Wikimedian in Residence

Supporting the University of Edinburgh's commitments to digital skills, information literacy, and sharing knowledge openly

Tag: Content Translation

Translation and Open Education – An Experiment using Wikipedia

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On March 6, 2019

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This post is the fourth in a series of blog posts for Open Education Week.

By Dr Iraklis Pantopoulos, Edinburgh College of Art, and Dr Charlotte Bosseaux, Translation Studies, School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh.

Translation and open education go hand in hand! The historical role played by translation in the proliferation and dissemination of knowledge goes back probably to the very beginnings of the act of translation itself. So there can be no doubt translation is a natural fit in the field of Open Education.

So, when the idea was pitched to begin a project working with Wikipedia as a tool in the MSc in Translation Studies it immediately clicked!

The Projects

The idea for the project was simple: As part of their Portfolio of translation, the practice component of their studies, MSc in Translation Studies students need to translate 4,000 words per semester on a topic of their own choosing. This is the independent study component of their portfolio. So, rather than them having to choose any text to translate their project was to select (either individually or in same-language groups) a Wikipedia entry of the right size and create a version of that entry in their target language.

To provide some scaffolded support in their task, two two-hour introductory workshops on the basics of Wikipedia editing and the new Content Translation tool were held by the Wikimedian in Residence. By the second workshop they needed to have chosen the entry to translate. Then the students were left to their own devices, with tutor support when needed.

At the same time, the students were taking a Technology and Translation in the Workplace course, focusing on the impact of digital tools on the translation ecosystem and developing the skills to prepare for a digital translation industry. Reflecting on their experience of working on the Wikipedia project clearly gave them something to draw on and quickly led to very confident discussions in a way that was not possible in previous years.

A Translation From One Language to Another, artwork by by Lawrence Weiner, CC BY SA, brbbl on Wikimedia Commons

The Outputs

Twenty-nine people took part in the assignment in 15/16 and 28 in 16/17, translating articles from English to Arabic, Chinese, French, Greek, Turkish, Japanese and from Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Norwegian into English.

There was a big number of positives from the project and students on the programme were quick to acknowledge this.

Developing their digital capabilities (in line with the University’s graduate attributes) in broader areas such as the use and importance of formatting, in sensitive areas such as their online presence and identity, or even in specialist areas such as the use of machine translation within the Content Translation tool was a clear benefit.

But the things that really excited them and enriched their experience were to do with their participation in the Open Education community!

Members of a community

The change in role from the traditional one of passive “consumers” of knowledge to the active role of producers was fundamental for the students and a crucial step in developing their identity both as postgraduate students and future translators.

Writing to be read not writing merely to be assessed made a huge change in the mindset of the students and was a challenge they were eager to tackle! They now wrote with a potential global audience in mind and were very conscious of the fact that Wikipedia editors would be scrutinising their work. This openness of their translation and the instant audience also resulted in theoretical discussions in class. And coupled with the fact that they were clearly working to create something tangible and lasting (an OER) the increase in their motivation was evident. But even more, this was the first step towards developing an openly available “portfolio” as fledgling translators.

Some of the students were happy to talk about their experiences of the project.

View from the office

For us, as members of the course team, the teething problems of incorporating the Wikipedia project in the programme were quickly outweighed by the possibilities it opened up. Some of our thoughts can be heard in summary here (at 5:35).

One of the common challenges we face with postgraduate students is how to build their research skills. Through their engagement with Wikipedia, and OER in general, students got hands on experience of such skills as the triangulation of sources and the critical evaluation of online material. They were also able to move past a rigid view of research material and view the inherent value in Wikipedia as an aggregator of resources. They were then able to incorporate these skills in more demanding upcoming projects such as their dissertation.

We also as a group got the chance to see how Wikipedia quantity varies from language to language, and how translation can address and redress this inequality, a great motivation for students and another great area for discussion and further research.

We ourselves managed to overcome our initial reservations and were left with genuine enthusiasm for this fresh outlook on the potential of translation to contribute to the dissemination of knowledge.

 

About the authors

Dr Charlotte Bosseaux has wide experience teaching in all areas of translation studies at postgraduate level. She has taught translation theory and methodology and has frequently been course organiser for core courses such as Translation Studies 1 and Research in Translation Studies. She has also organised the TRSS summer schools for doctoral students, where she also taught and offered feedback student presentations. She is also on the international panel of associates for ARTIS (Advanced Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies). She has been on Erasmus exchange programme to various European universities including Milan, Madrid, Zagreb, and Oslo teaching at UG and PG level in translation studies.

Dr Iraklis Pantopoulos has been working in Higher Education for 9 years in a wide variety of academic, support, and learning technology-related roles. He has always been curious about how we teach and how we learn. He developed a particular interest in the place of digital tools in pedagogy and research during my doctoral studies and early teaching and he is always looking for ways to improve the learning experience. In 2018, he completed a PGDip in Digital Education from the University of Edinburgh. He is currently a member of the Learning Technology team at the Edinburgh College of Art.

 

Wikipedia in Education: If not now then when? #OER17

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On April 12, 2017

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Last week I attended the eighth Open Educational Resources conference (OER17) at Resource for London. Themed on ‘the Politics of Open‘. Little did we know when these themes were announced this time last year just how timely this conference would be.

I presented 4 sessions at the conference:

This last presentation outlined the work the Wikimedia residency at the University of Edinburgh over the last fifteen months; the lessons learnt and the recommendations.

