Page 54 – Upcoming Events

Open Educational Resources – Some reflections on OER ’13

The Communicate OER logo

This post was written by Dr Martin Poulter, Wikimedia UK Associate

OER13, a two-day international conference about Open Educational Resources, took place last week in the University of Nottingham. As well as providing a focus for new developments and findings in open education, it addressed overlapping issues such as open access to research, student perspectives and digital literacy. Wikipedia and Wikimedia had a very strong presence.

I attended on behalf of Wikimedia UK, to deliver a presentation, set up a little stall, and offer the How Universities are Using Wikipedia case-study brochure, which went like hot cakes. The presentation explained how Wikipedia and its sister projects can be used as educational platforms. Its main example was the Wikipedia Education Program in which students improve Wikipedia articles for course credit. According to a blog post by Terese Bird of the University of Leicester’s Institute of Learning Innovation, the presentation “made a compelling case” for including Wikipedia-based assignments in formal learning.

Phil Wane, a Nottingham Trent University lecturer and previous speaker at the EduWiki Conference, gave both a paper poster and an electronic poster about the Wikipedia Book Tool and how lecturers can use it to create and customise lists of articles.

The gold star, however, must go to the Communicate OER project, which is bringing together Wikipedians, educators, and support staff to improve articles about open education. The project’s Pete Forsyth and Sarah Frank Bristow attended the conference, and thanks to them all delegates got a copy of the Welcome to Wikipedia booklet. They had a stall, a poster, and two sessions to introduce their project and invite participants to School of Open’s new online course on Writing Wikipedia Articles. As if that weren’t enough, they also ran a post-conference editing session.

The open education genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Open Educational Resources are not a new idea, but there was a sense at the conference that we were all part of a movement that is only just getting started. One discussion group argued that it is now within our reach to have public, open education on the model of the National Health Service: available to everyone, life-long without charge, with both rights and responsibilities for citizens who need it. Wikipedia was mentioned not just as an example of this free global service, but as a way for citizens to contribute back to the common good.

We covered recently on this blog how some educators are resistant to the educational potential of Wikipedia, yet our warm acceptance from the OER community shows that the shared goals between Wikimedians and formal education are impossible to ignore.

Announcement – QRpedia donated to Wikimedia UK

Wikimedia UK is pleased to announce that Roger Bamkin and Terence Eden are transferring ownership of QRpedia to Wikimedia UK.

As a donation from Roger and Terence, the intellectual property in QRpedia and the qrpedia.org and qrwp.org domains will be transferred to Wikimedia UK, which will maintain and support the development of the QRpedia platform for the future for the benefit of the Wikimedia community. Roger and Terence will act as honorary advisors to Wikimedia UK in this, as well as retaining their moral rights of attribution, but will not receive any financial consideration for this. The transfer of the domains will take place as soon as the remaining legal details have been resolved.

QRpedia is a web tool that uses QR codes placed on or near objects or locations to link mobile users to Wikipedia articles about those objects or locations in their language. The agreement was made as a result of negotiations at our board meeting on 8 February 2013.

Wikimedia UK is grateful for this donation which will allow ongoing technical support for a number of Wikimedia-related outreach projects where QRpedia is already in use, including Wikimedia UK’s work with the Derby Museum and Monmouthpedia, and many others worldwide.

Chris Keating, Chair of Wikimedia UK, said: “I am very pleased that we have reached agreement with Roger and Terence and that Wikimedia UK will support, preserve and improve QRpedia for the benefit of the whole Wikimedia community. QRpedia is a great innovation and already plays an important role in Wikimedia outreach projects not just in the UK but worldwide. I look forward to working with Roger and Terence to develop QRpedia further in future.”

Roger Bamkin, co-creator of QRpedia, said: “Terence Eden and I are thrilled to see the projects in Monmouth, Johannesburg, Gibraltar, Sayada and Fremantle that have inspired volunteers to write about different towns in dozens of different languages. Who would think you could tour Monmouth in Hungarian or Gibraltar in Punjabi?”

John Cummings begins work as Wikimedian in Residence

Wikimedia UK is very happy to report that John Cummings, a long-standing and well known Wikimedian, has begun his work as Wikimedian in Residence at the Science Museum and Natural History Museum.

This is a ground-breaking partnership between two of the UK’s most prestigious cultural institutions and the charity that promotes and supports Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in the UK. His role with the museums will last for four months.

John said: “It’s a real privilege to work with institutions with such important places in the history and public understanding of science. I hope I will be able to help the museums in their goals.”

John is the co-founder and project leader for MonmouthpediA and Gibraltarpedia, the world’s first Wikipedia town and city, and he is a Wikimedia UK accredited trainer for communities and institutions.

