User:KatieIreneC

Katie is new at this. She's a CompSci and MCBio student about to graduate from the University of Arizona.

She's applying for the GNOME OPW with Wikimedia. This description is under construction.

The Tech Person's Education Primer
Or What Everyone in Tech Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Education Before "Fixing" It (No Exceptions)

or What Everyone in Tech Should Know About Education Before they Educate

...I am really not sure about what the title should be.

Name and contact information

 * Name: Katie Cunningham
 * Email: katieirenec at gmail
 * IRC or IM networks/handle(s): katieirenec
 * Location: Tucson, AZ / Lansing, MI
 * Typical working hours: 10am-6pm MST / EDT (Here's a handy map of current times across the US!)

Synopsis
Short summary describing your project: what it means to accomplish, and how it will benefit MediaWiki or Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia.

Technology and education are interconnecting more and more. Education technology (ed-tech) is an enthusiastically discussed industry, and the movement for formal computer science education is gaining momentum at all levels. Groups like Py*, Black Girls Code, and OpenHatch have been created to attract and teach "free-range" beginners programming and open source skills. Organizations like Wikimedia promote learning among those that use and contribute to their products, but also have a need to teach, guide and mentor new members in their communities.

However, few in the technology sphere are familiar with research about the science of teaching and learning. Researchers know a lot about how people learn, as well as how new technology has affected or not affected learning in the past. A short primer on best practices in teaching and mentoring should be created so technological people can quickly absorb this information and then make the most impact with the people they aim to integrate to their community. A better understanding of this area can help individuals and organizations in tech reach more diverse types of contributors, minimize attrition of volunteers, and maximize the ability of those newcomers to make future contributions to the community.

In the context of Wikimedia, engaging and recruiting new editors is currently one of the main goals of the Wikimedia Foundation. This "contributor engagement" goal primarily targets Wikipedia and its sister projects, but is also a concern in Wikimedia's tech community; formal mentorship programs are effective but don't scale to the size of whole communities. A comprehensive, well-organized and easy-to-read document offering best practices on how to mentor and on-board new participants in a tech environment would undeniably support those efforts, and allow for more peer-to-peer mentoring, experience sharing and co-learning.

Deliverables
''Include a brief, clear work breakdown structure with milestones and deadlines. Make sure to label deliverables as optional or required. It’s OK to include thinking time (“investigation”) in your work schedule. Deliverables should include investigation, coding, deploying, testing and documentation.''

The products:
The final goal is a 20,000-word freely licensed English document that can be read in 2-3 hours. It will summarize known research about best teaching practices and the way people learn. It will be a resource that Wikimedians find easy to read and use in contexts like how-to-edit trainings. Its targeted audience is people with programming skill who have never done any reading or research in the field of education, but who want to help teach others to do technical tasks or create educational technology.

Intermediate goals will include weekly blog posts, progress on a bibliography, and coverage of the topics listed below. Although final topics for the paper will not be decided until after prewriting, the following general facts and related topics will guide the process.

So, the first might be cognitive psych (mental models, notional machines, working memory, etc) and the second might be teaching paradigms that target schema/model formation (constructivism, connectivism, active learning, project based learning).

Learning isn't just amassing facts (What people learn)
The connections between them, and the mental map of the terrain as a whole, are at least as important as cold hard facts. Learners also have to manage the cognitive load of the new things they are learning, a process that can become discouraging if it is overwhelming.

Related subjects:
 * Mental Models
 * Notational Machines
 * Working memory''

Learning should address these models (How people learn)
There are ways that teachers can facilitate the building of the important mental models and make sure that students aren't overly taxed while learning. Furthermore, the typical self-directed learning process applauded in the programming world may not be widely applicable. Most people can't "just pick it up on their own": autodidacts are at most 10-15% of the population. In addition, people often find it hard to learn or make decisions when there's no emotion involved.

Related subjects:
 * Constructivism
 * Connectivism
 * Project-based and active learning''

The playing field isn't level (There are other things going on)
Stereotype threat and other facts put people at a disadvantage even when there isn't overt discrimination. There are subtle effects at work that can add up to big effect on choices and performance.

Related subjects:
 * Environmental effects
 * Imposter Syndrome''

About you
''We don't just care about your project -- you are a person, and that matters to us! What drives you? What makes you want to make this the most awesomest wiki enhancement ever? You don't need to write out your life story (we can read your blog if we want that), but we want to know a little about what makes you tick. Are you a Wikipedia addict wanting to make your own experience better? Did a wiki with usability problems run over your dog, and you're seeking revenge? :-) What does making this project happen mean to you?''