It was not recorded so here’s what I said:

Lo and Behold: Reveries of a Connected Campus

The Wikimedia residency at the University of Edinburgh began in January 2016 so I am about to write my 15th month report this week. An infographic for the first 12 months is available to view at tinyurl.com/WikiResidency.

I should say that the reason for the title of the talk, Lo and Behold, is because I am massive fan of Werner Herzog and the film that bears the name. Potentially the subtitle for this talk could have been ‘a year of chaos, hostility and murder’. Thankfully, the reverse was true.

A year of chaos, hostility and murder? Au contraire…

But the residency has also, at its heart, been about making connections. Both across the university’s three teaching colleges and beyond; with the city of Edinburgh itself. Demonstrating how staff, students and members of the public can most benefit from and contribute to the development of the huge open knowledge resource that are the Wikimedia projects. And we made some significant connections over the last year in all of these areas.

 

But first some context as to how this came to be. In 1583 the University of Edinburgh came to be then a short time later in 2001 Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia was established.

Today, Wikipedia is the number one information site in the world with 500 million visitors a month; the place that students and staff consult for pre-research on a topic. And considered, according to a 2014 Yougov survey, to be trusted more than the Guardian, BBC, Telegraph and Times. Perhaps because unlike the secret algorithms of Google and Facebook, on Wikipedia everything is out in the open. Its commitment to transparency is an implicit promise of trust to its users where everything on it can be checked, challenged and corrected.

In 2011, ten years after Wikipedia first launched, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article by the vice president of Oxford University of Press acclaiming that ‘Wikipedia had come of age’ and that it was time Wikipedia played “a vital role in formal education settings“.

A timeline of Wikimedia residencies in Scotland (and Martin Poulter’s work at the University of Oxford).

 

In 2013, two years after this article was published, Scotland got its first ever Wikimedian in Residence at the National Library of Scotland, Ally Crockford. Melissa Highton, Director of Learning, Teaching & Web Services at the University of Edinburgh, invited both Ally Crockford and the newly installed Wikimedian in Residence at the Museums and Galleries Scotland, Sara Thomas, to hold an editathon during the university’s February 2015 term break. This editathon, themed on Women, Science and Scottish History was to help recognise and celebrate the achievements of the Edinburgh 7, the first female medical students in Britain, with new and improved Wikipedia pages. At the event, Melissa Highton invited Professor Allison Littlejohn to conduct some research to see if there was actually some formal and informal learning going on at these Wikipedia editing events. This research was then shared later that year at the Wikipedia Science Conference organised by the Wikimedian in Residence at the Bodleian Library, Martin Poulter.

Happily the research bore out that there was real merit in having a Wikimedian in an education setting because there was indeed informal and formal learning going on at editathon events. Up until this point all the residencies had tended to be GLAM oriented (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) so Melissa was quite bold in arguing for a Wikimedian on a university-wide remit. And I’m pleased to say that calculated risk worked out.

The University of Edinburgh residency began in January 2016 and its remit was threefold:

  • To raise awareness of Wikipedia and its sister projects
  • To design and deliver digital skills engagement events such as editathons (groups of staff & student editors coming together to edit Wikipedia pages on a focused theme – both inside and outside the curriculum)
  • To work with colleagues all across the institution to find ways in which the University – as a knowledge creation organisation – can most benefit and contribute to the development of this huge open knowledge resource.

But how to go about serving the university as their newest resource? Wikipedia in education is well established elsewhere but we were in slightly uncharted territory at the university so I could have been sat twiddling my thumbs for the year; waiting for take-up that may never have come (although I don’t think for a moment this would have happened). I could also have been treated as a snake oil salesman peddling the educational equivalent of fast food.

If I had been I would have been given short shrift. Thankfully, this ancient university is a thoroughly innovative modern one and among its 36,000 students and 13,000 staff there are a great many proponents of Open Knowledge.

I have never been busier.

Shared missions

 

The trick, if there was one, was to get colleagues to see there was a link between the Wikimedia projects and the work they were doing; to see there was a shared mission; to recognise that both were knowledge producers and, for want of a better word, ‘ideas factories’. And that collaborations between the university and Wikimedia could be fruitful for both sides. More than the sum of their parts. That involved engaging people in the conversation. Getting in the room. Because once in the room, colleagues could see the connections and did start to look at Wikipedia differently.

The Visual Editor interface

 

One of the biggest factors in the residency’s success was the new WYSIWYG Visual Editor interface, making editing so much easier and more akin to using WordPress and Ms Word through its drop-down menus.

But we had to get people in the room first of all to give it a go.  That’s why the ‘edit-a-thon’ model proved particularly successful. Hosting an event on a particular theme for editors to come together and create or improve Wikipedia articles on that theme.

The Edinburgh editathons

 

So we’d fit in with other events already happening in the academic calendar and stage our own when people were likely to be able to attend. Be it a Women in Espionage themed editathon for Spy Week; a Festival of Samhuinn event for Halloween to improve articles about those passed away; or Ada Lovelace Day to celebrate Women in STEM; inviting colleagues from STEM subjects, English, History, Scottish Studies and more to come take part in these events.

We’d also draw in other institutions like the National Library of Scotland and the University of Sheffield’s Centre for the Gothic in our Robert Louis Stevenson Day event themed on Gothic writers.

Edinburgh Gothic – Pic my Mihaela Bodlovic (CC-BY-SA)

And in our third year of running the History of Medicine we have colleagues sharing Open Knowledge from across the university and beyond including the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh), the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons (Glasgow), the Surgeons’ Hall Museums, the Lothian Health Service Archives and more.

So once people were engaged and their curiosity piqued then we could begin to show how the other Wikimedia projects link with Wikipedia and how information literacy is improved through engagement with Wikipedia.

Ultimately, what you wanted attendees to get from the experience was this; the idea that knowledge is most useful when it is used; engaged with; built upon.

The University of Edinburgh and Wikimedia UK – shared missions.

 

And that housing knowledge in silos, of any kind, be they Wikimedia projects or university repositories, is missing a trick when that knowledge could be engaged with and built upon.

RLS and the Web of Knowledge

That’s why in the Wikimedia universe, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Wikipedia article has a link to his out-of-copyright longer works on Wikisource, the free content library. It also links to images related to RLS hosted on Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. And it has a link to the Wikidata page on RLS where all the machine-readable structured linked data about RLS is kept.

And, in terms of raising awareness of these sister projects, we have had a showcase about Wikisource, the free content library, which has resulted in some digitised PhD theses being uploaded and linked to from Wikipedia, just one click away. Sharing open knowledge.

Thomas Jehu’s PhD thesis is now digitised and transcribed to Wikisource, one click away from his Wikipedia page.

 

We have also had a number of Wikidata showcase events as Wikidata represents the bright future of the Wikimedia projects. Machine-readable, language independent, this central hub acts as a repository of linked structured data for all the Wikimedia projects and the wider internet beyond. This means the data from the largest reference work on the internet can be queried, analysed & visualised as never before.

Further, by tidying up and putting citation data in Wikidata, as 2 million plus citations now are, it means we can also have a central bibliographic repository of linked citation data allowing the data to be queried in any number of ways.

And that’s the thing. Wikipedia doesn’t want you to cite it. It is a tertiary source; an aggregator of articles built on citations from reliable secondary sources. In this way it is reframing itself as the front matter to all research. And should be understood as such.

The Front Matter to All Research

Another important factor is the work Wikipedia is doing with Altmetric and Crossref to ensure more permanent DOIs are used as citations which can then be tracked for impact. Wikipedia is now the number 5 most prolific DOI referrer according to Crossref… and even that is thought to be a gross underestimate of its actual standing.

The new Content Translation tool, developed in the last two years, has made a big impact as it allows one Wikipedia article to be translated, using machine translation to take all the formatting across paragraph by paragraph to create a new article in a different language Wikipedia. Thereby building understanding.

And this is something our Translation Studies MSc students were motivated to address as they could see exactly how knowledge was unevenly spread throughout the different language Wikipedias.

The uneven spread of knowledge between the 295 different language Wikipedias

Similarly, one really important factor was this idea of taking ownership to help redress areas of under-representation and systemic bias on Wikipedia. In this way many of our Wikipedia events focused on addressing the gender gap.

Redressing the Gender Gap

Less than 15% of women edit Wikipedia and this skews the content in much the same way with only 16.85% of biographies about notable women. Given that the gender gap is real and that a lot of institutions will be undertaking initiatives as part of  their commitment to Athena Swan, the creating of new role models for young and old alike goes a long way to engage people in helping to address this issue.

Role models like Janet Anne Galloway, advocate for higher education for women in Scotland, Helen Archdale (suffragette), sociologist and LGBT campaigner Mary Susan McIntosh among many many more.

Changing the way stories are told

That’s why it is enormously pleasing that over the whole year, 65% of attendees at our events were female.

Over the course of this same year, Fake News has come to the fore. For Wikipedia editors this is nothing new as they have been combatting Fake news for years. Evaluating sources is core skill for a Wikipedia editor.

The skills Wikipedia assignments help develop

 In fact, all the skills and experiences that universities and PISA are articulating they want to see students imbued with at this moment in time are ones that Wikipedia assignments help develop. And that’s not just hot air. The assignments we have run this year actually have delivered on these.

As a result of colleagues seeing connections with, and benefits of, a Wikipedia assignment we have run three Wikipedia in the Classroom assignments and three online assignments.

Anyone can teach Wikipedia in the Classroom.

Teaching with Wikipedia is even easier with the new WYSIWYG Visual Editor interface

We have case studies for the World Christianity MSc Wikipedia literature review assignment; balancing up a hitherto Western-oriented field with new articles from perspectives in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia and more.

Reproductive Medicine undergraduates – September 2016 (CC-BY-SA)

We have a case study of students in Reproductive Biology Hons. researching and writing new articles about reproductive health such as High-Grade Serous Carcinoma and thereby improving their research & communication skills and contributing their knowledge to the global Open Knowledge community. This is set to run for its third year this September.

We have a case study of students on the Translation Studies MSc course translating 4000 words from one language Wikipedia to another using the Content Translation tool  as part of their Independent Study module; thereby getting much-needed published practice in translation. This has been such a success that we have continued for a second semester and Edinburgh University Translation Society are also publishing their own Wikipedia translations now too.

The approach taken

Translation has been a massive part of the residency; communicating how both sides can benefit massively from one another. My approach has been based on my background. Teaching in the Far East helped me see how to engage learners through stimulating, engaging & accessible activities; graded to their needs. In this way, my approach with translating Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines into a way that educators can engage with has been to:

  • Making learning engaging and accessible.
  • Building on prior knowledge.
  • Sharing good practice.

What’s next?

We have a number of big events planned including a Celtic and Indigenous Languages Wikipedia Conference and a Swahili translate-a-thon to look forward to.

But my main task is to finish the residency in January 2018 leaving behind a sustainable way for involvement with Wikimedia to continue.

That, for me, is a mixture of People and Process. Identifying the people who are going to take this on and work with them to support others but also preparing enough materials so that the process of involvement is easy enough for anyone to pick it up and get started.

Making the residency sustainable

That’s why I’m working to embed this in our Digital Skills programme and have already trained 12 Wikimedia ambassadors to support the Wikimedia activities in their area of the university. That’s why I have created and curated 110 videos and video tutorials on the university’s Media Hopper channel. That’s why I’ve written up case studies and shared a reusable lesson plan on TES so anyone can teach Wikipedia editing. There is nothing worse than people struggling on their own to edit Wikipedia and becoming frustrated when they get told they are doing it the wrong way. Well, by sharing the right way and by showing how easy it now is I believe we can make this sustainable across Edinburgh and beyond.

Key learning points

  • Sharing good practice & working collaboratively is crucially important.
  • Creating a variety of stimulating events where practitioners from different backgrounds participate in an open knowledge community has proved to be a successful approach.
  • Wikipedia & its sister projects offer a great deal to Higher Education and can be successfully integrated to enhance the learning & teaching within the curriculum.
  • Areas of under-representation and systemic bias have proven to be extremely important motivators for participants.
  • Demystifying Wikipedia through presentations, workshops & scaffolded resources has yielded positive reactions & an increased understanding of Wikipedia’s important role in academia.

Reasons why other universities should also look into hosting a Wikimedian as part of their digital skills team.

Wikipedia comes of Age

 

  1. The new Visual Editor is super easy to learn, fun and addictive.
  2. Anyone can edit Wikipedia BUT there are checks and balances to help revert unhelpful edits in minutes. (Only 7% of edits are considered vandalism).
  3. Wikidata – query, analyse & visualise the largest reference work on the internet. Add your research data to combine datasets on Wikidata.
  4. WikiCite – tidying up the citations on Wikipedia to make a consistent, queryable bibliographic repository enhancing the visibility and impact of research.
  5. Wikisource – Quotations and images from long ago can still touch and inspire. Out of copyright texts such as digitised PhD theses can be uploaded & linked to from Wikipedia.
  6. Content Translation – The new tool allows Translation Students to get much-needed published translation practice and help share knowledge globally; correcting areas of under-representation and building understanding.
  7. The gender gap is real and working with Wikipedia helps address this as part of Athena Swan initiatives; creating new roles models for young & old alike.
  8. Develop students’ information literacy, digital literacy & research skills.
  9. Share your research & library collections’ material to Wikipedia the right way and open it up to a global Open Knowledge community of millions demonstrating impact with detailed metrics.
  10. Fake news is prevalent. Engaging with Wikipedia helps develop a critical information literate approach to its usage and to other online sources of information.

Wikipedia vs. Fake News

So there’s your summary of why you too should engage with Wikimedia. 10 good solid reasons why the cost of a Wikimedian, as just one more digital skills trainer among all your others, is peanuts compared to what the university as a whole can benefit out of the experience. Indeed, staff and students are already consulting Wikipedia for pre-research purposes so why not ensure gaps in representation and inaccuracies are addressed? Because if not you then who?

In conclusion

I began by saying the Chronicle of Higher Education acclaimed “Wikipedia had Come of Age” way back in 2011. With Wikipedia now 16 (going on 17) and this being the Politics of Open, I’ll leave you with one final thought, has Wikipedia now come of age? Is now the time for Wikipedia in Education?

And, to paraphrase our First Minister, if not now then when?

Wikipedia in Education: if not now then when?

Postscript

But don’t just take my word for it, here are the staff and students who have taken part in Wikipedia in the Classroom assignments at the University of Edinburgh this year.

Reflections on the Wikipedia assignments (video).

The feedback from the assignments this year has been really positive – from both staff and students.

Wikimedia- on the edge of OER17

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On March 15, 2017

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The 2017 Open Educational Resources Conference (OER17) will be held at Resource for London on the 5th and 6th April. The conference theme is “The Politics of Open” and has never been more timely. Registration closes 16th March so don’t delay.

Once again, there is a strong presence of people associated with Wikimedia UK, as well as other Wikimedians. As Wikipedia edges towards 17 years old and we get ever closer to OER17, here’s a look at the presentations coming up from Wikimedia – on the edge of OER17.

Stevie Nicks. By User:SandyMac [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Stevie Nicks. By User:SandyMac [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

(Sadly there will be no Stevie Nicks.)

  • The conference is co-chaired by Wikimedia UK trustee Josie Fraser and Creative Commons Poland co-founder Alek Tarkowski.
  • Wikimedia UK Chief Executive Lucy Crompton-Reid is one of the keynote speakers.

