Wikipedia:School and university projects/E-learning Action Plan

Proposal by

 * María Calzada Pérez (Universitat Jaume I, Project Coordinator) at


 * María del Mar Bonet Ramos (Universitat Jaume I, Technical Coordinator) at
 * Maria Porciel Crosa (Universitat Jaume I, Teaching Coordinator) at
 * Iris Serrat Roozen (Universitat Jaume I, Translation Coordinator)
 * Jan Eissfeldt (Wikipedia Facilitator)
 * Santiago Navarro (Wikipedia Facilitator) at

Consultants


 * Dr. Carmen Pérez-Basanta (Former lecturer at the Universidad de Granada and principal coordinator of ADELEX, a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of education specialised in vocabulary and text difficulty)
 * María Moreno-Jaén (Lecturer at the Universidad de Granada and a member of ADELEX)

Summary
The E-translating the WIkipedia project is proposed for second-year translation students at the Universitat Jaume I (Castellón, Spain) so that they translate entrances from Wikipedia (from English into Spanish), supervised by Teachers and facilitators. Revision from Teacher / Facilitator of translation drafts is guaranteed.

Introduction
The Universitat Jaume I - E-translating project is part of the second-year course Traducción B (Inglés)-A (Español) II (Translation from English into Spanish) (Code TI0920), which is one of the subjects that make up the syllabus of the Translation and Communication Studies degree offered at the Universitat Jaume I (Castellón de la Plana, Spain).

By way of an introduction, and as may be gathered by accessing the Wikipedia in its English version, “the Universitat Jaume was founded in 1991 and, in 2003, it had approximately 13,000 students”. The University is committed to collaborative learning and teaching and to the developing of IT skills amongst students and lecturers. As part of this mission, the Department of Translation and Communication offers a degree in Translation and Interpretation that fosters multilingualism within a professional environment. This cannot be done without exposing students to the translation of a wide array of topics for which documentation and computer skills are fundamental.

The 4-year BA degree in Translation and interpretation combines theoretical knowledge with a very, very high level of exposure to practical tasks that are particularly trained at translating courses. Amongst the most practical subjects, there are TI0905 and TI0920 (where the present project will be carried out).

During the first year (in course TI0905), students learn translation basics and focus on the translation of newspaper articles, which are the first gateway to further (more variegated) texts.

This introductory course is followed by subject TI0920, where students have access to an ample gamut of genres (from popular-science to cartoons, through basic literature, advertising and political texts amongst others). During the first semester, TI0920 students face textual diversity and learn the importance of some functional-linguistic and scope-related notions such as pragma-semiotic issues or the importance of commissioners’ needs.

The present project is proposed for the second semester. Here students are meant to implement knowledge and skills acquired during the first semester while performing their tasks in (almost) real conditions. That is, students will have to attend to a translation commission, that consists in fulfilling their set tasks with a proficient level and professional skills. The end-result (and reward for both students and teachers/facilitators) is to see their translations published in the Wikipedia article space. Students will assess other translations and will propose corrections. Teachers/Facilitators will finally revise final drafts and provide students with feedback before texts are made public in the Wikipedia main space.

On Wiki measures in accordance with Wikipedia project guidelines - to ensure an stable teaching environment for this project - will be taken in advance to the first student-Wikipedia interactions.

Project Goals
The main goal of the project is:

Motivate students to translate the kinds of texts that they face as part of their course.

Motivation is the main key to learning and will have important effects not only for the present year but also for the remaining years of the degree. Translation can be a dry, demanding and difficult task. Motivation may help increase students dedication and reduce anxiety.

Other important goals are:

1.- Encourage students to put into practice their critical/exegetic skills and to assess the kind of texts that they are commissioned and the special needs and techniques associated to the translating task (according to what they learned during the first semester)

2.- Encourage students to apply those translation techniques that they learned during the first semester.

3.- Encourage students to face semi-specialised translation in (almost) real conditions

4.- Encourage students to work collaboratively in teams (and perform team-work)

5.- Encourage students to use IT tools to perform the translation task

6.- Encourage students to accept responsibility for their own work.

