Submissions:2014/Pedagogy and new user socialization

Title of the submission

Pedagogy and new user socialization.

Themes (Proposal Themes - Community, Tech, Outreach, GLAM, Education)

Community, Education, Outreach

Type of submission (Presentation Types - Panel, Workshop, Presentation, etc)

Curated talk

Author of the submission

Ryan McGrady

E-mail address

ryan.mcgrady@gmail.com

Username

Rhododendrites

US state or country of origin

North Carolina

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)

North Carolina State University

Personal homepage or blog

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

For two years I have incorporated Wikipedia into classes I have taught in the Communication department at North Carolina State University, including one self-designed course about Wikipedia. Each semester's challenges and successes both in class and on-wiki have informed the assignment specifics and teaching priorities of those that followed. For this curated talk I will draw from these experiences, associated examples, student feedback, and survey data in order to address two points: one of which is pedagogical while the other has more wide-reaching implications for the Wikipedia project. Depending on the other submissions the conference receives, I am prepared to focus on either or both. Pedagogically, I would like to take the audience through some of the more salient and less obvious best practices gleaned from multiple versions of assignments carried out by more than a hundred students, explaining some of the strategies, lessons, and activities that did and did not work, providing examples of each. The other point I would like to explore concerns new user socialization. Wikimedia's Aaron Halfaker's well-publicized study, popularized by the MIT Technology Review, points to a decline in the pool of active editors since 2007. One possible reason, the study explains, is that the likelihood a new user's first edit will be reverted has increased in that time. That this would have a detrimental effect on participation is in line with other studies highlighting the importance of early interactions in determining future participation. The student-editor making contributions for class is a small but growing contingency with unusual properties: required to participate and to make positive changes for which they are graded, and watched over by an educator who will likely guide the students to content improvements. This pastoral relationship may be useful to help create new editors, but in particular new editors who are socialized such that they continue to want to participate when the class is over. In this talk I will explore the relationship between instructor, student, and editors outside of the class and the implications for socialization, including arguments for and against student-editors being treated differently from other editors when enforcing policies and guidelines. I also hope to open this question to the audience in order to foster a discussion -- and also to learn from experiences others have had.

Length of presentation/talk (see Presentation Types for lengths of different presentation types)

15 Minutes

Will you attend WikiConference USA if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

Slides or further information (optional)

To come

Special request as to time of presentations

Interested attendees

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1. Fhocutt (talk) 02:22, 4 April 2014 (EDT)
2. LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 12:52, 7 April 2014 (EDT)
3. GastelEtzwane (talk) 15:41, 7 April 2014 (EDT)
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