Fwd: Instructions on using the training platform at Kloop

[Ринат Тухватшин]

Dear all,

May be we should have a meeting with students and editors and decide on that. I stand by the idea that if something was published, it was published, and we should assume reponsibility for that. It is anyway visible to anybody. I also believe visible comments will help our readers to be more critical about journalism as a whole in Kyrgyzstan.

My viewpoint stands only for Kyrgyzstan versions of Kloop, and the English version. Regarding Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, partners must decide it themselves.

Sincerely,

Rinat

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeff Erlich <jeffe...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, May 2, 2011 at 12:22 PM
Subject: Re: Instructions on using the training platform at Kloop
To: Ринат Тухватшин <ri...@kloop.kg>
Cc: John Couper <coupe...@hotmail.com>, Frederick Emrich <frederic...@gmail.com>, Гульнура Торалиева <gulnura....@gmail.com>, Gulnar Assanbayeva <gul...@kimep.kz>, Nigina Malikova <nmal...@eurasia.org>, Назгуль Аксариева <naz...@ef-ca.org>

Dear Rinat,

I'm including the original cc list, as I invite someone to disagree with my position.

I have to think about whether I'm comfortable giving honest criticism of kloop and students' work knowing that the whole world can see it. Praise publicly, criticize privately is generally a good approach.

Moreover in journalism, there are real-life legal and safety issues. To give an extreme, what if a story has potential for libel, addresses ethnic issues, or has careless mistakes. If an expert commenter points this out, it might encourage someone considering a lawsuit, and strengthen the lawsuit itself: "look, even journalism experts who are kloop's friends think the story has problems."

You may think you won't publish anything that could get you sued, but a) don't be so sure and b) you have limited control over kloop.tj and kloop.kz. And I would not want to be called as a witness based on my comments on an article.

J-professors, Nazgul, Nigina, any thoughts?

Yours,

Jeff

Je...@ef-ca.org

JeffE...@gmail.com

Tel. +66-80-67-11100
SkypeIn: +1-202-657-4202
Skype: jeff_erlich

On May 2, 2011, at 12:50 PM, Ринат Тухватшин wrote:

Dear Jeff,

The kloop.kg was unaccessible on Saturday due to problems with one of the servers. We work now to make the whole system more reliable.

We have to disagree with you on the subject of the privacy of the experts comments. The only way to have comments to take significant part in the learning process is to make them public. Please comment only articles by the current students. The list of the current students with links to their works will be available online this week.

Experts should comment only on edited works, but we try to preserve the drafts in the system. We will also probly will modify graduation requirements. 15 articles published included 3 unedited ones.

Regarding comments in the text. Currently it is not possible, but there is quote tag in the comments box.

Of course, experts should comment the works after the publication. There is no other way. Possible negative comments (though I hope for positive ones as well) will be taken more as a consequence of joint mistakes by editor and author, and probably will not discourage students.

As soon as experts start using this system and approve of it, we will introduce it on other versions of the site.

Bektour will tell you more about the content of the Uzbek vesrsion.

Sincerely,

Rinat   

On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Jeff Erlich <jeffe...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Bektour,

I'm afraid I've been unable to open kloop.kg for about 3 days now. (kloop.tj and kloop.kz are accessible), so I cannot log in. Is there something wrong with the server?

From your message, I can't understand if the rating system and comments will be private or public. I think it's essential that they be private.

Some other questions, while I'm waiting to be able to open kloop.kg

1. Will, or should, experts be able to see the first, unedited drafts of articles? Maybe it's OK that we are commenting only on edited work, but I think it's also useful to see the changes in the text. And for evaluation purposes, we need to be able to observe how the quality of first drafts changes over time.
2. Having a comments box at the bottom is OK, but it might be better if we could insert comments into the text, like with MS Word. Is that possible?
3. Can you explain how experts' comments will be integrated into the educational process? I'd also want to see this with an eye toward not discouraging students and editors, which is a risk at any time, but perhaps more so after the work has already been published.
4. What about kloop.info? That'll be much easier for English-speaking experts.

I also haven't seen the first Uzbek article: can you tell us what the subject of that article was.

Thanks,

Jeff

Je...@ef-ca.org

JeffE...@gmail.com

Tel. +66-80-67-11100
SkypeIn: +1-202-657-4202
Skype: jeff_erlich

On Apr 30, 2011, at 12:53 AM, Bektour Iskender wrote:

Dear experts,

We have added features to the online training platform at Kloop, which allows you to rate articles at Kloop. Currently it is only at Kloop.kg and we need your help to test it, so we would then install it on all the other editions of Kloop, including the English one.

We have set up accounts for almost all of you, except for Frederick: it seems like both of the emails we have of Frederick were occupied at Kloop.kg. If any of you have already had accounts on Kloop.kg, please give us your usernames.

The rest of you must have received automatically generated emails with instructions on new accounts. They might have been in Russian, so if you need any assistance with following steps, please let us know.

All of your accounts have been grouped on Kloop.kg, and only members of this group (which is called "Experts" in Kloop's system) can rate articles (which means, only experts can rate them).

You need to log in to do that. Grading bar is located under each article in the form of line of 5 stars. Only you can see it, other users do not see the bar.

We have set up a special page with list of articles rated by average experts' grade. This rating page is visible to everyone.

We want to add some more info about our experts, so that readers of Kloop would know who are the people who are grading the articles. Could you please send your short one-paragraph bios and photographs? We would add them somewhere near the rating, or maybe on a separate page.

The other action that we need from you is writing comments to articles. You need to use a form for comments, which is under every article. If you wish, we can make it such a way that experts' comments will be highlighted apart from comments of other users (by different background color or by a different special badge that would indicate that this is an experts' comment).

Comments are working everywhere, so it would be great if you start evaluating articles. It would be great if you pay equal attention to all of the four editions of Kloop: Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Central Asia (the only one that has English version).

Your comments and grades will be automatically aggregated in each student's profile page.

Besides your comments and grades, profile pages of students will have their articles, their profile pic, bio, and number of pageviews of each of their articles. Basically, this profile will be their portfolio for future employment, so your comments will be very-very valuable.

If this letter was too complicated and you still have questions, please let me know.

Warmest regards,

Bektour