    Lucy Crompton-Reid (CEO Wikimedia UK) – By Simoncromptonreid (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

    Lucy Crompton-Reid has a career in the cultural, voluntary and public sectors spanning two decades, with a strong emphasis on leading and developing participatory practice and promoting marginalised voices. As Chief Executive of Wikimedia UK since October 2015, she has led the development of a new strategy focused on eradicating inequality and bias on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, with an emphasis on the gender gap and geographic bias. In the past year Lucy has given talks on equality and diversity at the Open Data Institute, Open Source Convention and MozFest, and recently spearheaded an international partnership between Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia communities around the world and the BBC, focused on closing the gender gap on Wikipedia. Lucy will be presenting: “Open as inclusive: Equality and Diversity on Wikimedia” at OER17.
  • Sara Mörtsell, Education Manager of WikimediaSE, will present on “How openness in mainstream K-12 education can advance with Wikimedia and GLAMs in Sweden” – This proposal addresses how mainstream K-12 education can transition to use and share open educational resources and play a part in the future direction of the open educational movement (Weller 2014). The presentation is based on practical experience of a one year OER project in 2016 with 230 students in K-12 education from both minority and dominant communities in the city of Stockholm.
    Sara Mörtsell. Pic by Jonatan Svensson Glad [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

    Sara Mörtsell. Pic by Jonatan Svensson Glad [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

  • Stefan Lutschinger, an academic and Wikipedia Campus Ambassador at Middlesex University, will present on “Open Pedagogy and Student Wellbeing: Academic Confidence Building with Wikipedia Assignments“. Stefan’s talk talk will introduce the use of Wikipedia assignments in higher education, present a case study, discuss its benefits for students’ academic confidence building and propose a framework for evaluation and critical reflection. The evidence is based on the compulsory course module (level 6) ‘MED3040 Publishing Cultures’ of the BA (Hons) Creative Writing and Journalism degree programme at Middlesex University, Department of Media, developed in cooperation with Wikimedia UK and the Wiki Education Foundation.
  • Me in Mallaig after walking the West Highland Way and riding the Harry Potter train.

    Ewan McAndrew – Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh (Own work CC-BY-SA)

    Ewan McAndrew, Wikimedian In Residence at the University of Edinburgh, is delivering a presentation on “Lo and Behold: Reveries of a Connected Campus: Reflections from the Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh”.  While there have been previous Wikimedia residencies based in UK cultural institutions focussing on opening up collections, five years have now passed since Grathwohl (2011) acclaimed Wikipedia had ‘come of age’ in formal education settings with Wikipedia still representing the oft-ignored “elephant in the room” (Brox, 2012). Hosting a Wikimedian at a Higher Education institution to embed the creation of OER in the curriculum does therefore represent something of a shift in the paradigm. This presentation discusses one such residency and the lessons learnt from the first 15 months.

  • The artwork "Een vertaling van de ene taal naar de andere" / "A Translation from one language to another" by Lawrence Weiner. Placed in 1996 at the Spui (square) in Amsterdam. It consists of three pairs of two stones placed against each other. On each stone there is an inscription "A Translation from one language to another", in another language - Dutch, English, Surinam and Arabic. Author: brbbl (CC-BY-SA)

    The artwork “Een vertaling van de ene taal naar de andere” / “A Translation from one language to another” by Lawrence Weiner. Author: brbbl (CC-BY-SA)

    Ewan will also be giving a lightning talk on “Building bridges not walls – Wikipedia’s new Content Translation tool”. Wikipedia’s new Content Translation tool offers an impactful means of sharing open knowledge globally between languages as it brings up an article on one side of the screen in one language and helps translate it, paragraph by paragraph, to create the article in a different language taking all the formatting across to the new article so a native speaker just has to check to make sure the translation is as good as it can be. This presentation will outline the successful models already employed in a Higher Education context.

  • Martin Poulter By Ziko (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

    Martin Poulter By Ziko (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

    Martin Poulter, Wikimedian In Residence at the University of Oxford, is giving a presentation on “Putting Wikipedia and Open Practice into the mainstream in a University”. OER Conference attendees are often part of a minority group of Open Education advocates in their institutions, and it is a hard challenge to change wider institutional policy and culture. This presentation will share lessons learned from experience in a UK university, using Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects as well as Open Access research publication as levers to encourage an open approach to education. The drive towards open access to the outputs of research, and open access to the collections of cultural institutions, are potentially powerful drivers for the creation of open educational content. This session explores how to push academic culture in that direction.
  • #1Lib1Ref - 1 Librarian adding 1 Reference

    Citation (desperately) needed. #PoliticsOfOpen

    Ewan and Martin are jointly giving a lightning talk on “Citation Needed: Digital Provenance in the era of Post-Truth Politics“.This session covers why the most important frontier of Wikipedia is not its content but its 30 million plus citations (Orlowitz, 2016) and the latest developments behind the WikiCite project after its first year. The WikiCite initiative is to build a repository of all Wikimedia citations and bibliographic metadata in Wikidata to serve all Wikimedia projects. The ultimate goal to make Wikipedia’s citations as “reliable, open, accessible, structured, linked and free as our Knowledge is.”(Orlowitz, 2016)

  • Gamifying Wikimedia - Learning through play (Pic from Ada Lovelace Day 2016 at the University of Edinburgh - own work CC-BY-SA).

    Gamifying Wikimedia – Learning through play (Pic from Ada Lovelace Day 2016 at the University of Edinburgh – own work CC-BY-SA).

    Ewan and Martin will also be running a workshop on “Gamifying Wikimedia – Learning through Play (Workshop)“. This workshop will demonstrate that crowd-sourcing contributions to Wikimedia’s family of Open Education projects does not have to involve a heavy time component and that short fun, enjoyable activities can be undertaken which enhance the opportunities for teaching & learning and the dissemination of open knowledge. Participants will be guided through a series of Wikimedia tools; running through the purpose of each tool, how they can be used to support open education alongside practical demos.

