Wikipedia talk:Student assignments

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Student assignments page.

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(Any final policy discussion will take place only on related policy talk page This is just preliminary inputs round.)

Proposal  : Student's academic drafts be tagged as 'Academic Student's draft' in draft namespace and extend draft life for academic student drafts up to four years from present six months.

Reasoning:

Positive part is academic books are available with students and they can work on assigned topics to fill information and knowledge gaps not touched by non-academic Wikipedians compared to usual focus of popular topics by non-academic Wikipedians.

To my understanding academic assignments by students are supposed to be peer reviewed by other students and then approved by their professor before being posted on Wikipedia. My observation is peer review by other students and final review and corrections by professors are usually missed.

Same time various batches of student seem to be working on the same topic year after year. What I propose here is student's academic student draft be tagged as 'Academic draft' in draft namespace and extend draft life for academic student draft up to four years from present six months. So next batch students can peer review content of previous batches and improve. Four year term will give enough time to professors also for evaluation of the content being posted by their students and get necessary course correction. -- Bookku (talk) 13:05, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Pinging @Boud, Ahunt, and BilCat: Since I read their certain concerns at Draft talk:Women's Participation in Peacekeeping and User talk:Ahunt. Bookku (talk) 13:12, 9 July 2023 (UTC) [reply]

I would agree with the concept of tagging these articles as "academic drafts", but don't see the point of a longer deletion cycle. In my experience these drafts normally get abandoned at the end of the semester (three months max) and so the normal six month cycle seems to be a good idea. I think a longer draft period will just increase the number of abandoned drafts. - Ahunt (talk) 16:15, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think six months would work just fine for now. If each successive class begins within 6 months of the previous one ending, the draft will still be there. If some classes are only once a year, and it becomes a problem with them being deleted, then we can revisit this. For now, having a professor request an undelete should suffice.

Another suggestion is that academic drafts could be copies of mainspace articles that students could work on without fear of their edits being reverted as being "unencyclopedic". Certain issues, such as BLP and copyvios, would of course still need to be enforced. At the end of the semester/term, a professor could post a request on the main article page for editors to review the drafts, and incorporate any good material into the main article. (Such editors would probably need access to the academic sources used to verify that the content is actually supported by the sources. BilCat (talk) 18:30, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

.. If some classes are only once a year, and it becomes a problem with them being deleted, then we can revisit this. ..

My impression is in most cases new batch of students join annually.

.. If some classes are only once a year, and it becomes a problem with them being deleted, then we can revisit this. For now, having a professor request an undelete should suffice. ..

WP:NOTBURO ?

Bookku (talk) 02:33, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't see any reason to treat student drafts differently than any other drafts. Part of what should be the learning process in a class project is for the students to experience Wikipedia editing the same as anyone else does, so carving out any kind of special dispensation gets in the way of that. We already deal with large backlogs of drafts, so I'd rather not add further complexity to the process. If an instructor wants to keep material from one semester to another, the instructor can simply move the content into userspace. I also would object to using the word "academic" for "academic drafts", because this is not scholarly work in the sense of what faculty and other academic scholars publish. Rather, if we were to call them anything, it should be "student drafts". --Tryptofish (talk) 19:38, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I do endorse what User:Tryptofish has written here. - Ahunt (talk) 21:26, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

.. a class project is for the students to experience Wikipedia editing the same as anyone else does ..

The way topics are assigned IMO it's generally part of student studies plus faculty's interest in addressing information and knowledge gaps in Wikipedia and not just experiencing Wikipedia. How much individual student succeeds in given assignment is different aspect- that's becoming our concern.

..In my experience these drafts normally get abandoned at the end of the semester ..

My point is particular student is abandoning the draft, faculty is not abandoning the topic.

If drafts are topic wise, Continuation of draft for longer period does not increase number of drafts rather would reduce number of abandoned drafts.

From Wikipedia ambassador once they know unless draft - if any topic is not worked by four students from four batches and they clearly improving it things are not going to progress I suppose co-operation and monitoring level and quality may improve.

Bookku (talk) 02:54, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You quoted me about the purpose of a class project being for students to experience Wikipedia editing the same as anyone else, and I stand by that. When the instructor makes a decision to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool, they are doing so in such a way that they are using Wikipedia as it actually exists. If they think that they can expect Wikipedia to change the way we do business simply as a courtesy to the instructor, they are grievously mistaken, to the point of being WP:NOTHERE. They have lots of alternatives when designing a class. They can have students look at Wikipedia articles and create new material that is submitted in class, but not posted on Wikipedia servers. So they do not have to design the class in a manner that includes hitting the "publish" button. Rather, that's an educational choice. By the way, I'm the primary author of this information page, and I wrote that editors are not unpaid teaching assistants for a reason. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:45, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Opposed to the proposal, as there's no good reason for it. And if it passes, somehow, then I'm opposed to the name, which is essentially WP:PUFFERY. There's no reason to puff up the submission of one brand new editor over any other, by labeling their contributions in a certain way, just because they happen to be enrolled in a Wikipedia education-monitored class. Mathglot (talk) 03:13, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  This is just one of the idea suggested, in an effort to find solution to our common concerns. A very basic level discussion to seek inputs, we are not expecting votes, we can not finalize policies here that what is clearly mentioned in this talk page instructions.

