Portal talk:Tertiary Education/We need an action plan

Discussion relevant to Education extension

 * See Education extension and its talk page to develop part 1 of this plan.


 * Questions that need to be answered before I (we) start the guidlines

As stated in the main page, we need instructions for an instructor interested in using Wikiversity as a platform for written assignments. As I wait to see how many people want to contribute, let me jot down some ideas and questions:
 * 1) ✅ (see below) My understanding is that Wikimedia wants students to become registered and not have 30 socks associated with each course.  The latter would reduce excess files in userspace because names could be recycled, and saves us the bother of teaching students how to register (and also persuading reluctant students to do so).  I am not against Wikimedia policy (above my paygrade-as they say).  But I would like to verify that this is indeed Wikimedia policy.  For me personally, a collection of sock accounts would simplify that first day. -- I think I have answered this question -- see below --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 16:03, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * 2) I need to know the maximum number of students that can enroll in one day from a given campus.  The plan will be to put them in groups as soon as I can get 25% of the class enrolled.
 * 3) Where should students do their writing?  The need to do it in subpages to a main page.  One of the 6 courses I routinely teach is General Physics I, or Phy2400. Here are the options:
 * 4) Wright State Lake Campus/phy2400 with essays under Wright State Lake Campus/phy2400/username.
 * 5) User:Guy vandegrift/phy2400 withe essays under User:Guy vandegrift/phy2400/username
 * 6) User:username/phy2400 also works for me, since the users can add their names to the main phy2400 course. But where do I put phy2400?
 * 7) Once I have these questions answered, I can begin to write the guidelines.  Then the question is where do I put these guidlines?

I think this is all the questions I need to get started. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:25, 17 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Why classroom socks is a bad idea
 * Here is what I have found on Wikipedia:


 * w:Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry Classroom accounts is not mentioned.
 * w:Category:Wikipedians with alternative accounts Strong evidence that classroom accounts is not allowed is that the list of multiple users does not contain a list of 30 or so usernames one might associate with such a collection of socks. I was looking for names like user:Phy2400.01, user:Phy2400.02, and so forth.


 * Conclusion
 * The more I think about it, the more I realize that classroom sock accounts would be nothing but trouble for Wikimedia. In contrast to the legitimate use of sock accounts, an instructor might need 100 or more multiple accounts.  Students would change passwords and use them personally.  Now that usernames are shared across the wikisisters, we can't have an exception for Wikiversity.  Instead of having these socks it would be literally simpler to register every human being on this planet.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 16:01, 17 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Comments

1/2) Classroom socks are not necessary. Custodians and the new Curators have the CreateAccount right.  Legitimate accounts may be created for each student on the first day using the instructor's account.

3) I'm inclined to put the content under the subject. For PHY 2400, this would be Physics, Physics/Student Projects, Physics/Wright State/2015/Fall, or similar.  First, we have our own (proposed) policy on not including course numbers in titles.  Second, for the content to be useful to others, it needs to be somewhere it can be found.  My original approach was to put content under the institution, such as the content under University of Florida.  But that doesn't help other instructors see how Wikiversity can be used for student work.  Data Networking is a better example for others.  User space also works, but makes Wikiversity more of an independent learning tool than a collaborative collection of works.

4) Put it under a Wikiversity: title that makes sense to you. We can always move it.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:30, 17 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Preliminary ideas as we seek a name to continue with the project.

The first step is to write a page with a name like Managing writing assignments in a large course

In seeking an appropriate name, I did a Google assisted Wikiversity search and found lots of pages that need to be linked to this resource. The document should link to many of the following pages, and for that reason, we should pick a namespace before writing the page--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 12:44, 18 November 2015 (UTC)


 * 1) School and university projects
 * 2) Wikimedia:File:Wikipedia Education Program Case Studies.pdf
 * Category:Courses
 * 1) Teaching A strong candidate for this page
 * Category:Teaching
 * 1) Help:101 things to do with your class on Wikiversity must link from here. This is the closest thing I ever found to what I want
 * 2) Creating a lesson plan

Regarding namespace, Wikiversity: and Help: are the only choices I see. I don't know that it matters which one we use, because a redirect can be set up from the other one. Alternatively, maybe enhancing either of the existing Teaching or Help:101 things to do with your class on Wikiversity is a better approach than creating an additional resource. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:46, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Feedback on Education Extension
Just dropping a note here to say that the whole issue about having the Education Extension was just a complete waste of time. After responding positively to the suggestion, I got involved in a whole heap of discussion on phabricator, which ended up with "This should not be deployed to more wikis until all the security issues that this extension have are resolved; which IMHO is unlikely to happen. We can restore this change later if such miracle happen." see here, which I found particularly disappointing - like someone offers something which is really not going to happen. Which is a shame because the Education extension would deal precisely with Managing student contributions! Leutha (discuss • contribs) 23:17, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Is the extension active on Wikipedia? If so, it might be possible to use sister-links to interface with Wikipedia. Also, I have no idea what these "security issues" were.  Do you?--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:58, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the extension is available on Wikipedia, and indeed is regularly used to manage student contributions there. It is well worth having a look at Help:Education Program extension. As for the security reasons, I have no idea what they are! Leutha (discuss • contribs) 13:46, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
 * We can turn their refusal to allow Wikiversity to our advantage. I am convinced the best way to manage student writing assignments is through permalinks, which I hope  to use via Wikipedia's Education extension.  Once on that platform, I can "infect" Wikipedia education extension users with the idea of having students write on Wikiversity.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:31, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I just struck that last comment after spending a day learning about this extension. We need it on Wikiversity.  I seriously doubt that operating out of Wikipedia will be of much use.  The platform allows almost seamless sister-links out of Wikipedia into Wikiversity, but unfortunately it seems highly likely that the ability to closely monitor student edits on each others work can be sister-linked in that way. And since Wikivesity and Wikipedia have different templates, we cannot conviently move resources in and out of Wikipedia.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 20:24, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

First effort!
After studying this extension, I think we can use it from Wikiversity. It's a bit awkward, but by forcing Wikiversity to use the Wikipedia extension, we might be able to recruit instructors to join us at Wikipedia. Our acceptance of student work and use of subpages makes Wikiversity a far more convenient platform than Wikipedia.

See w:Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Wright State University/Introduction to Astronomy (Spring 2016)

See also if you can open this sample. (If you can't open it, you need to register with Wiki Ed, which allows you to view everything)