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
A leader should be able to:

Create the program, including a description, start date, end date, or other applicable logistics

Invite organizers

Add or remove organizers

View the group's activity and track progress toward program goals

Talk to the people who have joined a campaign

End the program, so no one else can join and any additional activity by participants is not counted as part of the program activities.

A leader may also like to...

Create a report/archive page that gives a brief overview of the program once it's over.

An organizer should be able to:

Create one or multiple event page(s) on wiki, possibly in multiple languages, with a location, start/end date, or other applicable logistics"Create a description/introduction for each event page"Share training materials / videos with participants

Providing a suggested list of things to do

Invite participants

Invite other organizers

View the group's activity and track progress toward program goals

Add or remove participants

Specify categories to automatically add to articles created

An organizer may also like to...

View individuals' contributions and thank them for it.

Talk to the people who have joined a campaign

A participant should be able to:

Be invited to the program

Join the program they're interested in

Find a list of things to do

Get an introduction to Wikipedia basics (if they're new)

Automatically add categories to articles created

Participants may also like to...

Be guided through setting up a Wikimedia user account

Talk to other people in the campaign

Introduce themselves to the group

Claim an article or set of articles, so others can help them or pick something else to do

View the group's activity and track progress toward goals

Leave the program

Writing contests
A leader should be able to:

Create the program, including a description, start date, end date, or other applicable logistics

Invite organizers

Add or remove organizers

View the group's activity and track progress toward program goals

Talk to the people who have joined a campaign

End the program, so no one else can join and any additional activity by participants is not counted as part of the program activities.

A leader may also like to...

Create a report/archive page that gives a brief overview of the program and the winners once it's over.

An organizer should be able to:

Create one or multiple event page(s) on wiki, possibly in multiple languages, with a location, start/end date, or other applicable logistics"Create a description/introduction for each event page"Share training materials / videos with participants

Providing a suggested list of things to do

Invite participants

Invite other organizers

View the group's activity and track progress toward program goals

Add or remove participants

Specify categories to automatically add to articles created

An organizer may also like to...

View individuals' contributions and thank them for it.

Talk to the people who have joined a campaign

A participant should be able to:

Be invited to the program

Join the program they're interested in

Find a list of things to do

Get an introduction to Wikipedia basics (if they're new)

Automatically add categories to articles created

Participants may also like to...

Be guided through setting up a Wikimedia user account

Talk to other people in the campaign

Introduce themselves to the group

Claim an article or set of articles, so others can help them or pick something else to do

View the group's activity and track progress toward goals

Leave the program

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

"Privacy standards will need to be in compliance with WMF policies and local laws. WMF is unlikely to have sufficient legal knowledge of jurisdictions around the world to customize these tools appropriately for so many localities, so leadership from affiliates, volunteers, and GLAMs will be necessary.

A common complaint that I hear is the amount of time that volunteers and affiliates are expected spend documenting their activities for WMF. This dashboard may be helpful if it moves a significant percentage of the administrative overhead burden from affiliates and volunteers to WMF staff and tools." Pine on Program_Capacity_and_Learning#Tool:_Program_and_Events_Dashboard

Meeting notes

 * January 13, 2016. Coordination meeting