Comments on: Students see benefits from Wikipedia assignment

By: Ayush Khanna

Ayush Khanna — Wed, 02 May 2012 21:58:29 +0000

Thanks for the comments.

@Laura:
Each course’s learning objectives are, of course, different, because professors use different assignments. You can see sample of the course syllabi on the course pages, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:United_States_Education_Program/Courses/Present
The learning objectives we were explicitly measuring against were the ones we’ve identified in the Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool brochure here:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_as_a_Teaching_Tool:_Learning_Objectives_and_Assignments_Types
As you can see from the results I highlighted in the blog post, students identified source evaluation/media literacy and writing skills as top learning outcomes for them.

@Ruairi:
Although we did ask for usernames, very few respondents provided them. so we can’t track how many respondents actually did continue to edit.

@Jen:
The goal of the program is to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles. We are currently doing more analysis on both quality and community impact from these students; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard#Suggested_approach_to_metrics_for_student-edited_articles if you have any feedback.

@Kelly:
Yes, this was a student survey measuring what they thought of their experiences.

By: Kelly Myer Polacek

Kelly Myer Polacek — Tue, 01 May 2012 20:26:23 +0000

It would appear that only student opinion was assessed, not student performance.

By: Jen

Jen — Tue, 01 May 2012 18:46:12 +0000

“Although converting students into longterm editors is not an explicit goal of the Wikipedia Education Program” – Is this true, and if so why is this not an explicit goal? These new editors impose a large burden on the community, and the only way that these programs is beneficial is if the programs provide a new source of editors, not just one-off contributors.

By: Ruairi

Ruairi — Tue, 01 May 2012 07:14:17 +0000

“as many as 46 percent of our respondents expressed interest in continuing to edit Wikipedia.”

What percentage actually do so?

By: Laura Hale

Laura Hale — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:22:50 +0000

May I ask what the learning objectives for the course were in relation to “A series of questions were designed around assessing student learning outcomes.” ? None of what is discussed in the section actually appears to relate to learning outcomes. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE! seriously, as some one with a background in education, love to see these. Can you provide the raw data, the course syllabi, the lesson plans where the learning objectives were listed?