Campus of Médéa University

As part of the Arabic Language Initiative, I had the chance to visit Algeria in the last week of April, where I had the privilege to speak to students at Médéa University (Médéa Province) about Wikipedia and invite them to contribute to it.

With a size of almost 2,400,000 square kilometers, Algeria is the largest country in Africa and the Arab World, and the tenth-largest country in the world. Algeria has about 4.1 million internet users (12% of the total population of 35 million), however they contribute only 0.08% of the total global edits on Wikimedia projects. While the official language of Algeria is Modern Standard Arabic, French as the ”de-facto” co-official language is still widely used in government, culture, media, and education due to the country’s colonial history. This fact can be clearly noticed in the readership numbers of Wikimedia projects in Algeria: While 52.2% of Wikimedia traffic from Algeria went to French language pages in the first quarter of 2012, Arabic language traffic shared only 30.7%. Having said this, the share of Arabic language traffic has almost doubled in the past three years, from only 17.0% back in mid 2009.

In particular, I could feel the passion for reading and adding content to Arabic language Wikimedia projects during my visit to Médéa University, where I delivered a lecture about contributing to Arabic Wikimedia projects, followed by an editing workshop over two days organized by Dr. Fareh Abdelhak. The introductory lecture laid out the current situation of Wikipedia contributions from Algeria, and a few thoughts on how Wikipedia works, and why is it important to contribute new content to Wikimedia projects. The lecture ended by giving the attendants (about 130, most of them students) a homework exercise: To think of one person they respect and one of their famous quotes, in addition to translating a topic from the English or French Wikipedia or writing an article based other sources that does not exist on the Arabic Wikipedia. Later on, I was informed that the students posted a report in Arabic about the lecture, and shared the homework on Facebook, so more interested people would be able to join the workshop on the next day.

Students attending the editing workshop at Médéa University

Although Friday was a day off at the university, about 30 students managed to come in the morning to attend the editing workshop. Unfortunately, since most of the university facilities were closed, we couldn’t use the PC rooms and provide every student with a PC. However, this situation did not preclude students from joining the workshop using their private portable PCs, where each group of 3 to 4 students had to share one PC with their colleagues.

The session started by registering a user account on the Arabic Wikiquote. Wikiquote was chosen as a start for two reasons, first to raise awareness about Wikipedia’s sister projects, and secondly in order to enable students adding content directly in their first edits without much interference from the larger Wikimedia community. Most students managed to register an account smoothly, and we started adding pages with the texts that most of the students had prepared as their homework. After students had learned the wiki basics on Wikiquote, we moved to the Arabic Wikipedia to start adding new articles there.

The workshop session resulted in creating 8 new articles on Wikipedia and 10 new pages on Wikiquote. At the end of the workshop, most of the students answered positively to a question on whether they will continue to add content to the Arabic Wikipedia. Indeed, in the evening I noticed that some of the students who attended the workshop went back to the Arabic Wikipedia and Wikiquote and continued improving their previously added articles, and also added new content. Later on, I received a message on my discussion page saying “When we meet next year, I will have already created a number of pages that exceeds yours!”… I really wish you will!

Haitham Shammaa, Editor Growth and Contribution Program consultant

a. 59 percent of editors edited Wikipedia anonymously before creating an account

b. Decline in edit activity is more pronounced for experienced editors

c. Edit history influences editors’ views on problems with Wikimedia culture as well as desired solutions

a. 59 percent of editors edited Wikipedia anonymously before creating an account

59 percent of respondents pointed out that they had edited Wikipedia anonymously before they set up a login account on Wikipedia. (The survey was only announced to logged-in editors.) Portuguese (70 percent) and Spanish (66 percent) Wikipedia editors were more likely to have edited anonymously in the beginning compared to English (60 percent), Russian (58 percent) and German (59 percent) editors. Among editors, the three biggest motivators for setting up a login account are: tracking their edit history (54 percent), creating new articles (54 percent) and having a watchlist of articles to follow (49 percent). Interestingly, while the English Wikipedia makes it mandatory to obtain an account before one can start a new article, respondents there cited this reason less often (39 percent). Among Spanish (67 percent) and Portuguese (68 percent) language editors this percentage was much higher, even though these Wikipedias allow creation of new articles without being logged in.
76 percent of those respondents who had started anonymously said that they had made between one and 50 anonymous edits before they registered a user account. The majority of these respondents (54 percent) saw the benefit of having a user account only after editing Wikipedia anonymously for more than 10 times.

