Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classroom coordination

Translation project
User:Proteins and I are in contact with a technology company that wishes to use some software it has developed that is a kind of graphic interface for translators to increase the amount of health-related information in developing-world language Wikipedias. Since this is quite a large company, this project might eventually cover many languages, but we are thinking about starting off small at around five (eg transferring content from the English to the Swahili Wikipedia is one leading option). The real work will be in developing a community of translators and bilingual experts in each destination language, students and teachers are one possible community that could help us with this, so your expertise in co-coordinating these projects might be very useful. The company is willing to help with this as well. At our end we will need to provide a list of articles on "essential health information", internationalize these as much as possible, and polish them a bit. This proposal is still in its initial stage, but could people who would be interested in participating sign up here. Thank you Tim Vickers (talk) 17:14, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Outreach to schools to reduce vandalism
There's a discussion going on at Wikipedia_talk:Administrator_intervention_against_vandalism that may interest some editors here. We're looking for more proactive ways of dealing with school IP editors than the present vandalise/warn/repeat-until-schoolblock cycle that clearly is not working very well. Please give it a read.LeadSongDog come howl  21:11, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Public Policy Initiative courses for Fall 2010: Help Wanted
Wikimedia's Public Policy Initiative has recruited (tentatively) 6 professors for Fall 2010 to do major Wikipedia assignments in their public policy courses. We're working on course materials and model assignments now that will try to take a lot of what seems to have been effective with earlier courses listed on this page, and transform that into assignments that a professor doesn't have to be a serious Wikipedian to run effectively. We're also looking for Wikipedians who want to help coordinate the student's editing over the course of the coming semester. For details, check out: --Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 12:05, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Introducing the Public Policy Initiative - The Signpost
 * WikiProject United States Public Policy - this will be the hub of activity for the courses
 * Guide for teachers - (in progress, help welcome)

Wikipedia Online Ambassadors program now accepting applications
Related to the above, I want to invite editors interested in Wikipedia in the classroom to apply for the Wikipedia Online Ambassadors program. It's a program for helping new users through their early edits, and will focus on students who are assigned to edit Wikipedia in their courses; it's part of the Public Policy Initiative, and will hopefully be the basis for a longer-term effort at improving the way we nurture newbies.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 18:29, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Concerns about these projects
My experience with the School and university projects, at least the ones in Wiki-chemistry and related areas, have revealed some weaknesses in this program. My main concern is that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, first and foremost, Wikipedia simply does not exist as a "scratch-pad" for students, who are required to write essays by their instructors. One consequence of student work is that regular editors are often stuck with the janitorial work. Janitorial work = reformatting, redoing artwork, and often correcting technical mistakes in content, finding better references. A persistent and unsolved problem is that students lack perspective. Consequently, they tend to cite primary sources, which are often newsy and usually US-oriented. If more involved, instructors could insist on general sources and help the students pursue this policy (per WP:SECONDARY). Often, instructors seem to rank quality of these articles based on the number of references, not the depth of the explanations. I understand the basic laudable drivers for School-and-university-projects: nurture new editors and create new content. The former is not happening at least in Chemistry project, and the articles that are created are often, as I said above, mediocre in content and often, in a search for new topics not currently covered by Wikipedia, hyperspecialized. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:30, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The most frustrating thing of all is when long-time editors (e.g. WP:CHEMS) raise such concerns with the instructor in charge (e.g. University of Maryland, University of Michigan), the instructor will often become very defensive or combative. They'll say things along the lines of "School and university projects gives us the right to do things however I see fit". Then they'll reject any suggestions or complaints unless they're policy. I feel that experience and the will of regular editors is (a) more important than policy and (b) instructors should be told in no uncertain terms that the guidance of relevant Wikiprojects is not to be ignored or argued with.


 * Basically, students and their teachers should show us regulars some respect. --Ben (talk) 09:18, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I am not familiar with such instances, seems to be an exception to the rule. If they want to do things their way, that's fine - it's their problem if they get their work mass deleted because they didn't listen to us... and if it isn't, well, then it means they were doing something right after all, doesn't it? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:56, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * First of all, students should not be required to write essays on Wikipedia. If that happens, which does rarely, it shows a failure on the part of the instructor. Janitorial work is not that much of a problem, because it is to be expected whenever a new editor contributes content. Poor references is another instructor failure, although to be fair, it something most editors, students or not, not pay any attention too anyway. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:56, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Help needed
Would someone here help User:Arria Belli, who has created School and university projects/ESIT translation project - French to English (First semester 2011-12) and could doubtless use some assistance, but who knows even less than I about how to obtain help regarding a project of this nature. I believe from our email conversation she intended to obtain assistance from WikiProject Classroom coordination] but created her page in the wrong place. KillerChihuahua ?!? 21:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Template standardization/merge
The templates WAP assignment and Educational assignment are very similar. I have proposed that they be standardized (to include same/similar parameters) and possibly merged (make one a redirect to the other). Discussion at Template talk:WAP assignment.

How should my students let the Wikipedia community know they are working on a new article?
Is there an official mechanism by which they can "stake their claim" to a certain topic? I want them to allow others who may wish to contribute to or create that topic during the semester to contact them and discuss an action plan for collaboration. We have had some disappointments in the past years when the topic they put a lot of work into was also being done by someone else, and there was no communication or collaboration between the two editors until the first one published their new Wikipedia article. Thanks for your advice! Professorpotter (talk) 17:42, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Education Program extension Request for Comment
I've just opened up a request for comment on whether to enable the Education Program extension for managing and monitoring courses. If it does get enabled, there are related technical (user rights) and policy (who should be able to use it, and how will user rights be assigned?) issues that will need to be sorted out. It looks like this wasn't ready soon enough to use this coming term for most classes, but if the community wants the extension, it should be ready to go for the next term.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:42, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

What's the relation between this and the Wikipedia Education Program?
I'm cross-posting this question here and on the Wikipedia_talk:School_and_university_projects page, because I would really like to get some feedback.

I've been working with the Wikipedia education program for a while now, getting a course going for this fall (it's in its first week now). It's been helpful, but it's also been a lot of extra overhead work. Just yesterday, the professor got a nice message on her talk page asking us to add links to our course pages on this school and university projects page. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, by now, because the Wikipedia community is so vast. But, I was already feeling that the Education program pages were way too fragmented and disorganized. Why all this duplication of work? Are there efforts to coordinate your activities? I have to say, there actually is such a thing as too much helpful information -- it adds quite a barrier to entry, because newbies like us have to sort through everything to get a feel for what is going on.

I would add that, while I'm not completely surprised that there are two independent groups doing the same thing, I am surprised that there doesn't seem to be even a little bit of cross-linking. There are no references that I can find to the education program from here, and I've read a lot of education program materials, and never seen any references there to this group. 130.14.254.25 (talk) 12:45, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It doesn't appear this page is being used, but you might consider seeing WP:Training, which simplifies things, and WP:Student assignments, which is a big-picture overview, in case you ever look here. The WP:ENB is also in use. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 23:03, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!


Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)