Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Education Program extension: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:12, 25 August 2012

Revision as of 19:38, 25 August 2012

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:as Sage says, and I think he has as much experience here as any of us, and it is his views I most trust in this, we are doing most of this for the first time. It stands to reason we will be doing this only partially right. There are only a handful of people who have run a course well, and I do not know if any of them , including most certainly myself , are really all that able to teach experience faculty how to teach WP. We are many of us qualified to teach people how to write for WP, but that's not the same thing. We have experience in that: we can tell faculty our experience. We know some of the things that can go wrong: we can explain them to faculty, but that's just the beginning. Effectively teaching people how to teach is extremely difficult--there are some general rules, and some obvious pitfalls, but much of it is very personal and idiosyncratic. At this point in the development of the program, I would discourage no one who wanted to try something different. Even two or three years from now, when we will have a few people who we know can consistently teach faculty how to teach WP, they will still not have a monopoly. WP lives by individual initiative and by encouraging anyone to edit. If I had wanted to do things the way I had been doing them, according to conventional wisdom, I would have stayed in the conventional system. I didn't come here to establish a replica. '''[[User:DGG| DGG]]''' ([[User talk:DGG| talk ]]) 05:19, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

::I agree that the WEP orientation should not be compulsory for instructors -- the only compulsory bit should be a community discussion (for user rights) where instructors demonstrate that they have the required clue (including understanding of Wikipedia and its goals) to guide a group of students around WP. We can also quiz the instructors on other things like the chosen subject area and the English language competency of their students. [[User:MER-C|MER-C]] 06:49, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

:::These comments make me see ways in which what I said earlier was unclear, so please let me elaborate on where I do, and do not, favor a "must". I actually agree entirely with DGG that we shouldn't tell instructors how to teach their classes. It's none of our business. But that wasn't what I was trying to say. Sage provided links to pages where we have instructive material on how to edit as instructors and ambassadors (and students). These are, in my opinion, helpful things to read. It's not about "how to teach your class", so much as "how to navigate Wikipedia". As I said above, I'm against any "must" about this for students, although I'd love to see all of them get a link to the page for students, by way of a helpful pointer to use as they wish. For instructors, and ambassadors, I am, indeed, arguing for a "must", but only to the extent that they be given a link to the appropriate guide page, and say (and we'll just AGF their saying so) that they read it. That's it!! The extension doesn't get turned on for their accounts until they say that they read it. They can always teach a class on Wikipedia with no string attached, no "musts". The "must" only comes into effect if they want to have the extension turned on for their account for them to use. If they do not want to bother with the extension, they are free to edit just as anyone else. It's really no different, at all, from what we require before an editor has the rollback permission turned on for their account, just a simple demonstration that they are unlikely to break the Wiki.

:::Here's why I feel this way. Most of the class projects with which I crossed paths have been terrific, really positive all around. But (as a former college professor myself) I'm aware of the pressures within the profession to find easy ways to teach classes (don't get me started on that!). This past year, a class worked on some pages on my watchlist, and the students thought, among other misperceptions, that they had to sign everything they put on the page, the way we sign comments on talk pages. I and other editors fixed their edits and tried to explain to them what we did. The students, however, edit warred over it and were upset that they wouldn't get "credit" for their edits. I went to the instructor's talk page and tried to explain, and got politely blown-off. I then asked the ambassador for the project, who left a brief note to the students, which the students ignored. Aside from anything else, I believe it was a bad experience for the students, which is exactly what we shouldn't want! They are potential new members of the editing community. I think they felt that their instructor was telling them to do one thing, and Wikipedia was telling them to do something else. And this wasn't about "how to teach the class", just about "how to edit Wikipedia". I agree with DGG that there is no guarantee that someone who says they read the guide will actually do better than someone who didn't, but at least this simple, unobtrusive "must" will improve the odds. --[[User:Tryptofish|Tryptofish]] ([[User talk:Tryptofish|talk]]) 19:38, 25 August 2012 (UTC)