WikiMaster concept - We need your feedback ..

[mackiwg]

Greetings WikiEducators

In the new year WikiEducator will commence with what we believe to be
the largest, coordinated international training initiative in
Mediawiki editing skills in the history of our planet. This will be
made possible due to a generous funding grant from the William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation under WikiEducator's Learning4Content
initiative. See our bid proposal here:

http://www.wikieducator.org/Metawikieducator/Learning4Content/Hewlett_bid

In preparation for our capacity building under the Learning4Content
project, User:Helena and I have been working on a skills typology
designed to acknowledge WikiEducator achievements and to earn
community kudos. See:

http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiMaster

This is work in progress, and we would appreciate feedback from the
community on the skills typology and suggestions on how we can promote
the concept.

We have identified 6 levels in the typology corresponding with
specified skills.

Questions to consider:

* Is this a reasonable classification of the skills and levels
required?
* Do we need a system to recognise and acknowledge different skills
levels within our community?
* How do we "certify" different levels? Do we work on a web-of-trust
model (we can always validate based on the wiki history)? or do
should we require certification from a trusted member of the community
(e.g. someone who has legitimately attained a higher level.)?

You will see that we have not developed the levels of:

* WikiTrainer and
* WikiMaster

Any ideas for the specified outputs for these levels are most welcome.

Chat to you soon.

Wayne

[Günther Osswald]

Hi Wayne, hi all,

some ideas:

Question 1: Yes, I think this typology of skills for participation in
WikiEd is reasonable.

Question 2: Yes, we should. But we should consider these thoughts:
For me, the wiki way is learning by doing. While I practice
developing content or participate in discussions, I learn how to do
this or to improve my skills. That means, for me active participation
is the focus of my interest, and learning editing skills is only a by-
product. I had to learn already too much in my life, and if someone
comes to me and tells me I have to learn this or that, I easily get
aversions. And I'm afraid there are more teachers who feel the same
like me. That does not mean I'm unwilling to acquire new skills, it's
the other way round! In fact since I bought my first good computer
December last year, my computer skills have expanded enormously (in my
view). But I used only my internal motivation.

The alternative for me would be to stimulate the internal motivation
of the wiki newbies by asking them about their dreams. Which content
would you like to see on the Internet? Let's say there is a sports
teacher who would like to hand out the rules of volleyball to his
students. He should start with this, typing it on his user page. But
then, he'll want to create an own page for this, so he has to learn to
create a new page and to link it well in WikiEd. And therefore he has
to investigate the content structure in WikiEd, and doing this, he'll
discover pages where he likes the layout. He says wow, I also want to
have illustrations like photos or drawings! So he is motivated to
learn how to do this and then he'll start imitating the corresponding
procedures.
And because he wants it to learn, he'll learn it, either by doing the
corresponding tutorial or by simply puzzling around until he has got
it. You understand what I mean? I, personally, I confess that until
now I've not done even one of the tutorials. I prefer to learn by
trial and error. And in school including university studies, what took
about 19 years of my precious life, I learned a lot and passed
millions of exams, but I estimate that only about 20% of what I
learned I can recall actively. So, f. ex. if someone creates once a
link to another wiki page, he'll probably have forgotten how to do
this in less than a month. Continuing practice is the only way to
acquire skills in a sustainable way.

So my proposal: Let quantity and quality of contributions to WikiEd be
the only measure to earn "community kudos". And there, I would
differentiate between content development, participation in community
tasks like discussions or giving feedback, and technical development.

If we give kudos for editing skills, we have to call them like that,
f. ex. MediaWikiEditingArtisan. This also demonstrates the fact that
these skills are applicable in MediaWiki wikis. These technical skills
are not sufficient to define a good WikiEducator.
But I would be in favor of acknowledging progress in wiki editing
skills, because it will be a certain motivation to learn for those,
who can be motivated by attaining titles or certificates.

But on the longer run I still think we need a system of financial
remuneration for authors. If stakeholders in education departments of
governments of CoL member countries get the evidence, that WikiEd
really works, they will be able to get funds for paying authors. This
should be our aim. As long as we don't have the possibility to pay the
authors, we will get only those who can afford to work without
payment. And in so called developing countries, this will be much less
than in industrialized nations.