He is also technical lead for Leaderwiki, a collaborative education resource for emerging leaders from all over the world who want to make a positive contribution in their communities.

Researchers: are you Wikipedia-compatible?

This post was written by Wikimedia UK Associate, Dr Martin Poulter

The first of April this year is a significant date for researchers here in the UK. It’s when a new policy comes into place, beginning a journey towards open access (OA) for publicly funded research.

This is a top-down policy from the Government’s (via the Finch Report), the Research Councils, and other funding bodies, but it follows years of campaigning by a grass-roots movement of academics and librarians. Open Access made headlines last year in what the Guardian dubbed “the Academic Spring”, when many academics started a boycott of journals that lock research papers behind a “paywall”.

The official policy is a huge step forward for open access in the UK, and comes at a time when the European Commission has announced its own OA policy. Just in the last few weeks the White House announced a new policy to make the reports of taxpayer-funded research openly available.

These developments affect whether the public can access reports of taxpayer-funded research without meeting a paywall. The UK policy affects new research papers, not those already published. It also affects how research is licensed: whether you and I have rights to copy and adapt the text or images of a paper.

However, the open agenda doesn’t stop at access to research results. There is also increasing pressure for public access to the underlying data and for greater openness and transparency around the process of research, for example with standardised information about funding.

Attending an event at the Royal Society recently, there was agreement about the merits of open access, but wide disagreement about the consequences. Will commercial publishers be banished from the academy, or will pay-to-publish mean they charge twice for the same work? Will more scientific papers be published, or fewer? Will learned societies – some of whom support their work with non-open-access journals – go extinct or will they flourish even more?

However, there has been relatively little mention of how this affects Wikimedia (meaning Wikipedia, its sister projects such as Wikiversity, and the communities that support them). For a lot of research, Wikipedia and Wikimedia are a gateway to a huge global audience, including taxpayers who ultimately fund public research, and including academics in poorer countries who are less able to access the original papers.

WIkipedia itself is written, reviewed and illustrated by volunteers. Some of us have day-jobs in universities or research institutions, but for those who don’t, the paywalls lock away content that could really help us improve articles on difficult academic topics. The difficulty of getting the best sources, while so much junk research and opinion is freely accessible, has a dumbing-down effect on the web: Wikipedia seeks to counter that trend, and open access would make that easier for us.

Wikipedia contributions are challenged, checked and reviewed through various formal and informal processes, so it’s not just the person writing articles who needs access to the original research: other users need access to verify that the Wikipedia summary is fair and accurate.

The question of licensing is no less important. Wikipedia and its sister sites require illustrations, and if researchers’ figures and video clips, such as the one on this blog post, can be freely copied and adapted, with attribution of the original authors, that would be an enormous boost.

Under the new open-access policy, publicly-funded researchers will face a choice between “gold” and “green” publication. Gold open access makes papers immediately available under a Wikipedia-compatible Creative Commons Attribution licence. Green OA means that papers are published normally but also made freely available after a delay of between six months and two years.

Green OA can involve a Wikipedia-compatible licence, but licences with a non-commercial (NC) option are also considered green under the new policy. Non-commercial activity is hard to define and so NC licences prevent some legitimate educational uses. That’s why NC content is not compatible with the Wikimedia projects. We have to hope that researchers will avoid non-commercial clauses and that their institutions will educate them so that they understand the significance of the decision.

Fortunately, there are simple solutions to making research academically credible and Wikipedia-compatible. There are peer-reviewed journals whose contents all have a Wikipedia-compatible licence, including the PLOS journals, or the new PeerJ. These are just examples and many alternatives are available.

Wherever researchers publish their papers, they can share figures, video clips or other media through services such as Figshare, which has a Wikipedia-compatible licence, or through Wikimedia’s own media-sharing site, Wikimedia Commons. This is a way to assert ownership of those media and the authors’ right to be credited, while at the same time giving the greatest opportunity for public benefit.

I hope that scientists and scholars, when deciding where to publish research, will give a thought to the Wikipedia authors who are trying to improve articles about their topic.

Know when to Oldham…

Coat of arms of Oldham County Borough Council

Wikimedia UK is partnering with Oldham Council to offer a free session for people to learn how to use Wikimedia projects with a focus on editing Wikipedia.

The event is primarily aimed at people from the Oldham area but it is open to everyone who is interested in learning how to edit Wikipedia. It’s free and takes place at the Oldham Library and Lifelong Learning Centre in the Cultural Quarter, Greaves Street, Oldham on Saturday 27 April.

Wikimedia UK trainers will cover the basics of Wikipedia editing and will teach new users about sandboxes, edit summaries, sources, referencing and other Wikimedia projects.

