Expert outreach/Jisc Ambassador/Summary 18 November 2013

This is the third report from the Jisc/ Wikimedia UK partnership project, covering 8 October to 18 November. It was written somewhat after-the-fact because November has been such a busy month.

Events

Jisc Digital Media webinar

I had a small slot in this webinar (now archived online) to talk about Wikimedia Commons as a tool for finding and sharing audio and video. The webinar also included some discussion of the merits of freely licensed content, with very favourable comments about Wikipedia from the other participants.

Research Impact and Open Education, Oxford

This was a three-hour workshop with fourteen attendees that generated 9 requests for further help. Reflections here. Request forms are being written up on the WMUK office (private) wiki since they include personal contact details. Oxford IT services have their own online evaluation form and I'm trying to get them to share any evaluation from this session.

Research Impact and Open Education, EduWiki Conference

I gave a version of the workshop spread across four sessions of this two-day conference. When not presenting, I was chairing other sessions. Additional Jisc presence at the conference included Terry McAndrew from Jisc TechDis who ran a workshop on inclusion, Lis Parcell from RSC Wales who interacted and tweeted prolifically, and the well-received keynote from Oxford University's David White about his Jisc-funded research on learners' use of resources.

There were around fifty attendees each day (with some differences between the two days). There were 8 requests for further help which are now being followed up in email. Wikimedia UK have an intern going through feedback forms and I will link any evaluation.

Research Impact and Open Education, Sheffield

This was a two-hour workshop at the Humanities Research Institute. There were 27 attendees; 11 commitments to further action (e.g. "I'll edit Wikipedia myself"), and 5 specific requests for further help (some of the audience left at 3pm to go to another event, so didn't get evaluation forms or request forms). Evaluation and reflections here.

Women in Science editathon, Oxford

This had 22 attendees, very nearly all female and all but 6 entirely new to Wikipedia editing. Many expressed an interest in editing beyond the workshop. An initial statement of outcomes is available on Wikipedia itself. A subsequent evaluation will assess ongoing impact and will look at contributions beyond the event. Some articles created on the day have since featured in the Did You Know? section on the front page of English Wikipedia.

"Spotlight on the Digital" meeting, London

I was one of seven speakers at this day event about how scholarly and educational projects (including in universities, archives and museums) could make their content (digital media and other research outputs) more discoverable. I used the speaking slot, informal chat and the Twitter discussion to promote sharing agreements with Wikimedia and my flowchart tool. The main point I took away was that many of the projects being discussed are small ones with very little staff time, so any sharing needs to be lightweight. I also noticed that people generally interpreted "contributing to Wikipedia" as adding external links to their projects (which can be easily misinterpreted and lead to conflict with Wikipedia editors) rather than uploading content or contributing to the meat of an article. I will follow up with a written submission to Sero Consulting.

Brian Kelly of CETIS wrote up some thoughts about the session at "Spotlight on Wikipedia: the opportunities and risks". Lorna M. Campbell, also of CETIS, Storified the days' tweets.

Publications and outputs

• A guest blog post, "Wikipedia: learning by sharing knowledge" went live on Oxford University's 23 Things for Research blog, and was copied with attribution to the Wikimedia UK blog.
• I added a comment to the Jisc blog on Wikipedia's utility for finding and disseminating ORCIDs (I actually submitted twice as it was deleted the first time). Since then, Verena Weigert, who is handling this topic in Jisc, has suggested a joint briefing.
• The Jisc Digital Media webinar is online: link above. I'm investigating if JDM keep view statistics for individual podcasts.
• The presentations at EduWiki have been captured on video and are currently being edited.
• The Sheffield workshop was captured on video. Although the nature of the workshop makes the video sometimes chaotic, there are presentational bits that can be usefully extracted. Martin is getting the footage to edit.

Meetings

I had a face-to-face meeting with Rod Dunican, Wikimedia's Director of Global Education Programs, about how the new Wiki Education Foundation could help the UK HE sector. I fed back about how to adapt printed and online material to be more relevant to the UK HE context, about the trouble the Oxford staff had had navigating the portal of online education materials, and about the Courses module in Wikipedia. Some changes to printed materials will be made straight away as a result; others depend on working with the relevant communities.

Documentation

I am behind schedule as regards creating documentation about Wikimedia and crowdsourcing. This is because there has been more follow-up from events than originally anticipated (which is a good thing!), and because financial management and comms have taken more time than was budgeted for them. The blog post that was written at the end of September is still awaiting copy-editing by Jisc. The past weeks have been very intensive for events; December is much less busy and so is a chance to catch up on writing.

Coverage

• "RVC to host veterinary wiki 'edit-a-thon'". Veterinary Record 173 (18): 440–440. 8 November 2013. doi:10.1136/vr.f6653. "The event [...] forms part of a series of national events being organised by Jisc and Wikimedia UK to encourage more users to author wiki content."
• There has been other publicity for the veterinary editathon in professional publications. More details will appear when I get them.
• The Women in Science editathon generated some very good press: see the event page.

Finance

I am in process of getting a corporate credit card from University of Bristol, which will allow advance booking of travel without paying any extra, and will reduce the personal expenses I run up. Use of expenses is well within budget so far, as expected with the bulk of the events yet to come.

This page has been created as part of the 2013-14 partnership between Jisc and Wikimedia UK