Presentation by Brian Kelly, UKOLN on 25 October 2012 for an Open Access Week event at the University of Exeter

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Talk by Brian Kelly, Cetis on 24 March 2014 at the Wikimedia Serbia Eduwiki conference

Wikipedia, Wikimedia UK and Higher Education:

Developments in the UK

Event hashtag: #tbc

Wikipedia, Wikimedia UK and

Higher Education: Developments in the UK

Brian KellyInnovation AdvocateCetisUniversity of BoltonBolton, UK

Contact DetailsEmail: ukwebfocus@gmail.comTwitter: @briankellyCetis Web site: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/

Slides and further information available athttp://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/eduwiki-serbia-2014/

Event hashtag: #tbc

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Contents

About Me • Involvement with the Web• Open approaches• Involvement with Wikipedia

Wikipedia and higher education: activities in the UK

• Eduwiki 2013: Two case studies• Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador

Looking To The Future• Wikimania 2014• Conclusions

Intr

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Short talk

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http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/

About Me

Brian Kelly:• Innovation Advocate at Cetis, University of

Bolton• Formerly UK Web Focus at UKOLN, University of

Bath• Prolific blogger (1,250+ posts since Nov 2006)• User of various devices to support professional

(and social) activities

Involvement in Wikipedia and Wikimedia UK:• Created first article in 2004• Involved in Wikipedia training and Edit-a-thons

since 2013• Combing interests e.g. blog posts about

Wikipedia; use of Twitter to support Wikipedia activities

Intr

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Slow Acceptance of Value of WPGrowing acceptance of value of WP in HE in UK:2004 Created Wikipedia article (hobby). Realised

value of (a) simple content creation & (b) crowd-sourcing content

2006-~11 Wikipedia not regarded as relevant in higher education [lack of citations = evidence ]

2012- Wikipedia slowly becomes more accepted as relevant in teaching & learning / research:

• EduWiki 2012 • Various edit-a-thonsWP editing sessions at:

• SpotOn 2013 (was Science Online)• LILAC 2014 (information literacy)

Op

enn

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But still a niche area, with events highlighted because of rarity value

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Evidence of Slow Take-up

LILAC (Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference):

• LILAC 2014 hosts Wikipedia sessions (for 1st time?)• Paper in strand on “innovative approaches to

Information Literacy” “Wikipedia: it’s not the evil elephant in the

library reading room”, Andrew Gray and Nancy Graham

“support and use of Wikipedia amongst educators and librarians has been a source of controversy partly due to the ever changing content and apparent lack of editorial control.”

• Hands-on session on “Improving the Information Literacy entry on Wikipedia: LILAC’s first edit-a-thon!”

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Eduwiki (UK) 2013

Eduwiki conference:• Held in Cardiff on 1-2 Dec

2013• Second EduWiki UK

conferenceCovered:

• Welsh language issues• Case studies from higher

education and schools• Research perspectives• Workshop sessions• Broader considerations

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Two Case Studies

Summary of two case studies presented at EduWiki 2013:

• Safe Use of Wikipedia in the Transition from School to University, Lisa Anderson and Nancy Graham, University of Birmingham

• Introducing Students to Independent Research through Editing Wikipedia Articles on English Villages, Humphrey Southall, University of Portsmouth

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Outreach work by University of Birmingham Library

• Demonstrate information literacy approaches to school pupils

• Students surprised that Wikipedia was shown

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Introducing Students to Independent Research through Editing Wikipedia Articles on English Villages

This was the assignment (see “Telling the stories of rural England with Wikipedia” )

Humphrey Southall at EduWiki conference 

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Introducing Students to Independent Research through Editing Wikipedia Articles on English Villages

Notice how Neutral Point of View principle was addressed

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Introducing Students to Independent Research through Editing Wikipedia Articles on English Villages

Note activities for (a) Wikipedia familiarisation & (b) research and learning about (c) community aspects; (d) citation; (e) creation of article for submission

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Introducing Students to Independent Research through Editing Wikipedia Articles on English Villages

Students verify NPOV; relevance of article; it is able to be edited and it is not currently being edited

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Introducing Students to Independent Research through Editing Wikipedia Articles on English Villages

Example of article chosen for updating by student

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Introducing Students to Independent Research through Editing Wikipedia Articles on English Villages

Article after updating

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Introducing Students to Independent Research through Editing Wikipedia Articles on English Villages

Students learn about researching and citations

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Introducing Students to Independent Research through Editing Wikipedia Articles on English Villages

Student work is publicly visible (and often easily found)

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Short talk

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After the Presentations

“Partly as a result of the Cardiff meeting we now have a course page within Wikipedia”

20Education notice board now available (but does it scale?)

21Tensions highlighted between student use of Wikipedia and administrators who delete new content

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Outreach work by Uni of Birmingham Library

• Demonstrate information literacy approaches to school pupils

• Surprise that Wikipedia was shown

Discussion: “Live edit a Wikipedia entry – highlight how quickly edits are corrected”But should pages be ‘vandalised’ in order to demonstrate how the community fixes such vandalism?Highlighted need to address best practices for those who teach use of Wikipedia.

