Wikipedia:Education noticeboard

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    Welcome to the education noticeboard
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    This page is for discussion related to student assignments and the Wikipedia Education Program. Please feel free to post, whether you're from a class, a potential class, or if you're a Wikipedia editor.

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    FAQ link at dashboard student welcome template

    The student welcome template identified in the subst'ed hidden comment as <!-- Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org welcome --> contains a link to a FAQ at https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/faq, however that page is devoted solely to the questions instructors might have, and nothing about students. The instructor FAQ page does have a link on it to the student FAQ page at https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/faq?topic=student_faq, however that page is devoted solely to username issues, and lacks any of the kind of common issues that I imagine would be useful to a student enrolled in a Wiki Ed course. Mathglot (talk) 07:30, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Featured article assigned to student editor

    Thought I saw a notice about this previously at this board, but can't find it now. Communication is a featured article, and has been assigned to an editor at Fairmont State U.. I don't know if featured articles should be automatically restricted from student articles or not, but it sure is a tough hill to climb for any new editor, to try to figure out how to improve a FA in their first few edits at Wikipedia. Seems like a poor assignment choice. Ping Brianda (Wiki Ed). Mathglot (talk) 09:33, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    @Mathglot, Definitely a challenging assignment for a first time editor. After @Chipmunkdavis's ping about it, I left a message on the student's talk page. I just followed up with them in email to make sure they get the message, and choose a better article to work on. Brianda (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:00, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Peer review page

    It looks like a student has opened a peer review page at Wikipedia:Peer review/Deficiency judgment/archive1, mistaking it for part of their classroom review process. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:32, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks for the ping @Thebiguglyalien. I've contacted the editor and looped in the instructor to orient the student. Brianda (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:31, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Contentious topics

    Is there any guideline, recommendation, or opinion at Wiki Ed about whether students should be assigned articles designated as a

    Contentious topic? Currently, Gender and Technoculture 320-01 (assisted by Brianda) has students assigned to Gender-critical feminism, Feminist views on transgender topics, and Transphobia, all designated as contentious. (There may be others, I only checked the ones I thought would be.) I checked the archives, but the only discussion related to this topic was this one, and it isn't directly relevant. Tryptofish started that one, so might have an opinion on this. Mathglot (talk) 05:14, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply
    ]

    Thanks for the ping. My understanding is that we have a consensus that student editors should steer clear of CTOPs, and that WikiEd advises students of this. But of course, some students initially do it anyway. In my experience, once the WikiEd advisor finds out about it, they can be counted on to tell the students to find a different page, and point it out to the instructor. I expect this will happen here. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks Tryptofish & Mathglot. We do try to steer classes away from contentious topics, but given the large swaths of Wikipedia that are or were covered, we take a more nuanced approach. For example, climate change articles have rarely proven to be a problem for student editors (at least in the dimension of them being contentious), so over the years we changed our approach from steering classes away from those topics to encouraging certain types of classes to participate.
    We've supported a large number of feminism-related classes (this class alone has run 22 times before this term) and improving the topic area is important. While the arbcom ruling is limited to "gender-related disputes or controversies and associated people", it isn't always clear up front what's disputed or controversial and what isn't. But telling instructors and students they need to stay clear of "gender", as a whole, on Wikipedia, probably would be.
    We try to strike a balance between steering students away from categories of articles where they're unlikely to have a good experience, and trying to help them understand how to edit collegially. In this case, Brianda has gone over the list of articles that students assigned themselves and suggested that they might want to drop certain topics, while also trying to provide extra support in the event students do run into problems. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Focusing my reply only on the following:

    it isn't always clear up front what's disputed or controversial and what isn't

    By "contentious" in my OP, I meant strictly: "article whose talk page has one of the (four, I think) contentious topics templates". If it has one of them, then it's contentious for the purposes of this discussion; if it doesn't, then it isn't. So students and instructors would have a way of determining it. Not yet ready for prime time is a template I'm working on which will detect this; e.g.:
    Draft template examples here, but see below for dedicated "{{Is contentious}}" template
    • {{
      Draft:Article attribute decoration
      |contentious|Transphobia}}
      contentious
    • {{
      Draft:Article attribute decoration
      |contentious|Iguana}}
    (Don't worry about the icon; you can either embed it in an #if, or maybe I'll provide yes-no booleans later; also, this draft template may cease working or work differently at any time; it's still in development.) The point I wanted to make, though, is that "contentious" can be well-defined, if we want it to be, by associating it with presence/absence of Talk page templates. Mathglot (talk) 22:36, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Ian, one approach that I think would be helpful to WikiEd staff when deciding whether or not to steer a student away is to look for whether or not there is a CTOP warning template, or edit notice, on the talk page. If there is such a warning already present for a given page, then it should probably be pretty close to automatic to tell the student and the instructor. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:03, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Ian, I've written Template:Is contentious which will detect this as a standalone template you can use, copy, or reengineer if you are using wiki ed dashboard software in a non-wikipedia environment:
    Hope this helps. Mathglot (talk) 00:04, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • The reality is that student edits to these high-traffic, highly controversial articles are simply going to be reverted. Frankly it's a waste of both the student's and community's time to be assigning articles like gender-critical feminism as Mathglot mentioned, whose student editor just got predictably reverted instantly. An article which has already gone through lots of debate and consensus-making is not going to be the type of article which is accepting of the (typically lower quality) contributions from student editors. Endwise (talk) 00:03, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Possible unknown class

    There's been a sudden influx of brand new accounts over at Pesticide drift, a contentious topic.[1]. The edits definitely have the look of coordinated class edits happening at once, but I'm not seeing any indication of an class dashboard, etc.

    I only had a remove a

    WP:MEDRS issue so far, but do any WikiEd folks know what class this may be? As mentioned in the section above, controversial topics are best avoided for class editing, and this is one we've frequently had issues with student editors in. Hopefully it's nothing for this one, but I thought I'd check in on this one now rather than later. KoA (talk) 18:44, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply
    ]

    These editors aren't affiliated with us, but if you do find out any contact information or name for the instructor, feel free to ping me and we can try to offer our support! --LiAnna (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:04, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]