  • Wikimedia UK volunteer Navino Evans is giving a workshop on “Histropedia – Building an open interactive history of everything with Wikimedia content“.
    By Wittylama (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

    Navino Evans and Histropedia. Pic by Wittylama (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

    Histropedia is a web application aiming to create free interactive timelines on every topic in history using open data from Wikimedia projects like Wikidata, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.All Histropedia timelines are published under an open licence, which means they can be reused and remixed for any purpose, both within Histropedia and elsewhere on the web. Tools like Histropedia provide an incentive for donating text, data and images to Wikimedia projects, as it can instantly be visualised in exciting ways without incurring any cost.
    Histropedia timeline of University of Edinburgh female alumni; colour-coded by place of birth and with language labels in Japanese, Russian, Arabic and English.

    Histropedia timeline of University of Edinburgh female alumni; colour-coded by place of birth and with language labels in Japanese, Russian, Arabic and English.

    It also shows how data becomes more valuable when it’s open, as it can be combined and compared with other data in a way that is not possible when kept in isolation. It’s our hope that Histropedia can play a role in getting more educational institutions to engage with Wikimedia content and other open resources, as well as inspire others to build innovative applications on top of the wealth of free knowledge that’s available. In this workshop, we will learn how to use Histropedia by completing a sequence of practical exercises to find, combine and improve content.

  • Alice White, Wikimedian in Residence at the Wellcome Library, will also in attendance running a Wikimedia session in the Lewis Suite.
    Alice White- By Zeromonk (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

    Alice White- By Zeromonk (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

    Something for everyone there. Look forward to seeing you there!

Seeing the links at the ‘Celtic Knot’ – Wikipedia Language Conference

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On March 10, 2017

In Uncategorized

By David J. Fred [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Tying the Celtic Knot. Pic by David J. Fred [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

The first ‘Celtic Knot’ – Wikipedia Language Conference will take place Thursday 6 July 2017 at the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with Wikimedia UK. This Wikimedia event will focus on Celtic Languages and Indigenous Languages, showcasing innovative approaches to open education, open knowledge and open data that support and grow language communities.

CC-BY-SA (Own work)

CC-BY-SA (Own work)

To assist with seeing the connections and areas of commonality between your work and the Celtic Knot conference please read the below guide to the Wikimedia projects:

The Celtic Knot conference is jointly supported by the University of Edinburgh and Wikimedia UK.

Wikimedia UK logo

Wikimedia UK logo

Wikimedia UK is the registered charity that supports and promotes Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, and the volunteers who write, edit and curate the content of the projects.

Our mission is to help people and organisations create and preserve open knowledge and to provide easy access for all. We support the widest possible public access to, use of and contribution to open content of an encyclopaedic or educational nature.

  • Culture: We work closely with cultural institutions, including galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) to help them realise the potential of openly-licensed content for public benefit.
  • Education: Wikipedia is more than a reference work. All over the world people and institutions are exploring the ways that Wikipedia can be used as a formal education tool. It belongs in education.
  • Volunteers: The Wikimedia projects are written, edited and curated by volunteers who are just like you. There are many ways to get involved – there are activities to suit the interests of everybody. You can also become a member of the charity.
Wikimedia's family of Open Knowledge projects

Wikimedia’s family of Open Knowledge projects

 

Wikimedia’s family of Open Knowledge projects include:

  • Wikipedia: the free online encyclopaedia exists in each Celtic and Indigenous language and Wikipedia’s new Content Translation tool allows articles to be translated easily between different language Wikipedias.
  • Wikimedia Commons: a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language.
  • Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. Wikidata acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects and many other sites and services beyond. Wikidata can connect other databases and collections of information, allowing computers and software to see connections between hundreds of data sources. GLAM institutions (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) realise that their collections become more useful and reusable when they are deeply interlinked with other collections around the world. Creating open structured data for their collections increases their impact on the public.
  • Wikisource – The Free Library – is a multilingual project to create a growing free content library of OCR-ed source texts, as well as translations of source texts in any language including constitutional documents, court rulings, plays, poems, songs, novels, short stories, letters, travel writing, speeches, obituaries, news articles and more.
  • Wiktionary, a collaborative project to produce a free-content multilingual dictionary.
  • Wikibooks is a multilingual project for collaboratively writing open-content textbooks that anyone can edit including textbooks, annotated texts, instructional guides, and manuals. These materials can be used in a traditional classroom, an accredited or respected institution, a home-school environment or for self-learning.
  • Wikivoyage—a multilingual, web-based project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide.

In addition, the Wiki Education Foundation connects secondary & higher education to the publishing power of Wikipedia. Bridging Wikipedia and academia creates opportunities for any learner to contribute to, and access, open knowledge. We cultivate deeper learning for students as they expand Wikipedia articles for course assignments. We work with libraries to expand the public’s access to their resources. We support academic associations as they expand and improve Wikipedia’s coverage of their field.

If you can see a clear commonality between your work and the projects above then we welcome diverse attendees and presenters working in Celtic and Indigenous languages ranging from Wikimedians, educators, researchers, information professionals, media professionals, linguists, translators, learning technologists and more coming together to share good practice and find fruitful new collaborations to support language communities as a result of the event.

Conference Themes

  • Building language confidence: participation, public engagement & social equality.
  • Putting our language on the map: preserving & opening up our cultural heritage.
  • Languages on the road to open: ongoing or new projects and initiatives in open knowledge, open education and open data.
  • The politics of language: Local, national, and international policy and practice; advocacy for funding, institutional and community support and investment
  • Hacking; making; sharing

The offical call for session proposals has now closed but email ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk if you would like to attend or have a session you would like to showcase.

