Jim,

Thanks a million for sharing, I am deeply interested in learning more about
wikis.

Saludos

2009/11/3 Jim Tittsler <jtitts...@gmail.com>

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the pointer to this research paper -- a solid piece of research.

It's an insightful read, most notably the significant increase in
productivity and output using the group approach.

mmm -- wondering how our community can leverage the advantages of the group
approach?

In Wikieducator -- the workgroup approach has achieved significant outputs
in a relatively short time frame. At the same time, workgroups can
contribute to burn-out and wiki stress. What can WikiEducator do to mitigate
this challenge?

I'm also thinking about ways in which we can learn from the Wikipedia
experience. One of the challenges facing Wikimedia projects is supporting
newbies who may not be familiar with the sophistication and complexity of
all the polices and guidelines which support group work. Having a new page
deleted within a few minutes because of non-adherence to a range of group
related guidelines is not a positive experience ;-).

I'd like to see WikiEducator develop and refine approaches to support and
promote all members, irrespective of their experience of the peer-production
model.

It seems that the apprenticeship model, where we guide and support all
members at their level of experience is a valuable and productive approach.
WikiEducator is also very good at scaling professional development of its
members --- Learning4Content being a prime example.  Most of our training
facilitators are "graduates" of the L4C initiative, which illustrates the
scalability of our model. Thoughts? Next steps?

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/3 Jim Tittsler <jtitts...@gmail.com>

Thanks, Jim, wonderful resource:

One that caught my eye was "Herding the Cats: The Influence of Groups

Alison
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:ASnieckus

Hi Alison,

That's a great suggestion. I think there are a number of opportunities to
tweak the L4C initiative to provide guided support in getting involved with
projects and workgroups.

Also -- I'm very keen to explore opportunities for developing
intermediate-level tutorials. That is, establishing a "career-path" for
WikiEducators after completing the basic L4C training  :-).

The OER Foundation has limited funding to support the development of
intermediate-level tutorials. One option would be developing training
resources and corresponding online workshops to help WikiEducators make the
transition to workgroups and collaborative projects.

Assuming we allocate two or three tutorials @ the intermediate-level to
supporting group work --

* What learning outcomes sould we include?
* Do we have ideas for a tentative content outline for these tutorials?
* What workgroups do we have or new workgroups should we create for this
purpose?
* Are their WikiEducator volunteers who would be interested in taking this
further?

mmm -- getting excited about the opportunities.

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/4 Alison Snieckus <alison.sniec...@gmail.com>

I will join the herds of cats (lol) supporting Alison's remarks and I
also agree with Wayne's perspective on this.

Cheers,

Patricia

From: wikieducator@googlegroups.com
[mailto:wikieducator@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Wayne Mackintosh
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 6:01 PM
To: wikieducator@googlegroups.com
Subject: [WikiEducator] Re: WikiSym: research on wikis

Hi Alison,

That's a great suggestion. I think there are a number of opportunities
to tweak the L4C initiative to provide guided support in getting
involved with projects and workgroups.

Also -- I'm very keen to explore opportunities for developing
intermediate-level tutorials. That is, establishing a "career-path" for
WikiEducators after completing the basic L4C training  :-).

The OER Foundation has limited funding to support the development of
intermediate-level tutorials. One option would be developing training
resources and corresponding online workshops to help WikiEducators make
the transition to workgroups and collaborative projects.

Assuming we allocate two or three tutorials @ the intermediate-level to
supporting group work --

* What learning outcomes sould we include?
* Do we have ideas for a tentative content outline for these tutorials?
* What workgroups do we have or new workgroups should we create for this
purpose?
* Are their WikiEducator volunteers who would be interested in taking
this further?

mmm -- getting excited about the opportunities.

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/4 Alison Snieckus <alison.sniec...@gmail.com>

Thanks, Jim, wonderful resource:

        One that caught my eye was "Herding the Cats: The Influence of
Groups
        in Coordinating Peer Production?"  I've been skeptical of the
emphasis
        on workgroups, but this paper makes a case for how joining a
group can
        affect behavior (and complement individual contributions).
         http://www.wikisym.org/ws2009/procfiles/p107-kittur.pdf

OK, I'm feeling like a cat <smile>. Amazing how they identified a random
sample of editors and then extracted key information from their body of
work --- and their source was the wiki history data of approx 144
million edits (spanning inception to Oct 2007), wow.

The results do make a reasonably good case, given their study design,
that editors who are part of a collaborative subgroup change their
behavior in ways that benefit the subgroup's work and the wiki as a
whole (e.g., good citizenship behaviors).

Makes a strong case for WikiEducator workgroups. I agree with Wayne:

        One of the challenges facing Wikimedia projects is supporting
newbies who may not be familiar with the sophistication and complexity
of all the polices and guidelines which support group work.

What if at the conclusion of an L4C session, new members were encouraged
to join one of a set of active project workgroups (not community
workgroups, because these often entail a larger commitment to get up to
speed). These "next-step" projects could be chosen because the project
is currently active, the project work is relatively straightforward, the
workgroup has agreed to provide support for the new members as they
figure out how to effectively collaborate on the project's work, ....
The set of projects could include a broad spectrum of subject-matter, so
that individual members could find something that suited their interest.

For example, I think the WE math glossary could be a good place for new
members who have a background in math. (Full disclosure: it worked for
me :-)

I'm interested to hear people's thoughts on how workgroups could be used
to strengthen the support of new members?

Interesting, I think this ties in well with a number of other recent
threads on collaboration. Just another side of the same coin.

Alison
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:ASnieckus

--
Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D.
Director,
International Centre for Open Education,
Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
Board of Directors, OER Foundation.
Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org

Mobile +64 21 2436 380
Skype: WGMNZ1
Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg