Learning patterns/Create a community policy for education programs

A learning pattern forEducation

Learning Pattern Library

Create a community policy for education programs

problemThe community is having frequent problems with students or new editors.

solutionWork with the community to create a policy for how to work with students and new editors

creator• KHarold (WMF)

created on3 February, 2015

status:DRAFT

What problem does this solve?

Sometimes as education programs or new editor campaigns grow and bring in more participants, there can be frequent disputes between new and experienced editors. Although there may be a variety of reasons why these disputes occur, a lack of understanding between the two groups is often the cause.

What is the solution?

One way to ease tension between the community and new editors in education programs is to work with the community to create a policy for how to respond to errors in student work.

General considerations

• Before creating a policy for working with students, be sure to follow these best practices for helping students work with the community:
  • Use course pages and templates
  • Make it easy to identify student work
  • Teach students about community rules and norms.

When to use

Policies created by communities in response to education programs:

• Wikimedia Serbia has a policy for education programs that was started by the community in response to problems with student work. It outlines rules, responsibilities and recommendations for how educators, students and the community should work together.

• The WikiMed community on English Wikipedia created a video welcoming new medical editors. The text of the video has a friendly tone and reviews basic editing rules, community norms and points out where to get help. WikiMed has created a template that posts the video on the talk page of users who have had an edit reverted.

See also

Education Toolkit Learning Pattern This learning pattern is part of the Education Program Toolkit. Go to the toolkit.

Related patterns

• Working constructively with the community contains several learning patterns for preventing and resolving disputes with the community.