User:Sputniza/OPW Final Report

This page is still in progress and about to become the final report for the Wikipedia Education program project as a part of Outreach Program for Women for User:Sputniza.

strategy - user needs
As described in greater detail in this request (http://wikiedu.org/blog/2014/07/02/request-for-proposals-wikiedu-org-1-0/) the overall goal is to provide a set of digital services for a successful cooperation of the worlds of Wikipedia and academia.

»The basic concept is that professors assign students to improve Wikipedia articles instead of writing traditional term papers. The students get a unique opportunity to do work that has an audience and makes a difference, the professors can improve public understanding of their specialties, and Wikipedia becomes better and more comprehensive.« (same source)

This platform should make the approach for everybody - no matter if or if not familiar with Wikipedia and other wikis - as convenient as possible by improving workflow and providing information, structure and conjunction with the community.

scope - functional specifications
To outline the set of specifications projected, we can distinguish three main user groups. Two of them participants of the classroom program and a third one affiliated with the program or Wikipedia, like Wikipedia community members, WikiEd staff, potentially interested people, or other.

1. Students

2. Instructors

3. Affiliated persons

In the scope of my few interviews I was only able to speak to instructors and not to students. But the meaning of the platform for students was always a matter of subject in the interview and I’m trying to sum up the most important functional specifications for every user group. For students I will describe, what the instructors would want it to be for their students. Some further testing or interviews to ensure, that this also meets the needs and wishes of the students themselves would be desirable.

1. Students

Central place - All of my interview partners stressed the meaningfulness of the platform as a »central place« on Wikipedia, where they could send their students to gather all the information they need, all the links and resources, the training and the possibility to enroll in the course at one place Training - To familiarise all students as quickly as possible with Wikipedia’s core principles as well as the basic mechanisms of contributing to Wikipedia and communicating with others, the training should be easily accessible from the main page and a badge or announcement of completion should be visibly granted.

Assignment - A quick and easy enrollment procedure should be provided. Maybe it could be useful to create some requirements - create an Wikipedia user account, complete the training - before being able to enroll. Course affiliation should be visible.

Own activity - Monitoring your own activity, having a central place, where all the (maybe very different) pieces of one students work are clearly presented and progress over time is visible.

Overview course activity - Display of students achievements in the scope of the course. It is desirable to evaluate overall results (of the whole course) and to provide comparability between different students in one course, as well between different courses in the education program. Communication space - The communication functionality is maybe the most ambiguous task in the interface. I see, and this was confirmed by what my interviewees told me, a challenge to avoid a »too-many-tools« issue. There is no shortage of options to communicate in course situation (in classroom, mail, chat, LMS, …) so options can be overwhelming and to add one just for adding one more is nonsatisfying. The potential could be in providing, what Wikipedia or other wiki systems can best - like history documentation, in-line commenting, referencing, … - and combine this with some messaging functionality. Could there be options to send in-line questions to my instructor? To comment on a co-students work and make only her/ him see it - or is this to offroad from Wikipedias philosophy of transparent work and communications? One instructor stressed the meaningfulness of private comments on work if done by authorities (as instructors tend to be seen as), because students tend to interpret them as »shaming« if done in public. The questions whether or not to provide a special shelter for students in the education program parallel to the community seems a hard question to answer.

2. Instructors

Dashboard - A tracker of all course activity is certainly the main point for instructors. Keeping ways short, enabling instructors to comment on edits, without leaving the page would be desirable. Or as one interviewee put it: »It gets tedious to go from page to page for different groups.« The dashboard hast to be considered an clear and efficient tool, what helps you focus on the content and teaching work to be done.

Support - The platform offers support not only for students, but also for instructors. It provides useful tools, as identifying articles to work on, links to valuable resources, help pages, meta-data, trainings and other wikis and not last provides direct contact with the WikiEducation staff if needed.

Communication - As the central virtual place of the course, the platform perfectly serves as a notice board to publish all the current information from the instructor to all participants of the course. The question of providing public or private or both commenting I already mentioned above.(Communicaton space)

Support mechanism for grading - As described above (for communication space) this might also be bit of a conflicting matter, concerning the LMS (learning management system) mostly established by the respective university. So a useful tool had to be complementing the existing system (whatever it is) but will not replace it. This is for reasons of consistency (an LMS is used at any courses), but also (as mentioned in an interview) of self-protective reasons (as »playing by the rules«) of the professor.

3. Affiliated persons

Program wide dashboard - Not being in the center of focus, the platform could still be a landing point for a lot of people interested in Wikipedia (or topics of it) in general or the cooperation of Wikipedia and academia in particular. Allowing overall evaluation and information in the scope of the whole program offers more possibilities for WikiEd staff and community to evaluate the courses and to not forget lessons »already learned«.

Achievement system/ archive - In academia keeping records of assignments, projects and results is key part of the system of acknowledgment. So the durable visibility of sucessfull courses and participants in an overall scope and longer time periods would be an assett, especially to the public.

structure - interaction design
Customizability/ flexibility

In my interviews I could identify a strong wish for customization. This is obvious as the prior functionality of the platform is to serve as a tool and most of the people have very specific ideas and needs about the tools they want to work with. Spoken for a class project, the instructor already has a subject, has a concept and a structure and she/ he doesn’t »like changing [my] (her/his) course to make it fit the system« [J.A.]. That’s why the system has to be »changeable« to fit the course. To fit a lot of different courses and needs. A dashboard can meet this expectations. It is merged out of different pieces of information and activity and these pieces can easily be imagined as pieces or widgets which could be turned on or off, ordered or supplemented according to personal needs.

Single page feeling Flat hierarchy

Integration with existing learning management systems (LMS)

The scenario of an already existing LMS seems to be so likely that is has to be considered carefully. Most of professors in universities nowadays - though not all of them - are expected, recommended or obliged to use an existent LMS in their teaching. Mostly this software is set by the institution and not a matter of choice for the instructor. Based on this fact, very different scenarios can be thought, with as different implications for a successful integration of the dashboard. Academic teachers mostly want to limit their effort of administration as much as possible and save their time to focus on their chosen area of study. The slightest suspicion, that using another tool would increase their time investment on administrative tasks, might effectively keep them from using or even trying it. (Tasks like having to transfer grades or lists from one system to another.) Considering all this the focus on the functionality unique to the course page system is very important as is the caution not to create redundancy with the existing tools. The challenge seems to have a fully functioning standalone teaching instrument, what can abandon parts of it if not demanded by the instructor. There exists a wide variety of LMS on the market, open source and proprietary ones, so the need to have the extension play well with other systems, could be a big challenge. But from the users perspective this will be one of the crucial points concerning most of the functionality, like providing materials, keeping track, grading, communication etc.