This post is available in 2 languages:

Português  • English

In English:

Professor Rafael Pezzi, a professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, read about a new program to support university faculty members in Brazil who were interested in incorporating Wikipedia editing into students’ assignments. Rafael was intrigued by the idea, and thought it might be a good idea for his physics course for engineering students.

“Wikipedia makes it explicit how knowledge is built: a never-ending dynamic process with conflicting opinions in a lively discussion,” he says. “Although this process is fundamental, it is ignored in the standard textbook-based class where knowledge is just given, considered as an absolute truth.”

Rafael was impressed with the level of support he received in the program, both from colleagues and from the Wikipedia community. Fabio Azevedo and Israel Rocha served as Wikipedia Ambassadors for his class. They introduced Wikipedia and motivated the students to participate in the assignment. They were also very supportive on-line, clarifying technicalities of the Wikipedia interface and introducing the participants to the Wikipedia community.

For Fabio, an editor since 2007, becoming a Wikipedia Ambassador and supporting Rafael’s class was a natural choice.

“I was motivated by using a modern teaching technique at my university, improving free content in my language, and helping Wikipedia to grow,” Fabio says. “I gave a talk on Wikipedia editing for his students in the first or second week of class. After, I replied to some emails, helping students with editing question and uploading images.”

“I must say that the help of the Ambassadors was key to making it happen,” Rafael says. “Without them it would not have happened, as I am not an experienced editor and created my Wikipedia account for this project.”

Rafael’s students really took to editing, creating or significantly expanding several important articles about physics related topics on the Portuguese Wikipedia, including articles such as Thermometer, Supercritical fluid and Interference of waves. In fact, five of Rafael’s students enjoyed the assignment so much that they volunteered to be Ambassadors for the current term.

“Basically traditional writing assignments are read once or twice and then sits in a drawer or folder archive in the professor computer,” Rafael says. “It is of limited value and does not really motivate the student apart from getting a good grade. With Wikipedia, the students have the real publishing experience and the feeling that what they write can help others understand what they are studying. Some get really motivated by this challenge.”

LiAnna Davis
Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

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This post is available in 2 languages:

Português  • English

In English:

Edivaldo Moura Santos grew up in the countryside of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The son of sharecroppers who worked on plantations in the region, Edivaldo discovered a love for physics in his first year of high school in the small town of Itupeva. It led him to work hard and pursue a bachelor’s and then a Ph.D. in physics, and then to teach students at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Last year, Edivaldo joined the pilot of the Wikipedia Education Program in Brazil, and he’s happy to see his students enhance the information available about physics on the Portuguese Wikipedia.

Edivaldo Moura Santos

Edivaldo’s students in his undergraduate Electromagnetism course had to write new or improve existing articles on the Portuguese Wikipedia related to their course readings. Campus Ambassador Vinicius Siqueira and Online Ambassadors Lechatjaune, Giro720, Sturm, and Olcyr helped students learn the basics of Wikipedia editing.

“I think the experience was unique,” Edivaldo says. “Not having the time and format constraints of standard written assignments gives you many more possibilities in the evaluation process. For example, having to write an encyclopedic article, the students have to be able to organize and systematize ideas and concepts. And to be able to accomplish that goal, the physical concepts have to be cemented in their minds. I had much more profound discussions with some students during the semester up to the point they really understood what they would later write on the Wikipedia.”

Edivaldo was extremely pleased with the student engagement and student learning that arose from the Wikipedia assignment.

“In a specific example, one of the articles was about the idea of electrical charge conservation,” he says. “The modern view of conservation laws in physics is totally based on the concept of symmetries and such a view is seldom discussed in a first course of Electromagnetism. The student responsible for that article, however, decided to read about topics beyond the course, such as analytical mechanics and quantum field theory. I was very happy with the final result.”

A key outcome for Edivaldo is that students are forced outside of the traditional way of learning in Brazil, where evaluation of student work is limited to written exams. While he acknowledges that exams have their place — physicists, he says, do have to be good at math — he feels that exams measure students’ ability to memorize key facts rather than truly understanding the concepts. When students had to write Wikipedia articles on topics, he says, they are forced to truly learn the concepts behind the formulas. And, of course, they improve the availability of free knowledge, spreading the wealth of information available to others interested in learning about physics.

“I discuss some physical concepts with students in more detail, and make them reflect on the definitions, theorems, and experiments that ended up in their articles,” he says. “My favorite part of doing a Wikipedia assignment is seeing students improving the content of the Portuguese Wikipedia and learning a bit of physics at the same time.”

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This March, the Community Department will be heading to Brazil to talk with supporters of Wikimedia’s mission. Our aim is to better understand how Portuguese-speaking editors and donors, many of whom are located in Brazil, view Wikipedia and the projects, in order to better tailor the fundraiser and all our programs to them.

First up, Maryana Pinchuk and I will be holding four meetups with active editors, in order to talk with them about what makes Portuguese Wikipedia unique. They are in…

• Rio de Janeiro
• São Paulo
• Curitiba
• Natal

Our colleagues in Global Development and at Wikimedia Brasil are working hard on several initiatives to reach out to new editors in the country. The Wikimedia Engineering team also has a number of large scale projects, such as the Visual Editor, that will deeply impact Portuguese Wikipedia.

The purpose of our visit is to gain a deeper understanding of the Brazilian Wikipedian community and to start a dialog with them about improvements they would like to see in Portuguese Wikipedia – something that we hope can be of assistance to everyone here at the Foundation. (To that end, Wikimedia Storyteller Victor Grigas will also be at the meetups, in order to interview interested Wikimedians one-on-one about the project and their perspective on it.)

In addition to editor meetups, Megan Hernandez will also be holding several donor focus groups in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Last year’s fundraising vastly improved on our ability to support donations from around the globe, but we still have work to do to optimize the localization and donor experience for readers in different countries.

If you’re an editor interested in joining, there’s still plenty of time to sign up for the meetup near you. We’ll be reporting back on our visit and discussions with the community, so look for a follow-up post come mid-March.

Obrigado!

Steven Walling
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation