Wikipedia Education Program/Dashboard

Existing Solution: Education Extension
The Education Program Extension facilitates educational programs by adding features for teachers and students that are improving Wikimedia projects as part of the Wikipedia Education Program. Features include various interfaces to manage courses, institutions, students, mentors, etc., as well as improving workflow for everyone involved with supporting the work of students on the Wikimedia projects through: managing enrollment, aggregating changes made by students, associating article contributors and reviewers, and providing several analysis/statistics interfaces. The Education Program Extension has had a demonstrable and measurable impact on the Wikimedia projects and the free knowledge movement. This page documents those impacts.

Proposed Solution: Dashboard
The Program and Events Dashboard will be an internationalized version of the Wiki Education Foundation's Dashboard, broadened to be used for editathons, workshops, education programs, and writing contests.

Time savings
The ultimate aim of this tool is to make the most of volunteer or staff time, which is one of our most precious resources. Here are rough time estimates of manual time spent on tasks, and how this tool may reduce them.

Project set up
Setting up a course/workshop/editathon takes X hours (rough estimate)?

Project monitoring
Monitoring participant contributions takes X hours (per week, per session, per participant; rough estimate)?

Project reporting
Reporting on cohort's impact takes X hours (rough estimate)?

Use cases and user stories
The Program and Events Dashboard will be developed with specific use cases in mind. These specific use cases likely have overlap in their specific user stories, and these will help us plan accordingly. Some user stories may already be "complete," but perhaps not in an internationalized version. Please feel free to edit and add to the lists as you see fit!

The general guiding principle is to have a tool available for all languages and on any project/wiki (and multi-project, as described a bit below), and to design for a broader use case than just education courses.

Education activities
People participating in and supporting Wikipedia assignments are able to organize their courses, monitor contributions, and report their achievements.

User stories
Teachers can create course pages with minimum required elements (start and end dates, country, institution) and add optional details (course guidelines, evaluation rubrics, training modules).

Course pages create on-wiki versions in a specified namespace/location on a specified wiki through OAuth.

Students can register for specific courses.

Students' contributions on any Wikimedia project are captured by their course page.

Course pages cohorts can edit in multiple languages or on multiple projects (eg. student contributions can be on multiple wikis and consolidated in a single course page).

Media files and uploads are included in contribution data (Commons or local wikis).

A user opens up the dashboard and finds relevant courses (by language, country, affiliation?). Instances of the dashboard and localization of the interface?

Students can redlink articles they intend to work on if they do not exist yet, and redlinks will be resolved when those articles are created.

Editathons
An editathon organizer wants to organize a new editathon. They click on a button on-wiki and are taken to a set-up-your-program page on the dashboard. They select "create an editathon" and it guides them through the steps, including asking the time, location, topic, and what materials they want to include on the event page. The dashboard creates the event as a dashboard program and as an on-wiki event page.

A person wants to sign up for a workshop. They click a link on-wiki, are taken to the program landing page on the dashboard, which includes a "Sign Up Here!" button. They click on it and are enrolled in the workshop.

Writing contests
A writing contest organizer wants to review the articles created and improved as part of the contest. They open their program dashboard and can see a list of articles created, including the authors' usernames, and a list of articles improved, including a list of editors' usernames. They can click on the name of an article to be taken to the article or on a username to be taken to the user's page on the dashboard.

Notes and links to previous planning

 * Use case diagram example
 * User stories example
 * Notes from an initial interview for need-finding research by Anke Nowottne, an OPW intern jointly mentored by the WMF and the WEF.

Feedback on proposal from potential users
"Personally, I very much like the idea of having an education extension incorporated onwiki, accessible as a namespace. In fact, I was perfectly happy with the extension as it was besides a few bugs ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T59608 ). It is very probable that - even if the dashboard was adapted - Czech education program would keep on using the extension." Vojtech.dostal on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T91676

"The biggest drawback with the tool as it exists is its features. If it were deconstructed to be then I can think of no other single intervention so poised to transform so much about Wikimedia community organization. The same problem existed with the Education Extension - it presumed a lot of user desire for features which actually created problems, when blank space and no buttons would have brought better outcomes.
 * 1) an "enroll" button and list of enrolled users
 * 2) the metrics providing service that it is
 * 3) and a blank text box where people can write anything

I have used both the education extension and the dashboard a lot. I like the education extension's enroll button and the way it allows for freely posting content. The dashboard makes these things harder but the metrics service it provides is awesome. In the case of both products, a major drawback is the education branding. While both are useful for class outreach, the labeling of "class" "instructor" "education" makes it awkward to use the tools for student clubs, library meetups, and especially, cohorts which are similar to classes but completely outside a university context. Even in classes sometimes the education labeling does not apply, or it seems a bit forced.

I would love to see the dashboard stripped of its education labels and made available for English Wikipedia and beyond. Until and unless the dashboard / education extension is well-designed and has community support in one language I would pause to push it out to all projects." Bluerasberry on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T91676

"I agree with Bluerasberry. Except instead of taking out the features make them easy to rename for use in formal and informal training groups. And add features that would work for WiR following training groups or any group of people interacting on Wikipedia from an organization." FloNight on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T91676

Meeting notes

 * January 13, 2016. Coordination meeting