Time schedule and methodology
In order to execute the project the following schedule is to be followed:

Introductory steps

 * By Students and Teachers/Facilitators

Students will receive two-session-training regarding the Wikipedia, its mission, its structure, its editing/formatting and its guidelines. They are required to create their own personal Wikipedia-account and to link the project page as well as to add a short introduction of their general task on Wikipedia to their personal user page. Teachers/Facilitators will prepare a central project coordination page in the Wikipedia name space.

Setting the tasks

 * By Students

In teams (notice that the class already has translation teams), students will choose a text per team to be commissioned. The text is to consist of 500-700 words and must be related to the film industry. It is to belong to the academic genre (notice that this is part of the students syllabus) and must have a semi-specialised level (notice that this is similar to the tasks perform in class). Students have to propose their texts to teachers / facilitators with a 600 word report 1 (i.e. proposal report) supporting their decision (taking into account the issues discussed in class about academic texts regarding the film industry).

If approved, the team has to note the text, the related translation page in the Wikipedia user name space of a team member and the user accounts of all team members responsible for it at the central coordination page.


 * By Teacher/Facilitators

Teachers / facilitators have to approve the texts commissioned by the students or set other alternative texts. Teachers and facilitators will assess text difficulty with the assessment of special consultants (Dr. Carmen Pérez Basanta and Dr. María Moreno Jaén), who will be using. among other things, ADA (an electronic interface especially developed to assess lexical difficulty). Students will receive feedback regarding word difficulty and terminology. Here is a list of wikipedia articles to be translated, and a brief lexical study with data about lexicon-terminology difficulty (produced with ADELEX-ADA Analysed)
 * Time Span

Commissioning the task and getting organised

 * By Students & Teachers/Facilitators

Translating tasks are to be commissioned to translating-teams (with the collaboration of students and teachers/facilitators). Notice that each task is to be commissioned to those groups that have not propose the task itself.
 * Time Span:

Once commissioned, translating tasks are examined by the groups who must gather from the rest of students and the teachers/facilitators all the information needed to translate the texts with the highest possible quality. Teams will also devise an action plan to decide each member’s role in the project. The action Plan (with the team workflow: working methodology, time schedule and task assignment) is to be handed in to Teachers/Facilitators, who are to approve the plan before the translating tasks commence.

Getting organised will be fostered by the Wikipedia-based project coordination page that will be set up by Teachers/Facilitators in the first week. It will provide space for basic documentation and is linked to user-pages as outlined in the description of week one.

This method enables the project team to make the active involvement of every student, which has to create his own Wikipedia-account under the regular privacy policy of the project in order to do so, transparent as well as to measure the output of the entire course over time efficiently.

After the analysis, here is a list of texts to be translated together with a brief lexical analysis of each text, produced with ADA-Anlayser.

Performing the translating task

 * By Students


 * Time Span: From 22nd March-19th April

Students are to translate the text that has been commissioned to them. They will work from different work-stations and will have to use electronic media to communicate. By the 19th of April, translated texts are to be sent to teachers / facilitator together with a 600-1000 word report 2 (i.e. Performance report), in which students will discuss their methodology, main translation problems, main solutions to these problems and tools during the performing-task stage. The translation has to be uploaded to the prepared Wikipedia user space sub page. This document can be based upon the action plan (see section 3).

Assessing the first drafts

 * By Students

Time Span: From 19th April to 10th May



Students are to assess other groups work and are to revise texts by posting their review-results at the translation draft-related section at the central project page and discuss their views with their peers, if requested by them. They can re-access the translation during this discourses via the user space sub pages created in section 4..

Publishing the translations in the Wikipedia main space

 * By Teacher/Facilitators


 * Time span: 10th May- 24th May.

Teachers/Facilitators are to revise translation final drafts (from translational and technical vantage points) and are to mark Performance reports (from the didactic viewpoint). The final mark is to be negotiated by Teachers/Coordinators at an assessment meeting. Feedback and marks are to be made public together with translations for the Wikipedia language version by transferring the finalized texts from the student user name space into the Wikipedia main space.

Looking back (hopefully!) without anger

 * By Teachers/Facilitators


 * Time Span: From 24th May to 24th June

Teachers / Facilitators will discuss the strengths and weakness of the project performed and will propose improvements for next year. Teachers /Facilitators (and consultants) are to present at least one research paper explaining the experience at an adequate conference.