their progress and leave notes for them.

5.    Refresher course:

Feel free to *speak with the professors or class reps* to figure if refresher sessions are required for their classes. A quick 15 minutes slot to explain the process of creating user account, user pages, and updating class page. It’s just another way of barging into the classrooms and making sure that students are meeting their deadlines and are on their toes.

Let me know what you guys think!

Cheers,

Ram


 * August 18

Encouragement email from Ram:

Friends,

While coming back after today's CoEP CAs meet, a thought strike my mind and it's quite similar to our situation.

..so if you remember your first few days of your kindergarten when the teacher first time taught us how to read and especially write, we were really amazed by the overwhelming complexity of drawing an alphabet, and later on she either facilitated us with some dots and told us to join them, even joining these dots was a task in itself, and we did some mistakes by drawing mangoes and bananas, and later on she hold our hand and helped us in joining those dots. Even after the first few "joining the dot" exercises we had no idea what it means.

We are exactly in a situation like this, we have given our initial presentations on Introduction and Editing Wikipedia, but there are folks who have no idea what's going on, so the

- first step is to creating the dots for them by directly/indirectly interacting with them.

- second step is for those who know there are dots but are making mangoes and bananas out of it, we need to hold their hand and guide them and start the conversation by any means

- third step, for those who can connect the dots, and the best thing we can do is to go and appreciate them by posting on their talk page or taking their example in class for doing great job.

- fourth step, is to create a "report card" for the parents and in this case it's the Directors and the faculty on weekly/fortnightly basis.

The most important and crucial part within ourselves is to communicate more frequently and be on the same page, update about anything and everything, share our experiences and make it a learning experience for us as well.

...and as Hisham always says, the most important part of this program is...."to have FUN" :)

Cheers, Ram


 * August 18

Encouragement email from Hisham:

a) Teachers are beginning to rock!  A wonderful teacher at SSE who manages this class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Course...) - and never edited before, has been leaving messages on student talk pages and driving them to faster progress. ...See the big, bold, red warning she put up at the head of that page - all on her own!

b) Students are beginning to get it and start articles!: A great student (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Basic.atari) and especially his contributions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Basic.atari and his article "Human Capital" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Human_capital&action=histor...)  Go on to his talk page and leave some kind words for him or use the WikiLove button and send him a cookie or kitten or whatever!

Best!

Hisham Mundol

CA Raghavendra sent a mail to the SSE faculty
 * August 16

Dear Professors, First of all, hope you all had a sprightly Independence Day! Just wanted to provide you all an update of the current status of projects and also check with you about the ways in which we can help you to get a timely and effective closure of the assignments. Following is the status of the number of students who have created their user pages, and the numbers who have selected their articles Group A: Economics of Social Sector - 42 students with user pages - 36 students with articles selected Indian Banking and Financial Systems - 27 students with user pages - 1 student with article selected History of Economic Thought - 16 students with user pages - 1 student with article selected Agri-business and Marketing - 28 students with user pages - 2 students with articles selected Group B: Economics of Social Sector - 32 students with user pages - 26 students with articles selected Indian Banking and Financial Systems - 13 students with user pages - 2 students with articles selected History of Economic Thought - 12 students with user pages - 3 students with articles selected Agri-business and Marketing - 11 students with user pages - 4 students with articles selected Considering that we are in the middle of August, and halfway to the next deadline where the students are supposed to start making contributions to their articles, can you suggest to us ways in which you think we can help the students complete the tasks? I was thinking of sending a mail to the students asking them to complete the tasks quickly before the next deadline, else, with your permission, they would be penalised for the delay. If post that you feel that there is a need for us to come down to take another session with the students, kindly let us know. We will get that organised Do kindly let us know Regards, Raghavendra


 * August 4

Update from PJ:

Hello Campus Ambassadors:

I have a few updates to share with you. Sorry in advance for the length of this email, but it's all important information so be sure to read all of it.

- Patricia Sauthoff - On August 13 and 14 Patricia Sauthoff will be in Pune. Patricia is Wikpedia Fellow working on the Indic languages aspect of the WikiHistories project. She would like to speak to you, the campus ambassadors, so I thought we could *meetup on Sunday, August 14 at 1pm at Cafe Coffee Day in Koregaon Park.* We will also cover some campus ambassador business at that time so I hope you can make it.

- Userbox - Based on your feedback I created a final version of the Wikipedia India Education Program userbox. You can add it to your userpage by using the* template *. Please add this userbox to your students' userpages as well.

