Talk:2019/Grants/CiteLearn - an academic tool for learning to cite sources

Hi Simon, thanks much for the application! A few questions to clarify or understand things a little more:

• Do you have a plan for sustainability? New software projects are always exciting, but hard to keep up. You'll be looking to Citation Hunt, which seems to have some good continued activity in GitHub, but Citation Detective is still quite new. But those aside, can you offer thoughts as to how long beyond your initial project you think there's likelihood for others (and any specific others) to join in and contribute?
• Related to this, what license do you plan to release the code under?
• Will you make also make a compiled prototype/version available to the general in advance your testing? (So just after your 3 month development period)

• Could you clarify the difference between Phase 1 and Phase 2? Or rather, we're a little unclear what Phase 2 is.
• Effectiveness -- we appreciate the pre-/post-testing which would not be covered under this project. In terms of thinking how research projects can mitigate risks: at best, your tool will help improve things for users. At worst, it could confuse them. Do you plan to update the metawiki page (we'll assume you create) in the future with these results; does it make sense to put such a disclaimer now? (Clearly, assumption is that you are offering the tool in some way publicly in advance of your future testing).

--Connieatwork (talk) 12:31, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Connie. I'll reply to each point as above.

• Sustainability wise, the project addresses a gap in onboarding and more generally teaching students. It should be low maintenance, and attract interest. Part of the project should be identifying key people who might be interested in contributing to the project, particularly beyond the initial period.
• GPL or other open license
• Ideally, yes
• Apologies, that's an error, in an earlier version we enumerated 3 phases with phase 1 comprising sourcing articles and design of the first part of the task (putting citations into an existing article), and then phase 2 the fuller development, with phase 3 the testing. I'm happy to edit the page to amend that (and to clarify further here) as is useful.
• While I recognise the small risk, I think more likely risks (as under challenges here) are that the tool has little impact either because it isn't used or because it doesn't support learning. Evaluation is a key part of that, and we can support evaluation both - as you note - by sharing results when available, which we're happy to do and would be happy to update the project page at a date outside the funded period, and by sharing our evaluation approach such that it can be adopted by others.

Thanks for the questions and very happy to provide further clarification or elaboration. Sjgknight (talk) 22:56, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers, Simon -- yes, can you amend the phases in the official version under the "How will you spend.." and "How Long..." sections for us? --Connieatwork (talk) 11:12, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi Simon - thanks for this idea and proposal. Regarding use: are you planning for this to be a publicly-accessible tool during the grant, or will it be private to the test + eval groups until the eval is done? Sj (talk) 16:29, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Sj, I think that will partly depend on technical issues around hosting in different stages, I would like it to be publicly accessible as early as possible both in code and useable tool, that would also allow easier sharing with other possible users. Sjgknight (talk) 23:55, 20 August 2020 (UTC)