The Value of a Wikimedian in Residence - Melissa Highton and Ewan McAndrew (University of Edinburgh)
From Ewan McAndrew
Related Media
- Melissa Highton - Melissa Highton - Assistant Principal Online Learning, the University of Edinburgh.
- Ewan McAndrew - User:Stinglehammer - Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh.
Abstract:
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.
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.
Themes of the conference included the advancement of Free Knowledge,
the role of academic and cultural institutions within the movement,
privacy and rights, and the role of technology to further those
objectives.
The event was held in and around the Centre Sheraton Montréal, in Montréal, Canada from August 9 to August 13, 2017.
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