QD3b. What prompted you to set up a user account? n=6378

b. Decline in edit activity is more pronounced for experienced editors

When asked about their level of activity in 2011 compared to the previous year (2010), 30 percent of respondents said that they were less active, another 30 percent stated that there was no change in their activity and 41 percent said that they were more active. However, more experienced editors (with 100+ edits) were more likely to point out that they were contributing less often. The most common reasons reported for becoming less active on Wikipedia are: Having less time (59 percent), spending more time on other offline activities like reading (44 percent), spending more time on school or academic work (34 percent), spending more time on other online activities like Facebook or Twitter (23 percent), and rules and guidelines for editing becoming too complicated (17 percent).

QD7a: Thinking about this year (2011) how active were you on Wikipedia compared to the previous year? (ratio of 'less active' answers) n=3890

c. Edit history influences editors’ views on problems with Wikimedia culture as well as desired solutions

We asked editors to choose the top three problems with Wikimedia culture that have affected them personally, making it harder for them to edit. The most commonly picked responses were: Other editors who feel that they own specific articles and don’t want others to collaborate (46 percent), too many rules and policies (41 percent), editors who are not fun to work with (39 percent) and lack of access to research materials like scholarly articles or books (39 percent).
When we sliced data through edit counts, we found that experienced editors are more likely to identify issues with other editors as the biggest problem that plague Wikipedia culture, while newer editors are more likely to identify complicated policies and software. For example, 45 percent of emerging editors (1-9 edits), 48 percent of aspiring editors (10-50 edits) and 44 percent of new Wikipedians (51-100 edits) said that too many rules and policies were the main problems that they faced in Wikimedia culture. But these numbers were significantly smaller for more experienced editors: 39 percent for active Wikipedians (100+ edits), 36 percent of very active Wikipedians (1000+ edits) and 34 percent of highly prolific Wikipedians (5000+ edits). Correspondingly, 59 percent of highly experienced Wikipedians, 53 percent of very active Wikipedians and 47 percent of active Wikipedians pointed out that editors who are not fun to work with formed one of the main problems that they were facing. But only 22 percent of all newer editors (emerging, aspiring and new Wikipedians) reported this as an issue.

Q23: Please pick the three most important problems that have affected you personally, making it harder to edit. n=5962

Similarly, when asked about changes that might make it easier to contribute to Wikipedia, newer editors were more interested in simpler policies and rules, and a more user friendly editing interface. On the other hand, more seasoned editors are looking for improvements in editor behavior. All editors, irrespective of their edit history, agree that they need access to better research materials for writing articles.

Q24. Please pick three changes that you believe will make it easier for you to contribute. n=6176

If you are interested in more information about Wikipedia editors, please check out the topline findings from the survey.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research
Ayush Khanna, Data Analyst, Global Development

In December 2011, we conducted an online survey of Wikipedia editors in 17 languages. This is the third in a series of blog posts summarizing our findings. If you are interested, you can find out more about the methodology of the survey here.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma is an interdisciplinary high school level program which was developed in collaboration with UNESCO mostly based on European and U.S. models. It is considered to be rigorous, with graduation depending on testing, the writing of essays, and the completion of a community service requirement. This makes IB program ideal for Wikipedia. Students have been prepared to do expository writing in their native language (and often in English as well), and the community service requirement is eighty hours, which allows for the development of various kinds of projects.