- Please add the* template students. It provides them with a lot of useful resources.
 * } *to the talk pages of your

- Tracking activities - It's important that we are able to see what you are all up to so that we know the status of the program at each college. To facilitate that process we've created the Wikipedia India Education Program: Pune Pilot Dashboard. When you schedule a meeting or a session you should *update this document* accordingly. In addition, you each now have access to the GoogleCalendar for the college where you are assigned. *Please add all meetings and presentations to the calendar for your college.* I can give a more detailed explanation of this process on August 14. - When adding an event to the GoogleCalendar for your college *please name the event in this standard format*: Type of Session (Name of Class, Last Name of Professor). For example, if I scheduled an Introductory Session at Symbiosis School of Economics for Ishita Ghosh's Research Methods class then I would create an event called "Introductory Session (Research Methods, Ghosh)." - I am assembling a page full of resources for campus ambassador. Please let me know what sort of information you would like included on it. For example, guides about creating a class page, what do in a faculty meeting, etc. - Finally, we are in desperate need of new campus ambassadors. If you know of anyone who is interested please ask them to fill out this formand email it, along with a resume, to indiat...@wikimedia.org.

Thanks again for all of your hard work so far!

pj

p.s. This is a fun example of how page view statistics on Wikipedia often reflect what's in the news. A few nights ago the CEO of Zappos.com (Wikipedia article here ) was a guest on The Colbert Report , an American comedy talk show. This show is hugely popular in the US (and in many other parts of the world). Take a look at the page view statistics for the Zappos Wikipedia Article . I bet you can guess which night the CEO was on the show.

July 2011

 * July 28

Nitika Tandon (User:Nitika.t) is announced as being a new hire who will start August 1 and help on the team.

CA Gurmeet sends a mail to SSE students
 * July 25

Hello Everyone,

Hope you had a wonderful weekend and are oozing with energy for the coming week.

We just thought we will let you know something about the Leaderboard and remind you about a few deadlines. Leaderboard is a place where all the activities performed by the students from different campuses in Pune will be recorded, which will clearly highlight contribution from individuals and the entire batch, which helps in deciding the leaders from time to time.

We are sure you don't want to be placed on the bottom of the Leaderboard.

So, gear up and work towards achieving the following deadlines, 24th July - User Creation, posting user details on the user section and complete the editing assignment. Please complete this ASAP, its overdue now. Group A - Assignments due is available on this page - some of you have posted the user details, others please do so ASAP, you are well head of group B Group B - Assignments due is available on this page, just 2 of you have posted the user details. Group A is leading, buck up. 24th -31st July - Once you are done with the already overdue assignment, you have a very exciting assignment waiting for you. All of this would not take much time and is a great learning experience.

Remember we are just one email away, do let us know if you have any difficulties with any of the above mentioned.

Regards, Campus Ambassador SSE team


 * July 26

PJ announces Ram (User:Ramshankaryadav) will be the new India Campus Ambassador Coordinator.

Dear Campus Ambassadors:

At Saturday's meeting we discussed the importance of leadership within the ambassador community. We agreed that since ambassadors are volunteers, and as a result have many other commitments, that someone would have to step forward to take responsibility for coordinating campus ambassador activities. Following that meeting we received email messages from many of you and almost every one mentioned that Ram would be an excellent candidate for this role. We absolutely agree and Ram has been gracious enough to accept the added responsibility.

Please know that this move is not intended to create a layer of bureaucracy in the program or to diminish the value of the work that the rest of us do. It's just that in order for the program to run smoothly, someone must keep track of what everyone is up to.

Thank you again for all of your hard work so far. Do let me know if you have any questions about this, or any other matter.

Best, PJ


 * July 24

Email to all CAs from Hisham:

Hi Team

Thank you all who came over yesterday for the meeting - and thank you from the bottom of my heart for the wonderful birthday surprise party. I am really touched.

Based on our discussions yesterday, and a detailed review that I conducted today of the program, I wanted to share some thoughts with all of you. I'd really like you to go through them and give me your comments and indicate whether you agree or not with my suggestions.

Story So Far

In one word, it's been amazing. Getting 15 professors from 4 colleges and potentially 900 students on board is amazing! I want to thank all of you who have pitched in so far. We wouldn't have reached where we are without your help - so thank you!

Editing workshops have been conducted in SSE (for all the classes ( and are being conducted in COEP (where some happened last week and most of the balance are hopefully happening this week.) We are discussing with SNDT and Modern to figure out dates for their workshops. Article selection is hopefully finalised for SSE this week and is scheduled for completion at COEP by August 15.