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Other DiscussionsAt EduWiki 2013:• Delegates

encouraged to use #eduwiki Twitter hashtag

• Tweets archived using Twubs archiving tool

See http://twubs.com/eduwiki

• Identify the community

Tools such as Twubs can help:

• Archive content of interest

Wikipedia = content+ community

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Curating DiscussionsStorify used to curate tweets:• Inappropriat

e tweets removed

• Can provide collective memory about event

• Ensures links shared are accessible after event

Tweeting at Wikipedia events:• Aligned with WP approaches in openness and

crowd-sourcing content• Engage with new audiences• Archives can be useful resource (e.g. evaluation)

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Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador

Funding support by funding body:

• Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador post

• July 2013 - March 2014

Deliverables:• Blog (shown)• Workshops• Edit-a-thons• Monthly reports• “Infokit”

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Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador post

Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador post

Jisc

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Jisc Inform

“Ten ways educators can use Wikipedia” article published in Jisc Inform (March 2014):1. Discuss and review2. Question the policies3. Look beyond the

English language4. Look under the

bonnet5. Look beyond

Wikipedia6. …Simple, brief summaries of

ways in which Wikipedia can be used. May be read by policy makers.

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Looking Into The Future

Wikimania 2014

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Wikimania 2014

Key themes:• Overcoming friction: “librarians and educators are

starting to teach students how they can use Wikipedia effectively. Like any other encyclopaedia, students are being shown how to use the site to find the helpful links to primary and secondary sources that are precisely the material students should be citing in their research”

• Knowledge is produced, not consumed: “Instead of being passive receivers of information, students become the creators and curators of knowledge. Wikipedia becomes an opportunity, not a threat, to formal education, and the educators' role becomes facilitating a shift from simply teaching answers, to teaching how to ask questions”

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Responding to the Themes

How might we respond to these themes?• Encouraging use of advanced Wikimedia

projectsAnd/or supporting crowd-sourcing:

• Promoting better understanding of relevance of Wikipedia in education

• Promoting Wikipedia editing by ensuring there are well-trained trainers

• Maximising the pool of potential contributors

Within the context of:• An Education Strategy • The WMUK Strategic Goals

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PastPlace

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Crowd-sourcing

Crowd-sourcing on Wikipedia

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Challenges

Challenges facing Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s community built a system and resource unique in the history of civilization. It proved a worthy, perhaps fatal, match for conventional ways of building encyclopedias. But that community also constructed barriers that deter the newcomers needed to finish the job. Perhaps it was too much to expect that a crowd of Internet strangers would truly democratize knowledge. Today’s Wikipedia, even with its middling quality and poor representation of the world’s diversity, could be the best encyclopedia we will get.

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Jisc InfokitThe Jisc ‘Infokit’:

“draws out some lessons from the most visibly successful crowdsourcing projects that support education and research, including Wikipedia”

“suggests ways in which those institutions and projects can benefit from working with Wikipedia and the wider Wikimedia community.”

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/crowdsourcing/

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Training the Trainer

WMUK Training the Trainer course

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Training the Trainer

WMUK Training the Trainer course

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Missing FemalesContext:

• “It is thought that only around one in 10 of its editors are female”

• “Many female scientists are either not there at all on Wikipedia or just [have] stubs” Dame Athene Donald, fellow of the Royal Society & Experimental Physics Professor at Cambridge UniversityAddressing the imbalance:

• Women in Science Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, 4 March 2014

• Women's Art Practices editing event, 8 March 2014

• Women Archaeologists editing event,

8 March 2014• Scottish Women in Contemporary Art

Edit-a-thon, 13 March 2014• Scottish Women in Computing

Edit-a-thon, 21 March 2014

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Accessibility Challenges (1)

Accessibility challenges include need to improve:

• Mediawiki as an authoring tool

• Wikipedia apps as viewing tools

And to improve Wikipedia content:

• Images have meaningful alt text; content is linearisable; etc.

• Content meaningful to people with disabilities (e.g. learning disabilities)

https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Accessibility_of_the_Wikimedia_UK_website

See proposed Accessibility of the Wikimedia UK website project

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Accessibility Challenges (2)

Accessibility challenges include need for more:

• Content about disabilities

This will be helped by:• Edit-a-thons will

participants who have disabilities

which needs:• Accessible tools• Trainers who can

support the contributors

• Understanding of diversity of options held by disability researchersSee WikiProject Disability

project

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Disability

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WMUK Education Strategy

WMUK Education Strategy

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WMUK Education Strategy

WMUK Education Strategy

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WMUK Strategic Goals

WMUK Strategic Goals

https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Strategic_goals

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Conclusions

To summarise:• Eduwiki (UK) 2013: examples of emerging

practices for consuming & creating WP content• Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador: example of

recognition of value of WP from funding body• Wikimania 2014: focus on Future of education

Need to go beyond early mainstream adopters:• Promote examples of use of WM beyond WP• Provide training the trainers• Development of educational strategy • 5 year plan for implementation of WMUK’s

Strategic Goals

ANY QUESTIONS?

Cartoon

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Questions?

Any questions, comments, …?

Continue the discussion: blog post about this presentation linked in from http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/eduwiki-serbia-2014/

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This presentation, “Wikipedia, Wikimedia UK and Higher Education: Developments in the UK” by Brian Kelly, Cetis is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 LicenceNote the licence covers most of the text in this presentation. Quotations may have other licence conditions. Images may have other licence conditions. Where possible links are provided to the source of images so that licence conditions can be found.

Slides and further information available athttp://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/eduwiki-serbia-2014/

Licence and Additional Resources