Places for this free event are limited to 20 attendees so if you’d like to attend please register here to reserve a spot.

Wikimedia UK is looking for experienced trainers to deliver the event. Please contact Daria Cybulska if you are interested in taking part as a trainer.

Jonathan Cardy joins Wikimedia UK as GLAM Organiser

Wikimedia UK is pleased to announce that Jonathan Cardy (aka WereSpielChequers) is joining us as our GLAM Organiser – co-ordinating and expanding our Outreach work with Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAMs). Jonathan will be starting work on 3rd April. Jonathan is already known among active Wikimedians especially in London where he is a regular at the meetup. Here is Jonathan’s own introduction. We’re sure you’ll join us in extending him a warm welcome.

“Hi, I’m Jonathan Cardy and I’m really looking forward to working with all of you, especially those of you who want to get involved in our collaborations with the GLAM sector.

“My own involvement in our GLAM outreach started when I took part in one of the events that Liam Wyatt organised during his trailblazing time as Wikipedian in Residence at the British Museum. I’ve since been involved in several other WMUK GLAM events, including ones at both the British Library and the V&A. My experiences with our GLAM program have ranged from photography to training, and from editing articles to explaining our jargon and policies to curators and British library readers.

“I’ve been a museum buff for as long as I can remember, a Wikipedian since 2007 and I’ve been uploading” photos to Commons since 2007… This is a great opportunity for me to combine those threads of my life together and help build on the amazing work done by Liam and others.

“I will be based in the Wikimedia UK office in London but am keen to be involved in GLAM outreach across the UK. I’m very much aware that my own experience of Wikimedia UK GLAM is very London-centric and my Wikimedia experience is strongly skewed towards the English language Wikipedia and Commons, so I’m particularly keen to talk to UK Wikimedians from other parts of the UK, other Projects and indeed other language versions of Wikipedia. My first priority will be the GLAM wiki conference in April, and I hope to meet many of my fellow UK Wikimedians and our potential GLAM partners there.

“I’m particularly keen to talk to Wikimedians in the UK who want to get involved in editathons and similar events – and if I know where in the UK you’d like to have GLAM events, what subjects you are most interested in and whether you want to take part in editathons, backstage passes, or photography sessions.”

Learning and Teaching in the age of Wikipedia

This post was written by Dr Martin Poulter, Associate of Wikimedia UK, to celebrate Open Education Week.

David White is a senior manager at the University of Oxford’s Department of Continuing Education. He co-manages Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning (TALL), an award-winning research and development group. If you attend conferences about open education or the cultural effects of social media, you’ve probably seen him speak.

David recently spoke to Wikimedia UK about some of his research, in which he investigated how learners in schools and universities use online resources. Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia came up again and again in the interviews with learners and staff, even though many teachers and lecturers forbid its use. “I tell my students not to use Wikipedia because I think it’s unreliable, but then I find myself using it all the time,” is a representative quote from a staff member.

In the interview, David discusses how learner attitudes to Wikipedia change over time, and become more sophisticated as people get better at critically assessing information. He argues that, rather than pretending Wikipedia does not exist or that learners are not going to use it, education institutions should see the new environment as a great opportunity. The established models of education were developed in a world where merely obtaining information was harder work than it is now. The skills needed now are less about factual recall and much more about critical evaluation and assessment.

Knowledge, as opposed to mere information, and credibility are still crucially important, but our interpretation of these concepts is changing as open, collaborative processes of writing Wikipedia become more common. “It’s been a really useful focus for me,” says David, “in understanding how learners are evolving their approach to education; often doing that entirely independently of the education institution they are in.”

I’d like to thank David White for giving his time to talk to us, and to Stevie Benton for conducting and recording the audio interview. You can listen to the interview here.

Wikimedia UK and the Women of the World Festival

This post was written by Daria Cybulska, Wikimedia UK Events Organiser

Wikimedia UK was present at the high profile annual Women of the World Festival (WOW) at Southbank Centre on 9th March this year. WOW festival is a global event where the audience gather to celebrate women’s achievements, and discuss how we can collectively overcome the boundaries that women face. I attended the event to give a short talk explaining why women should get involved with Wikipedia, where could they get started.

This event coincided with the International Women’s Day (8th March), and indeed was a part of the Women’s History Month celebrated within Wikimedia community

This ‘how to’ session was an opportunity for 20-30 attendees to gain insight into how they can participate in a project that increases women visibility, making their achievements more accessible to everyone. After my presentation (which can be seen here) I was showered with questions, which proved that the audience was really engaged, very interested in Wikipedia (no one in the audience had contributed before) and wanted to know more about how to join the project. A lot of the participants were women interested in making women’s achievements more visible, and welcomed Wikipedia as an interesting way to contribute.