Challenges

I think all of you will agree with me that PJ has been an wonderful person to have on the team. He's put in awesome efforts and these have resulted in fantastic results. However, this is also has helped to disguise a massive problem that we have as a team. Of the 15 workshops that were conducted in SSE, PJ has conducted about 13 of them on his own without any Campus Ambassadors. The SSE Campus Ambassadors really really really need to step up. Given that PJ is going to leave on August 21st, it is frightening to think of what will happen to SSE after he leaves.

Some Campus Ambassadors are putting in a lot more effort than others and are feeling that others are not throwing in their weight into the program. I've looked at who has attended which sessions and how much time they put in and it's very clear that there what they are saying is right. It's not fair on these guys because eventually they will wonder why the are carrying so much of the burden. Everyone needs to put in their fair share. Everyone has challenges like work or study pressures / schedules but the guys who are putting in efforts also have these pressures / schedules and yet still manage to find the time that is needed.

Learning and practicing basic editing is a hugely important for us to be able to train others. The 900 students are going to depend on us. Their marks depend on how well we can train and hand hold them. Their futures depend on their marks. We must not let them down. We have to become more skilled at editing because the 900 or so students are going to be working >1200 articles. They will have huge number of questions and clarifications and doubts. The work load will be massive on us if we can't help the out quickly. The only way of doing this is to learn and practice basic editing. We should attend the Editing Sundays and we should practice editing on our own. It'll be impossible to train anyone unless we ourselves know how to edit.

We should become much more responsive and proactive. Very simple things like asking for people to update their profiles on the project page, etc. are requiring so much reminders and follow-ups it's really sad. Put a 24 hour response time and stick to it. Anything that is asked for will typically take no more than 15 minutes. Right now, I fear that PJ is becoming something like a secretary to all of us and that is just not right on him - and will be disastrous.

Let's all start showing some flexibility and initiative. Everyone has other commitments - but we must work around these given that we need to work together as a team. For example, for nearly 1 month, we've been trying to co-ordinate time for the so far untrained Campus Ambassadors to get trained - but we have failed! Get together and sort out a date and let's conduct the training and let's move on! We have huge number of students and articles and we'll all need to be available and trained! I've asked the untrained Campus Ambassadors to get together and figure out a date that works for them instead of having to follow up with them so many times.

Way Forward

I would like to make 5 suggestions.

I'd like to nominate a Campus Ambassador to function as a Overall Co-Ordinator for all the Campus Ambassadors. It's not a way of creating a hierarchy or anything like that. It's entirely about us a a team being able to operate smoothly and independently. Whenever the Co-Ordinator ask for anything (and typically these will be relatively easy things to do), I'd like all of us to respond within 24 hours on this requirement. Let's not waste time and effort following up needlessly!

For every college, there needs to be an overall College Co-ordinator from the Campus Ambassadors. (Similarly, I'm tyring to ensure that we have an overall incharge from the teachers in that college.) I'd like your ideas on how we select these College Co-ordinators. It's again not about creating hierarchy but it is about ensuring that someone maintains the schedule for that college and ensures that Campus Ambassadors are available and are each putting in fair efforts. With regard to the selecting these College Co-ordinators, it is something that you guys ought to do on your own but happy to nominate someone to begin with and then you can figure out how to alternate.

I am extremely worried about SSE. The SSE Campus Ambassadors really need to step up. It'll be tragic if we fail the students. SSE's student and teacher quality is wonderful and we will get some great quality articles from them - but we need to start putting in efforts or else it will all collapse.

Everyone must start editing. Let's set a target for a least 10 edits as individuals - plus attending the Editing Sundays.

Have fun! Don't ever forget this. I know there is a lot of pressure and there is a lot that you need to do. ...but Keep Smiling and Laughing!

I know the tone of this email is slightly strong in some parts - but I felt the need to share it because we have such high expectations from all of you. I've done every interview so far for Campus Ambassadors - and I know that you are truly the best of the best. The 22 of you have huge potential and you are carrying the responsibilities of nearly 1000 students on your shoulders!

Warmest Regards,

Hisham Mundol

Srikeit and PJ start Editing Sundays to encourage new CAs to learn Wikipedia basics.
 * Mid-July

Hi Campus Ambassadors

The first *Editing Sunday* is here! The objective of the Editing Sunday is to give the Campus Ambassadors hands-on experience in creating and improving articles in a collaborative environment.

Time: *9AM onwards* Date: *Sunday, 17th July 2011* Place: Wikipedia! More precisely, *The Editing Sundays project page*. Also, join the Campus Ambassadors IRC channelto collaborate on chat.