So once again my formula in short words:
1. Yes, we should give titles for MediaWiki editing skills like
"MediaWikiEditingArtisan", and get all other MediaWiki wikis to use
the same system.
2. Yes, we should give "community kudos" for participation in
discussions and decision taking processes as well as content
development. The measure for this should be quantity and quality of
contributions. The titles could be called "WikiEducatorKudo bronze",
"WikiEducatorKudo silver" etc.
3. We have to clearly separate these two.

Question 3:
1. For the editing skills: How if we use the web-of-trust model? A
user who wants to demonstrate his MediaWiki editing progress puts the
corresponding label on his user page. He like that announces to the
community: Look, I'm able to do all what is required for this level.
And if no one objects, he is permitted to use this title.
2. For community kudos: I think it should be the task of the WikiEd
board to honor the work of an active user.

Greetings from frosty Bavaria,

Günther

[mackiwg]

Hi Günther

Many thanks for this detailed response -- this is good stuff which
will help us refine the Wikimaster concept.

I apologise for the delayed response - For selfish reasons I took a
day's vacation leave to ride my motorcycle ..;-). We are now moving in
to the wet season here in Vancouver - so yesterday was probably the
last day I would have the opportunity to take my bike out before next
summer .;-(.

You've highlighted two very significant omissions in our draft
Wikimaster concept:

1) WikiEducator is first and foremost about community - i.e.
contributing to education as a social good - the skills are secondary.
We must find way's in the Wikimaster concept to recognise and
encourage community contributions and participation driven by personal
motiviation. Therefore we should build in community participation
projects into the outputs section
2) That there are multiple pathways to acquiring skills other than
formal tutorials. WikiEducator's that aquire these skills through a
learn-by-doing approach also have the right to claim recognition for
the various levels of mastery. These can easily be validated by
analysing the my contributions link of a user.

We'll make these adjustments to the draft concept. Appreciate the
feedback. This demonstrates the power of a community approach.

Thanks.
Wayne



On Nov 21, 7:30 am, "Günther Osswald" <Guenther-Ossw...@t-online.de>
wrote:

[Declan]

I found the tutorials helpful; our local computer folks usually say
"you don't know what you don't know" and it is true, I have learned
new things by running through the tutorial. Also, I think that the
number of new Sand boxes is a good reflection of use. ~~~~

> > Günther- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[mackiwg]

Hi Declan,

Appreciate the positive feedback on the tutorials. There is always
room for improvement and we need a few tutorials for folk who want to
move their skills to the next level.

I'm also thinking about packaging a resource tool kit which will make
it easier for folk who want to facilitate their own online training
sessions for WikiEducator.

This may be useful for your project when new students come on board.

So much to do ....

Wayne

[Steve Foerster]

I think the idea of recognizing participants for their involvement is
a good one. The number of levels seems a bit daunting, though. I can
imagine being a newbie and on seeing that thinking, "Wow, that's a lot
to learn!" I also have to ask how much of this system would be
obviated by deploying WYSIWYG editing.

Perhaps it might make sense to have an approachable "driver's license"
sort of initial certification, and then beyond that have other
certifications for other aspects of WikiEducator that aren't
necessarily linear, e.g., content development, training others,
advocacy, template production, etc.

-=Steve=-


--
Stephen H. Foerster
http://hiresteve.com
http://wikieducator.org

[mackiwg]

Hi Steve - I like the Driver's License suggestion.

That would cover the first three levels of the Apprentice - and folk
would be issues with a WikiEd Drivers license. Makes things simpler.

The drivers license wouldn't be too onerous and a 1.5 day workshop
would do the trick. The rationale for dividing skills into so these
sub-levels is to map this with different workshop formats for the
Learning4Content project.

Fair comment on rich text editing - You're right, when MW gets this
right - we can drop the first three levels. COOL.

I also like your suggestions for multiple paths - post drivers
license.

Wayne