We have discussed the problem of lack of visibility of some notable women on Wikipedia – if they don’t have articles about them, then a lot of people will not find out about them. But if they don’t have a Wikipedia article, that means there is no other easy way to find information about them on the Internet. I have encouraged people to spend time doing a bit more research (e.g. in their local library) to reach information that may not be available online.

Apart from the seminar, I have circulated an introductory leaflet to encourage as many people as possible to edit, and showing them where to start. Anyone interested can base on the resources listed on there and contribute during Women’s History Month in March.

I really enjoyed the experience of sharing a topic that the audience found so illuminating and worthwhile.

GLAM-Wiki – celebrating culture and open access

A panoply of international cultural experts and Wikimedians are set to descend on London next month for an international celebration of open access and culture.

GLAM-Wiki 2013 is a global conference, organised by the UK chapter in association with Wikimedia Sweden and Europeana, and hosted by the British Library. It examines the possibilities, relationships and potential for galleries, libraries, archives and museums in working with Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia. The conference will take place on the weekend of 12-14 April at the British Library in London.

The international nature of the conference this year is reflected in the keynote speakers. The list includes Michael Edson of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, Lizzy Jongma of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and Nick Poole of the Collections Trust in London.

Michael Edson, Director, Web and New Media Strategy, of the Smithsonian Institution, said: “I don’t know of a single museum, archive, or library project that is as dedicated to transparency and quality improvement as the GLAM-Wiki community is. For GLAM-Wiki editors, it’s personal. Wikipedians are a terrific and intimidating audience. They tend to be well informed, independent thinkers who are hungry for big ideas and practical insights.”

Lizzy Jongma of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, said: “The Rijksmuseum is all about art, about images. We want to share these images with everyone, everywhere. That’s why we have decided to put everything, free of use, up to date, in the best quality, on the internet. We believe that knowledge needs to be shared and the internet is the best medium to share and reach our global audience. GLAM-Wiki helps and supports galleries, libraries, archives and museums to produce open-access, freely-reusable content for the public.”

Nick Poole, Chief Executive Officer of the Collections Trust, said: “I am hugely excited to be speaking at the GLAM-Wiki conference. Wikimedians and culture professionals share a common set of values and there is so much that our communities can learn from each other. Wikimedia can help bring cultural content to a global audience, and at the same time help us solve some of the most pressing questions about how we work with our communities to create and share knowledge about collections on equal terms.”

As well as the keynote speakers there will be plenty of other activities taking place throughout the conference covering a broad range of topics related to the conference theme. You can see the schedule here

Tickets are available for the conference and are priced from £15 to £40, with some scholarships available. Visit http://bit.ly/glam-wiki13 for tickets and more information.

Toni Sant joins Wikimedia UK as Education Organiser

Toni Sant, Wikimedia UK Education Organiser

Wikimedia UK is excited to announce that Toni Sant is joining our team as our Education Organiser. Toni will be starting work during the week beginning 18 March. Toni is already known among active Wikimedians in the UK as well as globally as he has been active with Wikipedia education programmes for the past couple of years. Below Toni introduces himself in his own words. We’re sure you’ll join us in extending him a warm welcome.

“Hello fellow Wikimedians, I’m Toni Sant. I have long been an admirer of the global Wikimedia movement and have integrated work from my teaching in Higher Education with the English Wikipedia.

“I am currently also employed at the University of Hull’s Scarborough Campus as Director of Research in the School of Arts and New Media, where I’ve been based since 2004. I have been a teacher or lecturer at different education levels since 1993. For the last three academic years I have integrated a Wikipedia assessment in my undergraduate university teaching for all my students and I have also introduced other teaching colleagues to adopt Wikipedia as a resource for some of their assignments. You can view a presentation I gave at EduWiki about some of this work here

“I came to know many other Wikimedians in person by attending the WikiConference in Mumbai, India in 2011, through a scholarship from WMUK. I have also attended a number of other events such as WikiMania 2012 in Washington DC, the EduWiki Conference in Leicester and GLAMcamp at the British Library in London. At these events I have met many of the amazing volunteers that make all the Wikimedia projects possible.

“I will be based in Scarborough but plan to be at the WMUK office in London as frequently as possible. The are a number of things I’ll be working on in terms of Education at WMUK, but the two main things that will very likely take up most of my time in the first few months will be the Wikimedian-in-Residence programme within a UK university, and this year’s EduWiki Conference. I will be at our open day on 23 March and look forward to meeting Wikimedians face-to-face, particularly anyone interested in Education issues within the context of Wikimedia.”