Four students who edited Wikipedia as part of their community service requirement of their International Baccalaureate Diploma.

In the pilot program at ITESM-CCM, I trained students on how to edit Wikipedia and helped them come up with article ideas, working at the school’s self access language laboratory, which I run. We began with English-to-Spanish translation on Wikipedia since I have had success with this kind of assignment and the Teylers Museum was doing a translation challenge. Soon after doing several articles related to Teylers, students began to find their own interests over the course the semester. Students worked on translating or creating fifteen articles, as wells as donating and organizing photos in Wikimedia Commons. See a list of articles created or translated.

Opportunities arose during the semester to allow students to explore options other simply working in the lab. The main one was an edit-a-thon held at the Museo de Arte Popular in Mexico City. This allowed the one IB student who could attend to not only work with the museum, some university students, and members of Wikimedia México, it also got her picture in the school’s newspaper. Various students have worked with me to create formal proposals in Spanish to be sent to other organizations with interest in working with Wikipedia.

The pilot had only seven students so that time and other considerations could be tested. It turns out that these students adapted to working with Wikipedia rapidly, mostly because they already know the basics of doing expository writing and citation. Since this is a community service requirement, the only assessment is hours served, no grades. This makes working with students in International Baccalaureate programs, which exist worldwide, an attractive option for outreach programs to explore!

Leigh Thelmadatter, Volunteer

At WikiSangamotsavam 2012

I made a short visit to India last week in order to attend the Malayalam community conference “Wikisangamotsavam 2012“ in Kollam, Kerala. The trip was my sixth visit to India since I joined Wikimedia in 2010, and was particularly special because it highlighted the importance and the huge potential of our projects in Indic languages.

While many people around the world experience India as an English-speaking country, close to 90 percent of Indians do not speak English at all. This is easy to miss, since it is quite common for the rest of the world to interact with one of the 125-150 million or so Indians (twice the population of the United Kingdom) who do speak English.

India is home to several hundred languages, 11 of which are the primary language of more than 30 million people worldwide (the approximate population of my home country, Canada). For Wikimedia to realize its vision, we need to have projects that serve the 90 percent in India, or more than a billion people.

What was encouraging about my visit was that I saw that this isn’t some naive dream. We are really seeing some communities emerge and there is no reason why we can’t attract large communities of contributors to build high quality Wikipedias in many Indic languages…and we can get these in the hands of every Indian on their mobile phone (more soon on mobile partnerships in India).

Logo of the Malayalam conference (English version)

The Malayalam community served as a real inspiration. Over the past 4 years, they have built a passionate community that has expanded their Wikipedia from 5,700 to 23,000 articles. The community is a diverse mix of teachers, university students, computer engineers, photographers, business people, doctors and others. They have been highly industrious in working through the myriad technical issues posed by the lack of Malayalam keyboards and the limited localization of software into the language. They developed an input tool that now allows users to enter information in various Indic languages on a latin script keyboard. They have built innovative partnerships with the Kerala government to introduce Wikipedia to students and to conduct Wikipedia Academies across the state. One middle school teacher even had his typing class contribute Malayalam epic poems to Wikisource, a useful way to get their typing practice done. They recently held a photography program called Malayalam loves Wikimedia, adding over 11,000 local images to Wikimedia Commons.

The Malayalam community is only at the end of the first verse of their epic poem. I challenged them to think about ways to grow their community. They have 80 active editors and are doing great work. Imagine if they were 1,500 editors like we have in the Polish community (a similar language by number of speakers): a community of that size would enable massive access to knowledge for any Malayalam speaker.

