Submissions/Wikimedia UK's Virtual Learning Environment

From Wikimania 2014 • London, United Kingdom

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2014 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this August.

Submission no. 3058
Title of the submission
Wikimedia UK's Virtual Learning Environment
Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)
Presentation / discussion
Author of the submission
Stevie Benton User:Stevie Benton (WMUK)
E-mail address
stevie.benton@wikimedia.org.uk
Username
User:Stevie Benton (WMUK)
Country of origin
UK
Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)
Wikimedia UK
Personal homepage or blog
www.wikimedia.org.uk (although not personal, of course)
Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

Wikimedia UK has, for some time, delivered a programme called Train the Trainers. This focuses on giving people the skills and understanding required to effectively train people to use and contribute to the Wikimedia projects. To support the trainers the charity has been developing a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to act as a tool to not only support the trainers but to offer to people interested in learning about Wikipedia (to begin with). Use of the VLE can be either independent of any training programme, or complementary. The VLE has been in development for a long time. Built in Moodle, a piece of open source course management software, it has been carefully created to provide a space for people to gain an understanding of how Wikipedia works before taking the plunge and becoming an editor. We believe that by offering the chance to build skills and comprehension to potential new editors, they become less likely to fall afoul of community norms and expectations and hence more likely to become contributors. In this presentation, Stevie Benton and Charles Matthews (TBC) will give a walkthrough of the VLE and some details of the way it is designed. For example, there are many tens of course modules, each module covering a specific aspect of Wikipedia. These are further broken down into three levels – A, B and C – with each level pitched at a different level of difficulty. The modules also include quiz questions that help students to monitor their own progress and clarify specific elements of the course. Work is also ongoing to develop a MediaWiki > Moodle / Moodle > MediaWiki transclusion function so that all content is community editable. Once the VLE is ready it will be released under a CC-BY-SA licence. Presentation attendees will have the chance to see the VLE in action, share their views of the tool and hopefully be able to offer input on how content may be localised, both in terms of language and other Wikimedia projects and different language Wikipedias.

Track

Education Outreach


Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)
30 minutes
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Yes
Slides or further information (optional)

Further revisions and refinements to the VLE will be made before the conference so presentation materials will be created closer to the conference

Special requests
None


Interested attendees

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  1. MartinPoulter (talk) 16:44, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Add your username here.