The project page for the coordination of Editing Sundays - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Editing_Sundays

For tomorrow's session, I suggest we work on the article about the *Pune Municipal Corporation*. It requires images, an infobox, references, cleanup and wikifying so therefore would be a good article to start with. Also sources for the article can be found quite easily.

to your abilities as a Campus Ambassador. *
 * Cultivating yourself to be a good Wikipedia editor would be a great boost

I hope all Campus Ambassadors join in and contribute in this project.

Thanks and Regards -- Srikeit

Hisham encourages them to attend:

Hi guys

Apart from it being awesome fun, as Srikeit mentioned, it'll also be incredibly useful for you to sharpen your editing skills for when you help out the huge number of students and articles (and teachers) we have with us.

Have a great great time!

Happy Editing!

Best

hisham

June 2011
PJ sends email about next steps.
 * June 30

Dear Campus Ambassadors:

Nehru Stadium seats 25,000 people. At our current rate, by the end of July we'll be able to fill that stadium with students participating in the Wikipedia India Education Program.

Let's back up.


 * An Update*

Since your training session we've been hard at work recruiting professors to participate in the program. We held faculty workshops at 7 colleges during which we introduced Wikipedia and this project to interested faculty members. These workshops provided excellent opportunities to talk honestly with the professors about not only what benefits they could expect, but also what challenges they would face. On the whole, faculty members (and administrators) were extremely supportive and enthusiastic.

The next step proved to be rather challenging. For a number of reasons (busy schedules, the new-ness of this project, concerns about work load) professors needed heavy doses of encouragement to get them to officially agree to participate. We held additional meetings, exchanged dozens of phone calls and emails, and engaged in some old fashioned nagging to get the job done. This process look a few weeks. Still, as recently as early this week we only had three professors officially on board. We were worried about meeting some basic bench marks for participation.

The past few days have been critical. We met with professors from the Symbiosis School of Economics (SSE) and College of Engineering, Pune (COEP), and held phone calls with professors from SNDT and Symbiosis School of Arts and Commerce. In a wave, the registrations started pouring in. Suddenly we've gone from having too few participants to having too many. At this writing we have 4 colleges, 13 professors, and over 1,000 students (for the full list of classes check out the project page). And we're still not done! Several more professors have expressed interest so it is entirely possible (likely, even) that a few more professors will sign on. Though filling Nehru Stadium is certainly an exaggeration (and not at all our goal) the overwhelming response from the Pune education community is a testament to the value of the work you'll all be doing.

Great things are expected of you! We had over 700 applicants for your positions and we selected just 22 - you are an elite group of ambassadors. This means that we think you are more than capable of handling such large responsibilities. Don't forget that you can rely on your fellow ambassadors for support when you need it.


 * Next Steps*

Over the next couple of days we'll be finalizing professor commitments. We'll also be allocating resources appropriately based on changing demand for them. I'll be contacting each of you regarding scheduling meetings with the professor(s) you will be assigned to. We will meet with each professor separately so discuss a timeline for this assignment and other details. During that meeting we will also determine when you will make the in-class presentation to the students. Once we schedule your in-class presentation we will meet to engage in some additional preparation. Some classes (those at SSE) have already begun so those presentations will be scheduled within the next week or so. Other schools do not have classes starting until mid-July so we'll be scheduling your meetings within the next two weeks.


 * Conclusion*

I hope this gives you a fairly good idea of what we have been up to since the training. I know many of you have been wondering when you're going to actually get to start doing work. Hopefully this email suggests that the time is not too far off.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

pj

PJ asks Campus Ambassadors to add themselves to the WP:INDIAEDU page.
 * June 26

Hello Campus Ambassadors,

As promised, the Wikipedia India Education Program Project Page is now live on Wikipedia. It's still a work on progress and part of that work involves you! Please complete the following tasks as soon as you can. I will follow up with more complicated tasks soon. Please note, completing this task requires that you've created a user account. If you have not yet done so, do that immediately.

- You'll notice that the campus ambassadors in the US projecthave pictures next to their names on the project page. We'd like to do the same thing here. To get that process started, go ahead and upload a picture to Wikimedia Commons<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard> - Next, navigate to the campus ambassadors tab<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Campus...>of the project page. Click edit.

- In a new tab, open my sandbox<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pjthepiano/sandbox>. What I have done is isolated a single entry that you can copy and then paste back into your spot in the project page. So, click edit. In caps I have identified what information you should enter and where (your user name, your real name, or a description of yourself). Also, where you see you should add your own picture. Do this by going back to the picture of yourself you uploaded to Commons. Find the picture and click on it. You'll notice that above the picture you have a row of options. Select the one to the right of the Wikipedia "W" that says "Use this file." Copy the text under "Thumbnail" and then, in the sandbox, paste over the text identifying the old picture (see above). - Now that you have entered all of your information into my sandbox template DO NOT SAVE (because others after you will need to see the template unchanged). Just copy all of the text from "" to "". - Go back to the project page tab<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:India_Education_P...>. Find the entry with your name in it (the text will read, for example, "button label = email PJ Tabit"). Paste the text copied from the sandbox over the entire entry from "" to "". - Click preview to make your you did it correctly. Then click save.

