Grants:TPS/Oren Bochman/WikiSym 2013

User name

OrenBochman

User location (country)

Israel

Event name

WikiSym

Event Web site

http://www.wikisym.org

Event date(s)

05-07/08/2013

Event location (city)

Hong Kong

Amount requested (remember to specify currency!)

USD 982

Endorsements

User:Bdamokos - see discussion page

Budget breakdown

• Travel: USD 166
• Accommodation USD 283 => 3 nights USD $1.1\times \Sigma (82,82,94)$.
• Meals and incidental expenses USD 312 => 139 * 75% * 3 days.
• Registration fee of 220 USD.

Proposed participation

I had applied for a scholarship to Wikimania but was informed that my application was declined. Recently I was offered a partial scholarship by WM.IL . Since It was too late for a presentation at wikimania I asked if I could do a demo at wikisym after some deliberation it was accepted.

Who are you and what are you doing?

I'm a mathematician and information specialist by training and I work as a software engineer. In the last year I have taken part in a many of the local chapter's event as the board meeting of WM.IL. It soon became apparent that we are unable to handle as many tutoring sessions as we would like. The Israeli chapter has unusual teaching challenges - editors in multiple languages. I helped out as a mentor in Glam events and in academic settings, Recently I helped outfit an expedition to Africa with copies of off-line Wikipedia and Kiwix software to operate it. Before I was also active with the WM.HU the Hungarian chapter. During that time I volunteered as the head of search doing bug fixes and development of Mediawiki's search engine. Some years before I developed a propitiatory morphological search engine for the Hebrew Wikipedia with cross language capabilities.

On Wikipedia I write articles on Yoga, help with AfC and as a mentor. I also develop analytics tools using the new Mewdiawiki tool labs.

Why should we support your participation in the WikiSym

This year I have been accepted to create a demo on automated assessment of new users in academic settings. Based on my experience as well as materials I and others have developed a course and software integration between an Moodle a popular Learning Management System and the MediaWiki software with a goal of supporting MOOC (Massive Open On-line Classes) to enable a more sustainable education system for our understaffed chapter and community. I have in last year been coordinating with members of WM.UK and WM.DE who have been working on similar Moodle based projects for their chapters. During May I attended the Amsterdam Hackathon (thanks to a generous grant by the Amsterdam Chapter) in which I got a good start on this project.

Wikisym has a long tradition of hackers show casing new breakthroughs in Wikitech and for academics presenting their latest research on collaborative systems of peer productions (wikis). This is perhaps the best place to get feedback on this system from the most brilliant people on the plant.

Goal and expected impact

Going to Wikisym last year has had a very significant impact on me, perhaps even more than going to Wikimania . In the intervening year I have been able to transform my game theoretic analysis into a into a rudimentary system which I plan to demo at the conference. My goal as been to create a tool which will support both peer assessment and more importantly automated assessment of Wikipedia based editing assignments in schools and universities. This tool will use edit count and bipartite networks to assess students progress in learning to edit, communicate and build social capital within the community.

Current goal

Release a working version and get feedback on further improving this project.

Expected Impact

• By reducing the Teachers and Campus/On-line ambassadors workloads I expect an increased participation in Wikipedia editing assignment.
• By providing peer assessment and game mechanics I expect to make these assignments more fun who will request this type of assignments.
• By introducing them to wiki culture I hope to sustain long term participation of these captive editors once their academic obligations are ended.
• In the long run I expect to use this system to coach large numbers of editors in a MOOC (Massively Open On-line Course).
• I expect that others will also be able to build on this work. The code is available on the WMF tool labs and is open source software.

Goals & Expected impact II

CSCW (Computer supported Collaborative work) Researchers at Wiki Sym provide a wellspring of erudition on Education, new research tools and (metrics, visualization techniques and ethnographic nad statistical methodologies) in Wikis and similar environments.

My Goal in participating in wikisym to get information and find potential collaborators from researchers and developers and participating in the conference and active in education in universities. I am aware of a number of research methods and metrics in use in by CSCW researchers that are not available to end users or educators. Attending related presentation should reveal even more as would engaging them in further discussion.

The area of metrics in this field is an enabler of quantitative research in education.

Besides the demo track in which I wish to make a presentation, Wikisym also has an open space track which participants can announce panels on their subject and create a useful dialogue with other conference participants on these areas. I plan to institute panels on areas such as Wikipedia assignments in the classroom, Gamification in LMS and on Wikipedia and CSCW Literacy/Education/Socialization Metrics.

Impact for the WMF and its community

Outreach (GLAM, Education Program, Research) and the software development branches of WMF as well as education and research communities are unfortunately exclusive cliques of individuals with minimal embeddedness in Wikipedia's community. Accordingly exchange of information between these groups is a slow almost random diffusion though weakly connected individuals. The possibility of collaboration is further curtailed by lack of participation in wikipedia's relevant projects (aka embeddedness).

By attending wikisym I will not only collect insights from professionals, I will effectively be putting Wikipedia's Education Program and related Projects such as the adoption program and AfC on the conference's agenda. This will create interest for researchers who are looking for new fields of research alongside their instructional duties. Strategically this is a game changing strategy creating a win win situation for the researchers and the community. Particularly since this is an area which has been neglected since the first paper was presented in Wikisym 2011 and despite a renaissance of activity in the field almost exclusively by community members - an area which I would like to report on.

Finally I plan to provide a presentation with detailed resources on education assignments, gamification used within wikipedia, available metrics following my second demo session on the last day of wikisym. This will provide interested parties with a good start for further work.

Personal participation at this type of event create long term connections between individuals which is the principal on which successful chapters operate. I function best as a bridge between different groups. By locating the people who are already participating in two such areas I can become a hub facilitating a rapid exchange of information by disseminating it via different channels such as my blog, my meta page, on irc, the research newsletter, chapter/editor meetings etc. To be more specific, I plan to participate in further events such as the Education Program's meetup before wikimania and in the hackathon on the following day to further these goals.