NB: Abstracts have now been reviewed as of April 2017 and notifications sent out to speakers.

Wikipedia assignment – Translation Studies MSc

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On January 5, 2017

In Uncategorized

 

 

The artwork "Een vertaling van de ene taal naar de andere" / "A Translation from one language to another" by Lawrence Weiner. Placed in 1996 at the Spui (square) in Amsterdam. It consists of three pairs of two stones placed against each other. On each stone there is an inscription "A Translation from one language to another", in another language - Dutch, English, Surinam and Arabic. Author: brbbl (CC-BY-SA)

The artwork “Een vertaling van de ene taal naar de andere” / “A Translation from one language to another” by Lawrence Weiner. Placed in 1996 at the Spui (square) in Amsterdam. It consists of three pairs of two stones placed against each other. On each stone there is an inscription “A Translation from one language to another”, in another language – Dutch, English, Surinam and Arabic. Author: brbbl (CC-BY-SA)

The University of Edinburgh offers a taught Translation Studies. As part of an independent study module, students were asked to choose a Wikipedia article that was at least 4000 words long and to translate it into another language. 29 people took part in the assignment, translating articles from English to Arabic, Chinese, French, Greek, Turkish, Japanese and from Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Norwegian (bokmal) into English. Students were allowed to choose the article and language they wished to work on but the article choice had to be run past their course tutor who would check the article’s suitability for a class assignment in terms of the article’s subject and the degree of challenge to the language used in the article. Importantly, the tutors were prepared to reject any articles they thought were too simple in the language being used or too frivolous in the subject matter with students reminded that the purpose of the assignment was to further develop their translation skills in tandem with supporting the dissemination of important articles into another language. (The relative importance of the article being decided in negotiation between the student and the tutor.)

The assignment was structured with two in-person training sessions after which students were expected to translate the articles in their own time and submit them. The first in-person session introduced the students to editing Wikipedia and then got them to select the articles they would be working on. The Gapfinder tool was used to help identify trending pages with no corresponding coverage in the target language. A week later at the second in-person session, the students began the process of translating their chosen article.

The students used the Content Translation tool to prepare their translations which helped with the formatting of the article so that they could focus on the translation itself. There is a screencast demonstrating how to use the Content Translation tool which students watched at the end of session one and received more detailed instruction on the use of the tool in session two. The students had until the end of the semester (15 December) to complete and publish the translations.

As of writing, the assignment is now complete and a third in-person drop-in session was held to assist the students with any issues relating to the publishing of the articles. The students were also supported by email. Issues did arise, such as the source article being edited by a Wikipedia community member during the translation process. However, the student in question was able to flag this concern via email and I was able to look at the issue and advise promptly not to change the nature of the translation but instead stick with the older version they had begun to translate. Referencing and notability has also been flagged up when an article has been published in the target Wikipedia but again the student in question was reassured that ensuring the referencing is as clear & detailed as on the source Wikipedia will mean there is no problem. The course is routinely monitored with any issues noted to ensure best practice is documented for future iterations of this project. Student volunteers and course tutors have also provided video interview feedback on the course.

The is the first time Wikimedia UK has supported a translation classroom course, and the first time it has encouraged the use of the Content Translation tool – and we are keen to learn how this will develop. The course has been making a very positive impression within the university so far and there’s an commitment on both sides to continue this assignment next semester too.

In addition, through the running of this course in Translation Studies MSc, the residency has been introduced to Edinburgh University’s Translation Society (EUTS). Student representatives from EUTS learned of the Wikipedia Translation assignment through the Translation Studies MSc course leader and requested to take part in the exercise. As there was not enough in the computing lab to accommodate them during the in-person sessions, the EUTS reps sought to meet in order to learn more about how their society could collaborate with Wikimedia in a way that would be mutually beneficial. The meeting was extremely positive and there are now plans to have an EUTS translation project beginning in February 2017 where the student reps will invite all 100+ of their members to attend and take part in. Discussions are at an early stage but both parties are keen to see this happen with current consideration being given to whether the project should have an over-arching theme, fitting in with students’ interest areas and Wikimedia’s strategic priorities; using University College London’s translation editathon themed on women’s health as a model for the collaboration.

There have been additional benefits from the session as also in attendance during the assignment was a staff member from Edinburgh University’s MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine. The staff member in question works as a Eurostemcell Translation Manager and is keen to support the translation of Eurostemcell related articles into different languages as the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine works closely with European partner labs to share research knowledge related to the study of stemcells; particularly on Wikipedia as they receive research funding on this very basis. Consequently, a Danish Wikimedia trainer has been contacted and secured for a scheduled Eurostemcell Wikipedia editathon at a Danish partner lab in Copenhagen at the end of November 2016. If this Danish pilot works well then the Eurostemcell team plan on holding Wikipedia editathons every year for World Stem Cell Day.

Teaching with Wikipedia – how to get started (an Edinburgh University case study)

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On June 10, 2016

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Wikipedia is much more straightforward using the new Visual Editor interface which makes editing Wikipedia now as easy as using Microsoft Word. Students can be taught how to edit in approximately 60 minutes and thereafter can research and write, with academic rigour, brand new Wikipedia articles.

The video interview provided by the University of Edinburgh’s Dr. Chris Harlow illustrates  the Wikipedia research session he ran in September 2015.