During the rest of my visit, I had the opportunity to hear about promising steps in Kannada, Gujarati, Assamese, Oriya, Telugu, Sanskrit and Hindi (we also recently blogged about the Tamil Wiki Media contest). Most of these projects are small at this time with fewer than 50 active contributors, some less than 10. What is promising is that there are a few passionate people ready to provide leadership, reach out in their communities and help build Wikimedia projects in their languages. It is also promising that groups are piloting different strategies in partnership with the India Program’s Indic initiative led by Shiju Alex. If we can have 5-10 small pilots operational at any given time, with frequent exchanges of the experiences gained in each, then we can quickly figure out effective strategies and spread them across the many Indic language projects and to other smaller projects around the world.

Imagine a world in which every single Indian with access to a computer or a mobile phone can freely access and contribute to the sum of all knowledge in their own language. Wouldn’t that be something special?

Barry Newstead is Chief Global Development Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. He does not speak an Indic language, but is committed to supporting these projects.

But there is a fourth kind of cultural and educational resource within the city that is sometimes overlooked—Washington‘s 170+ embassies and diplomatic missions. These embassies are hidden gems of knowledge, housing cultural artifacts and works of art, and hosting numerous educational and cultural events, particularly in May, which DC Mayor Vincent Gray has declared as the city’s “International Cultural Awareness Month,” in order to showcase the value these embassies bring to the city.

In an effort to capture the intellectual energy and highlight the cultural and educational resources of these international institutions, Wikimedia District of Columbia (Wikimedia DC) last week kicked off its Embassy Outreach Initiative (EOI) with an inaugural event held in partnership with the Washington European Society and the Estonian Embassy in Washington.

The event, hosted at the Estonian Embassy, featured a discussion on global Internet freedom efforts with Danny Weitzner, Deputy CTO for Internet Policy at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy; Chairman Marko Mihkelson, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Estonian Parliament; Ian Schuler, Senior Manager for Internet Freedom Programs at the US State Department; and Rebecca MacKinnon, Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board. Adam Kushner, Deputy Editor of the National Journal, moderated the discussion.

From L to R, Weitzner, Mihkelson, Schuler, and MacKinnon. CC-BY-SA

At the heart of EOI is an effort to foster an international dialogue around Wikimedia DC’s and the Foundation’s vision. In that sense, the choice of the Estonian Embassy as the debut venue for EOI was not coincidental. Estonia currently ranks as the number one country for Internet freedom by the DC-based NGO Freedom House. Not only do tech, Internet companies, startups (think Skype) and knowledge initiatives thrive in Estonia, but so does the Estonian Wikipedia. Its nearly 95,000 articles, and 8.1 million monthly page views, may seem small compared to the English Wikipedia, but considering the country’s population stands at slightly over 1.3 million, these numbers are very substantial.

The global Wikimedia community will be coming to Washington, DC, this summer for Wikimania 2012, providing the city with an opportunity to witness how the world collaborates in pursuit of free global knowledge. Before these international delegates arrive, and long after they have returned home, Washington, DC has always been and will always remain a great place to promote international dialogue in support of shared knowledge. That is the ultimate goal of Wikimedia DC’s outreach and program efforts–like EOI and LibraryLab: they utilize the potential for collaboration that is present within the city and make a positive and lasting impact on global knowledge.

Nicholas Michael Bashour, President, Wikimedia District of Columbia

Being a Wikipedian is not only about adding content to Wikipedia. Many Wikipedians work behind the scenes to ensure content on Wikipedia is of high quality and meets the standards of Wikipedia. More than one-fifth of editors (21 percent) patrol for vandalism, copyright violations or other problems with articles often/very often. A slightly smaller number (17 percent) participates in the discussion namespace often/very often, and nine percent participate in the deletion process including speedy and proposed deletion often/very often. Other popular activities include: doing translation work and uploading or editing images, media etc. (14 percent each).

Q4a,4b: How often have you participated in the following in the last 30 days? (n=6348)

With 3.9 million articles in March 2012, the English Wikipedia is one of the more mature and complete language Wikipedias. It’s no surprise that editors who edit other language Wikipedias are more likely to say that they write new articles or add content to existing articles often/very often. Editors who work on smaller Wikipedias are also more likely to do translation work. Compared to the English (4 percent) and German Wikipedia (5 percent), more editors from the Russian (18 percent), Spanish (28 percent), French (16 percent), Portuguese (35 percent) and Arabic (36 percent) Wikipedias stated that they did translation work often/very often.

