Wikipedia talk:Class: Instructional Psychology and Technology 692R, Brigham and Young University, spring 2016

Class -- please add any questions, comments, or ideas below. You can use the "new section" link above for a new topic, or just the "edit" button. At the end of your post, put four tildes ( ~ ), which will turn into your signature when you save. -Pete (talk) 20:58, 1 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you for all of the great resources you provided, Pete! It's been very interesting to become more acquainted with Wikipedia. I have been an avid user for years but never took the time to learn how to fully enjoy the site. I am looking forward to learning more about some of my favorite articles and contribute to some, too! Thank you for all of the great resources you provided. -Tarahkerr (talk) 21:30, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Like Tarah, I've (Troy Martin) used the tool for years and never had the thought about actually contributing. I'm looking forward to learning more about Wikipedia. Thanks for coming to our class Divotmeister (talk) 00:33, 3 March 2016 (UTC)


 * In total agreement with all that has been said. Thank you for the resources and my newfound ability to edit Wikipedia pages. I'm a Wikipedia master! Olgamariab (talk) 04:24, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I considered editing what everyone else had said, and then decided to do it anyway. Stcmason (talk) 04:34, 3 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Pete, this is really getting me to reconsider the role that Wikipedia plays in my life and the lives of others. I don't know why I really hadn't considered OER. I would love to discuss more about bridging the gap between Wikipedia content and open courseware. Bob Bodily might be interested in that as well. Robnyland (talk) 05:21, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I think it might be a good thing I did not discover the edit feature of Wikipedia during my more immature days because I might have been banned very quickly. Bodily11 (talk) 07:22, 3 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Like several others I use Wikipedia all the time, we pull it out every time we have a question, but always as a lurker. I'm excited to learn more about it and how I might be able to contribute. Kjspring (talk) 17:12, 3 March 2016 (UTC)


 * ,, , , , and : Thank you for the kind notes. Looking forward to meeting you all in 's class! -Pete (talk) 15:51, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Some notes following the first class
Our first class went well. Thank you, , and for volunteering as our first "pilots!" This is my first time leading an exercise where first-time editors jump right in, and I think it was a great success -- it seemed to me that all students were highly engaged and enjoyed it, and the questions and observations that came up were interesting and insightful. Looking forward to next week's session! By the way, the video from the course is here. -Pete (talk) 00:45, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I just wanted to chime in that I saw the post on Wikipedia Weekly about the class and decided to watch the video of the first class. I’ve often felt that it would be challenging to do a session with first time editors remotely, but it worked better than I might have guessed. I was happy to see that the exercise was started in user space – I see too many articles in main space deleted because they weren’t quite ready for prime time, and might have done better if started in user space. I was also impressed by Pete’s ability to give the short answer to many questions. I could tell that with some questions, he was taking a deep breath, realizing that a full answer might take ten or twenty minutes, but managed to give a 30 second summary that got the main point across, and saved time to get something accomplished. I was cringing at how long it took for the first “save”. I prefer to compose externally and paste in, because I inevitably lose something when writing directly into the edit box, but it turned out OK. This time. Save early and often.


 * I do like the concept of switching editors. In my earlier day job, I taught a new system to users, often in pairs, and they inevitably would decide that one would “drive” and the other watch. We insisted that everyone “drive” and it helped, you learn much more from doing that just watching.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  01:23, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Notes from our second class session
All -- great work in the second week! Here is a brief summary of what happened in the second class. (Also, please be sure to read the note from above -- this is a longtime Wikipedian who took an interest in our project, and has some helpful general words of feedback.

A summary of what happened with our draft in the second week, and where we'd like to go next:
 * The class agreed, at John's suggestion, that tightening up the entry, and publishing it as a section of the open educational resources article (instead of its own article) is a better goal.
 * There was a good deal of discussion of the Mike Smith article, and how it is essentially a call for research, as opposed to being research or even a research framework in itself. This lead to mentioning it much earlier on.
 * I suggested changing the structure to more or less the following:
 * The first 1-3 sentences need to clearly state why the topic of OER research is important, and how it has been significant more broadly to the field of education (and/or distance learning). It may be best if this draws on the Mike Smith article, i.e. the language around what research is needed and why.
 * Some language around the general concept of a research framework, prior to getting into COUP, might help as well. John (or perhaps it was one of the students?) suggested that there might be a bit of a bias toward COUP here because of its BYU origins. I can't really assess how true that is, but if there are other frameworks out there, it's important to structure this in a way that allows them to be included.
 * A bit more work is needed to make this a smooth narrative, but I think it's close. The class agreed that nobody is worried about individual attribution in the edit history, which is important because it means we can just copy-and-paste the final text into the OER article when it's ready.
 * We should be sure to announce this work to the OER community, and encourage others to build on it! When posting to the OER article, one of us should also leave a note on its talk page (Talk:Open educational resources); and it would also be worthwhile to write a blog post, and maybe announce it to some of the OER email lists. I'd be happy to write a blog post, and it would be great if any of you want to work on it with me; let me know.

If I've left anything out, or if you have questions or further ideas, please add them here! -Pete (talk) 23:50, 12 March 2016 (UTC)