Submissions/The Value of a Wikimedian

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2017.

Etherpad link for the session - please take notes here.

Submission no. 6021 Subject - E2 EO

Title of the submission: The Value of a Wikimedian in Residence.

Type of submission (lecture, panel, tutorial/workshop, roundtable discussion, lightning talk, poster, birds of a feather discussion): Lecture (25 minutes)

Author of the submission

Melissa Highton - Melissa Highton - Assistant Principal Online Learning, the University of Edinburgh.
Ewan McAndrew - User:Stinglehammer - Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh.

Language of presentation

English.

E-mail address

ewan.mcandrewed.ac.uk

Username

Country of origin

Scotland, UK.

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

The University of Edinburgh
Wikimedia UK

Personal homepage or blog

Abstract (up to 300 words to describe your proposal)

Hosting a Wikimedian in Residence (WiR) in a higher education institution has real potential to target empowerment in learning technology. If you put your Wikimedian alongside your digital skill trainers and learning technologists their impact can be significant. Senior managers in higher education institutions will be well aware of the numerous reports which urge universities to pay attention to digital skills as a key component of graduate employability. To stay competitive globally, "the UK must ensure it has the necessary pool of (highly) digitally skilled graduates to support and drive research and innovation throughout the economy".
Technology can make it easier to develop authentic learning experiences that are relevant to the labour market and help students demonstrate their skills to employers. With Higher Education students and staff Wikipedia leads to empowering discussions about privilege, transparency, geographies of knowledge, gender bias, publication bias and if there is ever a 'neutral' point of view. Our Wikimedia projects in higher education bring students as co-creators, authors, actors, partners and agents for change to the fore.
Editing as an individual is a different activity than editing as a group or class. Classroom activities – learning and teaching activities- need to be carefully designed and structured and although this can be done successfully it takes a bit of work and that is where our WiR partnership helps us. We are creating and sharing re-usable lesson plans and models for classroom activities. This session will showcase real outputs and impact from a WiR project in a large UK HEI and make clear recommendations of how this can be of use to the sector.
Some people say they can't afford to host a Wikimedian, in this session we will argue that you can't afford not to.

What will attendees take away from this session?

While there have been previous Wikimedia residencies based in UK cultural institutions focussing on opening up collections, hosting a Wikimedian at a higher education institution to embed the creation of OER in the curriculum does therefore represent something of a shift in the paradigm. This presentation discusses one such residency, the first of its kind in the UK, and the lessons learnt from the first 18 months.
This session will provide attendees with a chance to hear about the lessons learnt and how we work with colleagues across many teams to facilitate student-created OER. The curriculum areas for which we have developed learning activities include Reproductive Biology, World Christianity, English Literature, History of Medicine, Translation Studies, Veterinary Medicine, Scottish Studies and the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP). So far we have run dozens of events; the vast majority of which have been to correct the under-representation of women in the online world thereby shifting away from Wikipedia being the “sum of all male knowledge” and creating new role models for young and old alike.
This residency provides a live case study of how a university with approximately 36,000 students and 13,000 staff has engaged with Wikimedia UK as part of the business of teaching, learning and research. Participants in this session will learn how the residency has championed open educational resources (OER), open practice and open knowledge skills alongside emerging models of information & digital literacy. We will include examples of successful, reusable lesson plans for academic and student engagement in Wikipedia projects and reflect on how academic researchers have engaged with the constantly evolving open knowledge tools. We hope this session will provide insight and advice for anyone who might be interested in hosting a Wikimedian in Residence in their own institution in the future.

Theme of presentation: Education

For workshops and discussions, what level is the intended audience?

Length of session (if other than 25 minutes, specify how long): 25 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Possibly but much more likely if the submission is accepted.

Slides or further information (optional): We will be using slides in this session.

Link to slides.

Special requests

Is this Submission a Draft or Final?

Interested attendees

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