I've become passionate about computing education because I love computer science and because I see so much potential for computer science to advance other fields. I'm about to graduate from the University of Arizona with a B.S. in Computer Science and Molecular and Cellular Biology, so I've spent a lot of time with both computer scientists and biologists. I see how helpful a knowledge of computer science would be to so many scientists, saving them time processing data and allowing for new approaches to discovery through new algorithms. But currently, only a narrow segment of the population takes courses in computer science---even though basic programming skills can be as important as basic mathematical skills for many projects. The lack of exposure to real computer science and the fact that few seems to know about the importance of computer science until late in their education has become clear to me, both from the number of panicked phone calls I get from friends who can't figure out basic programming tasks in their labs and the number of attendees to workshops like Software Carpentry bootcamps or the introductory Python workshops I started at my university last year.

Improving the state of computer science education has the power to change this. It can help us not only get the additional software engineers and open source contributors we need, but also improve work in fields from linguistics to biochemistry. And for me, computer science education and outreach is just fun. Breaking down computer science concepts into small, easily understood pieces and disassembling misconceptions about the field so others can share my joy in computer science is awesome. It's what I fill my free time with, it's what I write about on my blog, and it's what I want to pursue in my career.
 * Blog: There once was a student from Tucson
 * Twitter: @katieirenec

Greg Wilson

 * Organization: Software Carpentry
 * Role: Primary mentor, editor, research advisor

Guillaume Paumier

 * Organization: Wikimedia
 * Role: Secondary mentor, advice on user experience, formatting, integration with Wikimedia

Researchers at MSU
MSU consistently earns high rankings for its School of Education. There are many fantastic people at MSU who can guide me in completing this project. They include:


 * Mark Urban-Lurain: a curriculum designer for engineering, a constructivist, and teacher of a "Foundations of Engineering Education" grad course.


 * Julie Libarkin: an assessment specialist who has worked with Software Carpentry in the past.


 * Cait Pickens: a graduate student in Computer Science education and summer intern of Software Carpentry who shares my interests.

Participation
''We don't just want to know what you plan to accomplish; we want to know how. Briefly describe your work style: how you plan to communicate progress, where you plan to publish your source code while you're working, how and where you plan to ask for help. (We will tend to favor applicants that demonstrate a clear vision for what it means to be an active participant in our development community.)''

The project will (most likely) be hosted as a book in the English Wikibooks collection. This will allow for easy collaboration while keeping the project open at all times.

I think the topic of education is very important to the tech community, so I plan to tweet and blog about what I'm reading and writing. I think this will help spark conversation around the topic. I plan to publish weekly blog posts (which will likely become part of the final product) on the Wikimedia blog or elsewhere. This will maximize the visibility of the project and allow more people to see a shorter, more easily digestible version of the content.

Communication with my mentors will take place mainly through email and wiki talk pages (their preferred method of communication). Occasional video chatting and IRC-ing may occur.

If I am accepted to the program, I plan to relocate to Lansing, MI for the summer in order to be able to interact with a graduate student in Computer Science Education who is doing a summer internship with Software Carpentry. As well as my mentor Greg Wilson, this student will be a primary resource for helping me absorb the relevant educational research.

Past open source experience
''Do you have any past experience working in open source projects (MediaWiki or otherwise)? If so, tell us about it! If you have already written a feature or bugfix in a Wikimedia technology such as MediaWiki, link to it here; we will give strong preference to candidates who have done so.''

My initial contribution for the OPW was helping "define and polish" the first draft of mediawiki.org's new Greeter page, as well as contributing to the Project:New_contributors/Starter_kit. Through this process I created a MediaWiki account, learned the basics of wiki markdown, and got a feel for the organization of Wikimedia's edit-based world. Be bold!

I was part of the Gutengroup, a lab that is committed to making their code open source. As an example, check out dadi, the Gutengroup code I am most familiar with.

Any other info
''Please add any other relevant information -- UI mockups, references to related projects, a link to your proof of concept code, whatever. There are no specific requirements, but we love to see people who love what they're doing. Show us you're excited about this project and have an interest in the background and are considering how best to make your idea work.''

Related projects by others
I plan to draw inspiration from these small or unfinished projects by others that are in similar spirit to this project:


 * Cait Pickens' quals paper
 * The EdTech Primer Wiki
 * Software Carpentry Teaching and Learning Guide

More about my educational experience
I have a resume focusing on my teaching experience here.

Check out pictures of the beginning programing workshops for non-Computer Science majors that I organized on the UofA WICS flickr page.

I helped out at a Software Carpentry bootcamp for biologists held at University of Arizona, described here.