I know there are a lot of steps to this assignment. If you're having trouble, don't panic. Slow down, read the instructions again, and then proceed. If that doesn't help, I will be available to answer questions on IRC chat (http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-classroom) on Monday, June 27 from 8 - 9 pm IST or you can reach me via email.

Thanks!

pj

PJ Tabit (User:Pjthepiano), an experienced U.S. Campus Ambassador who spent his summer in India getting the program going, sends out a message to the India Campus Ambassadors email list.
 * June 10

Dear Campus Ambassadors,

This is just a friendly (but important) reminder to those of you who have not completed the homework assigned to you prior to the training session this past weekend. The homework for both Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians is below. Please complete it in a timely manner. Feel free to email me with any questions.


 * New Wikipedians*


 * Create a user account.
 * Account creation screencast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WP_tutorial_en_New_user_account.ogg
 * Create your user page. Add a short paragraph about yourself to your page.  Add a link to IRC where you can get live help: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-ambassadors .  Add links to the userpages of your trainers.  Add a link to the course page(s) for the classes you'll be working with.
 * Read userpage handout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:How_to_create_a_userpage.pdf
 * Create a sandbox and add some sample text in it to get a feel for wiki code.
 * Sandbox screencast:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tutorial_on_starting_a_sandbox_article_on_Wikipedia.ogv
 * Make five edits in the article space -- can be adding a reference, fixing a typo, cleaning up a convoluted sentence, adding a sentence,  etc.
 * Wiki markup basics screencast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boldness_and_links_tutorial.ogv
 * References screencast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Citing_sources_tutorial,_part_1.ogv
 * Wiki markup basics sheet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Welcome2WP_English_Flap_081810.pdf
 * References handout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WikipediaReferencing.pdf
 * Upload an image of yourself to Wikimedia Commons. During the training, you will add this photo to the Campus Ambassador page, so please choose a clearly recognizable head shot.
 * Commons handout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UploadingImagesHandout.pdf
 * Add 10 articles to your watchlist. Monitor the changes to these articles over a few days.
 * Watching pages help page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Watching_pages
 * Leave a message on your trainer's talk page to get a feel for on-wiki communication.
 * Wikipedia Help page on talk pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Introduction_to_talk_pages
 * Review key policies/pages:
 * NPOV video: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Verifiability_and_Neutral_point_of_view_%28Common_Craft%29-600px-en.ogv
 * Celilo Falls evolution of an article: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_an_article_%28Celilo_Falls%29
 * Contemplate the five pillars, which represent Wikipedia's core principles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars
 * Be able to explain, in your own words, the Wikipedia concepts of "neutral point of view", "no original research", "verifiability", "assume good faith", "consensus", "ownership of articles", and what it means that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
 * Read and be able to explain the general notability guideline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability


 * Existing Wikipedians*

It is assumed that exisiting Wikipedians have done the above points already. If not, please do them before you proceed to this section. In addition to the above, existing Wikipedias should undertake the following as well.


 * Do a GA (Good Article) review, and provide thorough feedback on Wikipedia. Then come to the training prepared to present these feedback in person, in front of the other trainees. We'll set up a lunchtime panel during the training in which you'll talk about the feedback in front of the group.
 * We'll ask you to be a part of a panel discussion about the culture and norms of Wikipedia. Please think about what the most important facets  of Wikipedia culture a newbie needs to know are. What is Wikipedia  etiquette? How do you communicate on-wiki? Come prepared to discuss your views on Wikipedia culture and  norms with fellow Wikipedians.
 * You know a lot about Wikipedia, but how would you *teach* it to a newbie? Come prepared to explain what someone brand new to Wikipedia needs to know about an important topic of your choosing. Think about what's really important and how to explain it without Wikipedia jargon.

All the best, PJ

Campus Ambassadors are trained in Pune, India. See commons:Category:Wikipedia_Campus_Ambassador_Training_in_Pune,_June_2011 for photos from this training. Training slide decks with notes are at File:CA_Day1.pdf and File:CA_Day2.pdf. A video is available on YouTube. Students are given access to training slides they can use in their classrooms. See Ambassadors/Resources.
 * June 4-5