Q4a,4b: How often have you participated in the following in the last 30 days? (n=6348)

If you are interested in more information about Wikipedia editors like age or country of residence, please check out the long-awaited topline findings from the survey.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research
Ayush Khanna, Data Analyst, Global Development

In December 2011, we conducted an online survey of Wikipedia editors in 17 languages. This is the second in a series of blog posts summarizing our findings. If you are interested, you can find out more about the methodology of the survey here.

Some members of the Language Acquisition seminar at the Augustana Faculty of the University of Alberta.

The students in the class found this writing assignment a bit scary, but they were curious and eager to see how it could turn out.

“I was nervous about writing for Wikipedia because I didn’t know what to expect and the process seemed a little daunting,” said Alanna Lindsay, a fourth-year student from Wainwright, Alberta. “However, once we began, I quickly got used to Wikipedia and began to really enjoy the project.”

Alanna’s classmate Erika Heiberg, a fourth-year from Kingman, Alberta, agreed, saying she was “slightly intimidated” at the beginning.

“I was unfamiliar with the editing process and was overwhelmed at first by all the new interfaces and things like that, but I was excited to do something different,” said Heiberg.

Dr. Marentette said the traditional research essay generally develops information literacy, critical thinking, and writing skills, but she appreciated the fact that the Wikipedia assignment addressed those and more.

“The students learned a lot about evaluating sources. They learned how Wikipedia works (talk pages, standards etc.). They know now that they can figure out if an article is of reliable or not. It made the typical lesson about evaluating sources very relevant,” she said. “When writing, they need to constantly be aware of the potential audience. They have to address public response as soon as they begin to plan changes to an article. They have to defend their choices, or allow themselves to be persuaded to change their approach. They have to write and rewrite to achieve the tone and clarity and coverage for which they are aiming.”

And her students noticed their skills blossoming as they worked together to improve the two articles.

“The good thing about Wikipedia is that it teaches you to write in a more accessible manner and to leave out a lot of the unnecessary information that you include in a traditional paper to meet the page number requirement,” Heiberg said. ”This project helped me to make my writing much more succinct and easy to follow.”

The students improved their articles, then reached out to their Online Ambassador, Neelix, members of WikiProject Psychology and other editors who contribute to psychology-related articles for feedback. When they felt ready, they submitted both articles to the Good Article review process, then collaborated to make edits based on the feedback of the reviewers. Students said they welcomed the productive feedback on their articles, and they were excited to have had their hard work recognized with the Good Article designation.

All of the students said they preferred Wikipedia assignments to traditional assignments after this experience. In fact, third-year student Lianne Theelen, a native of Red Deer, Alberta, said she hoped to take another class next year where she writes Wikipedia articles for class.

“We get more feedback on our writing and we’re more motivated to make it look good because it’s accessible to the public,” Theelen said. “My favorite part is not having it sit and collect dust or get thrown away after the term. Our article is still there, and it is useful for people.”

Other classmates agreed, echoing the themes that drove APS to call on professors like Dr. Marentette to use Wikipedia in their classrooms in the first place.

“In the future, I would prefer a Wikipedia assignment over a usual term paper, since this will help many Wikipedia users get credible information on psychology related topics,” said Juliet Brown, a fourth-year student born in Ghana and now living in Alberta.

“My favorite part about writing for Wikipedia was knowing that the information being presented is valuable to someone, and in particular to parents,” said Alison Owens, a third-year student from Olds, Alberta. “The joint attention page may be a place where parents of children with developmental disabilities go to look in order to learn more about their child’s disability. I think its great that we can provide that information for them in an easy access format, with reliable sources that they can trust.”