Dr. Chris Harlow - Reproductive Biology (University of Edinburgh)

Dr. Chris Harlow – Reproductive Biology (University of Edinburgh)

A practical example of engaging with Wikipedia in teaching and learning – watch Dr. Chris Harlow speak about his recent experiences introducing Wikipedia to his 3rd year Honours students to researching & writing a Wikipedia article.

Teaching with Wikipedia – Dr. Chris Harlow (Reproductive Biology research session)

Duration: (7:09)
User: Ewan McAndrew – Added: 03/06/16

YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIHlOWxepoc

Some additional resources & recent examples of approaches to teaching with Wikipedia are detailed here:

1.    Teaching with Wikipedia (University of Edinburgh examples)

2.    How to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool (PDF)

3.    Wikipedia Education Program – Case Studies: How universities are teaching with Wikipedia (PDF)

If you would like to know more about how Wikipedia fits in with academia then these recent articles make very compelling reading:

1.    Wikipedia 15 and education

2.    Wikipedia the digital gateway to academic research

The project page for the residency with details on upcoming events is located here: Wikipedia: University of Edinburgh and the latest Wikipedia training session (30th June 2016) is available to book here: bit.ly/1UdQ4f6

Further video tutorials can be found on the Wikimedian in Residence Youtube channel here.

Further examples of Teaching with Wikipedia include:

Making use of Wikipedia’s new Content Translation tool – University College, London.

  1. The UCL’s Wikipedia ‘Translate-a-thon’ is written up here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/case-studies-news/e-learning/teaching-translation-wikipedia
  2. In addition, UCL also ran a Wikipedia session for familiarising Year 1 undergraduates with using sources – making good use of the Wiki Education project dashboard to allow educators to manage & monitor class Wikipedia assignments & communicate with students from a central hub: https://prezi.com/apxnjcabgtdd/when-ucl-students-write-wikipedia.
  3. This one also includes how Wikipedia work complements UCL’s educational strategic aims.

Telling the stories of rural England with Wikipedia – The University of Portsmouth.
 Dr Humphrey Southall, Reader in Geography, University of Portsmouth, written with Dr Martin Poulter, describe a Wikipedia-based assignment given to first-year students in Applied Human Geography and also looking at how academics can inform the widest public about their subject, and raise awareness of the reliable sources used in research.

 

In addition – Wiki Education resources

Wiki Education has a variety of materials which may be helpful. 

Whisky (and Projects) Galore!

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On June 9, 2016

In Uncategorized

The residency so far

The residency so far

As the dust settled after the hectic days of Spy Week 2016 and OER16 came to a close and the university exam period came and went, I was left thinking… what’s next?

Projects in development (from the University of Edinburgh Wikimedia residency page)

  • History of Veterinary Medicine edit-a-thon – Event for Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies staff to research & create articles relating to the history of veterinary medicine. 4th July 2016
  • Euro Stem Cell Editathon at Centre for Regenerative Medicine, Edinburgh. Editathon for UoE staff and Eurostemcell partner labs in Europe & at the Wellcome Library.
  • Wikidata (& WikiSource) Showcase (with Pauline Ward & Histropedia’s Navino Evans) at the John McIntyre Conference Centre JMCC – 1st & 2nd August 2016
  • Reproductive Medicine Edit-a-thon (with Dr. Chris Harlow) – 21 September and 28 September. Partnering with West Virginia University.
  • Vet School Wikipedia research session – Edit-a-thon event for Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies students to research & create new Wikipedia articles on Veterinary Medicine. Proposed for October 5th 2016.
  • International Alumni project – Celebrating the international students who studied at Edinburgh University and gone on to have a huge impact abroad (including simultaneous editathons, hopefully, in Singapore & Hong Kong to create a global edit-a-thon). Mooted for early October 2016 for Black History Month.
  • Ada Lovelace Day – Tuesday 11th October 2016 – celebrating the achievements of Women in STEM with a particular focus on female mentors given that Mary Somerville will grace the new £10 note. Truly noteworthy.
  • Day of the Dead editathon – Monday 31st October 2016 – using the obituaries from Scottish & UK newspapers to recognise & celebrate the lives of those sadly passed away.
  • Edinburgh Gothic (agreed a partnership with the National Library of Scotland) – Saturday 12th November. Marking the day before Robert Louis Stevenson Day, the National Library of Scotland will join us to celebrate the best of Edinburgh Gothic, releasing Robert Louis Stevenson images into the public domain to Wikicommons (wherever possible) and any additional material not yet transcribed onto Wikisource. Looking to see if we can combine efforts in gothic art, gothic history, gothic costume design, gothic music, gothic film, gothic literature etc. to fill any gaps on Wikipedia… in the most macabre way.
  • The Kelvin Hall relaunch (in Glasgow) – mooted for late November / early December 2016 (again in collaboration with the National Library of Scotland). The idea is to create an edit-a-thon based on the Moving Image Archive by showing participants short films from the archive on the Video Wall there, creating Wikipedia articles for the films & filmmakers, and showing a longer film afterwards at the Hunterian cinema.
  • Translate-a-thon – Reaching out to bilingual and multi-lingual students to translate articles from English Wikipedia to their own native language Wikipedia (& vice versa) using Wikipedia’s new Content Translation tool.
  • Festival of Architecture 2016 – An architecture-themed editathon to celebrate the achievements of architects for the Festival of Architecture 2016.
Whisky Galore

Whisky Galore

And the whisky? It seems my less than unsubtle hints following my trip to Skye in April resulted in my getting a fair few bottles for my birthday.

Projects and whisky galore. Lots to be excited about and lots to get on with!

 

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