LiAnna Davis, Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

a. Wikipedia editors continue to be predominantly men

The gender distribution of Wikipedia editors hasn’t changed since the last survey. Among those surveyed, 90 percent self-identified as males, 9 percent as females and 1 percent as transsexual or transgender. That being said, there was a greater amount of female editors among those respondents who had joined more recently: Among editors who had joined in 2011, 14 percent were female compared to 10 percent for 2010, 9 percent for 2009 and 8 percent for editors who had joined in 2008 and participated in this survey. Possible explanations include that Wikipedia has been attracting a higher ratio of women recently, or that female editors leave the project sooner. There were no significant variations across the major language Wikipedias, with the exception of the Russian Wikipedia, which reported only 6 percent female editors. Also, out of all editors in the US, 15 percent are women, which is significantly higher than any other country of residence. Conversely, there are fewer male editors in US (85 percent) compared to other countries (UK, India, Brazil, Canada) where 90 percent or more of editors are males.  With initiatives like the Teahouse project that engages new editors through outreach, we hope to increase the number of female editors on Wikipedia.

(D15) What is your gender? (n=6503)

D15. What is your gender? n=6503

b. English Wikipedia continues to be the most read and edited Wikipedia

As we had found in the April 2011 survey, a large majority of Wikipedia editors read and edit the English version. Many editors that primarily make edits to another language Wikipedia also edit the English Wikipedia. While only 30 percent primarily edit the English Wikipedia, 63 percent contribute to it. Almost half of English Wikipedia editors reported other language Wikipedias as their primary project. Similarly, 86 percent of Wikipedia editors read the English Wikipedia, though only 38 percent read it primarily.

Q1a. Which language versions of Wikipedia do you CONTRIBUTE to? Please choose all that apply.

Q1b. Which language version of Wikipedia do you PRIMARILY CONTRIBUTE to? Please choose ONE.

Q2a. Which language versions of Wikipedia do you READ? Please choose all that apply.

Q2b. Which language version of Wikipedia do you PRIMARILY READ? Please choose ONE.

If you are interested learning more about Wikipedia editors – from age demographics to their editing experiences, please check out this space as we publish the long-awaited topline findings from the survey.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research
Ayush Khanna, Data Analyst, Global Development

In December 2011, we conducted an online survey of Wikipedia editors in 17 languages. This is the first in a series of blog posts summarizing our findings. If you are interested, you can find out more about the methodology of the survey here.

It is imperative that a diverse, representative group is enabled to attend the conference, representing a variety of cultures, languages, and projects. To that end, the Wikimedia Foundation and some Wikimedia chapters offer a limited number of scholarships with the goal of making Wikimania a productive conference by enabling the attendance of a diverse group of participants in the Wikimedia movement.

As the movement continues to grow and expand around the world, it is unfortunately impossible to fund the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who have contributed, but each year we strive to support a select few who we think will both greatly benefit from the conference and contribute to the conference. A “Scholarship Review Committee” — entirely consisting of community volunteers — reviews a large number of scholarship applicants (over a thousand this time), scoring applicants on their activity in the Wikimedia projects and other compatible movements as well as their potential for future contributions in the Wikimedia movement. WMF looks at the recommendations of the committee and accounts for the diversity of the pool of candidates in order to support a diverse group of representatives from countries around the world, allocating more scholarships to global south regions, editors in smaller language projects, and women.

This year, we are pleased to announce that scholarships have been awarded to 130 individuals from 57 countries! We were able to sponsor so many people with the help of Wikimédia France, who also contributed directly to the general funds for scholarships. These representatives contribute to a variety of projects and will bring both old and fresh experiences into the conference.  Scholarships this year were awarded by region in an effort to ensure that we would have good representation from different countries. Partial scholarships were distributed based on the applicants’ indication of whether or not they could pay, and funds were distributed via partial scholarships where possible in order for the most people to attend. So for example, though North Americans make up 13% of the total scholarship recipients, they represent only 5% of the total anticipated funding because about 65% of those spots were only partial scholarships.

As always, the field was incredibly competitive, with 1113 applicants from 118 countries. The overall acceptance rate of applicants for the WMF scholarships was 12%, with Europe as the lowest at 8%. Note that the low acceptance from Europe was intentional, as a series of Chapter-funded scholarships for Europeans are about to be announced which will boost the participation numbers from this region.

While we are excited about the input our 130 scholars will provide this year to the conference, we wish that all the other excellent contributors who applied would be able to attend. The scholarships are in no way a direct reflection on one’s value in the community -it is a result of a very competitive process, where many deserving community members are unable to be funded for this year. We greatly value the participation of all in the Wikimedia projects and sincerely hope that all applicants will continue to participate in both local and worldwide conversations online outside of this event!

Jessie Wild, Liaison with the Scholarship Review Committee

Learning outcomes

A series of questions were designed around assessing student learning outcomes. About two-thirds of the respondents agreed that doing a Wikipedia assignment was a beneficial experience, with almost 20 percent of them strongly in favor of a Wikipedia assignment in place of a traditional term paper. Students from the United States and graduate students all reported higher beliefs in the benefits of a Wikipedia assignment. More than half of the respondents felt that doing a Wikipedia assignment improved (1) their ability to identify poor quality Wikipedia articles and (2) their ability to identify bias in documents. In addition, more than half the respondents felt their ability to write a neutral (i.e., balanced point-­of-­view) document improved through a Wikipedia assignment more than through a standard term paper.

These findings indicate that students recognize the media literacy benefits in doing a Wikipedia assignment. As professors have noted, when Wikipedia is not the destination of the student’s research on a topic, but is instead the road, students are forced out of their research comfort zone. Students are required to evaluate the reliability of sources, find journal articles, and write from a neutral point of view to meet Wikipedia’s policy requirements.

Support resources

Student participants use a set of resources when they have questions about editing Wikipedia — online text, Campus Ambassadors, Online Ambassadors, and professors to name a few. Online text is the most commonly used resource, followed by printed materials. Nearly 93 percent of students who consulted their Campus Ambassador found him or her to be helpful, and 74 percent of students who consulted an Online Ambassador said he or she was helpful.

We’ve found that having that support makes a big difference to students. Students can chat with their Campus Ambassadors in person on campus or on wiki, and they can interact with Online Ambassadors on-wiki and through an IRC chatroom where they can get immediate help for quick questions.

Students had a positive interaction with the Wikipedia community of editors when they interacted with them. Students were asked to pick two adjectives to describe their views of the Wikipedia editing community; top responses included “helpful” (72 percent), “collaborative” (39 percent), and “intelligent” (27 percent).

Motivations

We asked students to identify the key motivations for their contributions to Wikipedia. Important factors students reported were getting a grade, interest in their Wikipedia article topic, and the usefulness of their work (i.e., it wasn’t another throwaway assignment). Graduate students reported a broader variety of motivations, when compared to undergraduates. In particular, more than 60 percent of the graduate students gave a high ranking to the fact that their work contributes to a freely accessible knowledge base.

Final comments and looking ahead

Although converting students into longterm editors is not an explicit goal of the Wikipedia Education Program, as many as 46 percent of our respondents expressed interest in continuing to edit Wikipedia.

When students were asked to share the hardest thing about their Wikipedia editing experience, some common themes emerged. Many students mentioned the challenges of learning how Wikipedia works, and how editing an article was a lot more work than they imagined. Almost universally, they talked about how hard it was to learn wiki syntax. The Visual Editor will help alleviate many of these concerns.

To sum up, here’s what one student had to say when asked about any memorable experiences:

“Overall, a great learning experience. Having to really validate anything you say by backing it with a reputable source is incredibly beneficial and students should be exposed to this, especially if they have not had a research methods course in their undergraduate career.”

Ayush Khanna
Data Analyst, Global Development