  Name means 'academic drafts'? , the point is taken I would be okay with wording 'student draft' too. As such original suggestion about tagging 'student draft' is not mine. I just took initiative to facilitate discussion to find solutions for concerns being discussed. Bookku (talk) 03:54, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Opposed – my experience is that one day after their course ends, a student editor is gone, and will no longer respond to comments or questions on their Talk page, user sandbox, or anywhere else. Four years won't make any difference; at that point, they are probably trying to get into grad school or are already there, and are even busier than before, or they are otherwise busy finding their footing in adult life. Keeping it open for four years won't do much. Just my two cents, but I've watched a lot of student editing, and exceptions to that pattern are rare. I'll bet my paycheck that shortening the life of student draft from six months to six days after the class end date (or six hours) will likely generate zero requests for WP:REFUND. Mathglot (talk) 09:14, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  The disappearance of student editors immediately after the course is done, never to return, has been my experience, as well. Most of the instructors also follow this pattern. Until, lo and behold, several months or a year later when they're back with a new crop to start the same pattern. With only one exception, their contribs and interactions have been frustrating and a waste of time. - CorbieVreccan ^☊ ☼ 20:40, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the large amount of effort jc37 put into revising the page over the past day. However, I dislike the overly brief and bland lead section, and would like to take it back to something more like what it was before. I won't be hasty about it, and would like to take a little time to think it over, so I thought I'd post this here and invite comments from other editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:11, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There was a gaggle of various things there, which I tried to merge to some sensibility. I won't say I was wholly successful lol. The page really could use work on clarity.

All that said, as I mentioned inn the edit summary when I wrote the current sentence in the lead - it really needs work. And really was just a place holder. So if you've got better ideas, great : )

But I think we should avoid the lead being quite as negative as the stuff I merged from the lead and the overview section into "challenges". It probably should be something more neutral and explanatory. What do you think? - jc37 20:04, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I actually think a certain amount of negativity is a feature, rather than a bug. Not that I want to scare anyone off, but the original impetus for creating this page was that there are problems, and that remains as true now as it was then. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:42, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I don't think they should go away, but the title of the page is "student assignments". We should be providing tools for usage right at the start. I particularly was uncomfortable how far down, deeply buried in walls of text, the caution about student usernames and privacy was.

It's like this page has been morphed to serve two main duties. A guide for starting and running an ed course, and also how to interact with that pesky community : )

I think the page needs to draw a clearer line between those two goals, for clarity, understandability, and really just so someone who needs info can get to it quickly and not have to skim through walls-of-text. - jc37 21:00, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging StartGrammarTime, Dustfreeworld, Tryptofish, and Sage (Wiki Ed) as I think you'll all be interested:

I'd like us to think about creating a page that collects basic statistics about student editors compared to other editors. Like: we block a hundred accounts for spam and vandalism per day, but basically zero students get blocked. We revert 10% of all editors' first edits, but only 5% of students' first edits. Most student accounts are active over the space of weeks or months; most other accounts never come back on a second day. 25% of students post on a talk page, but only 15% of other newbies post on a talk page.

When editors see a class that goes wrong, they see a big mess with an identifiable, central target they can blame. They can't see the context (all the good edits) or the de-centralized, individual messes (all the mistakes that everyone makes on the way to becoming better contributors). It's like saying "Don't take this drug, because 10% of the people taking it eventually die from heart disease", without noticing that twice as many people not taking that drug die from heart disease. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You make a point here that is similar to what you have been saying at WP:ANI#Strange editing from Uskudar University. To some extent, I agree with you, that there are lots of good class projects that get overlooked when the bad ones get in the spotlight. On the other hand, my reaction to the idea of putting in work on collecting such data is a big so-what? I think that asking volunteer editors to compile it depends on, well, finding editors who are willing to volunteer for that (not me). Perhaps WikiEd already has such data, and it would certainly be interesting to see. But it seems to me that the rationale for starting such an effort rests on the desire to rebut editors who criticize class projects. In my experience, most criticism of class projects is directed at specific assignments, and the criticism is frequently well-founded (usually because the instructor fails to act responsibly, leaving student editors in an unfair situation). There are perennial suggestions that all student projects should be banned, but those never come close to getting consensus, and I'm not too interested in developing data to rebut proposals that are going to fail anyway. (I guess I should also point out that this is the talk page of an information page, as opposed to a talk page of some sort of project.) --Tryptofish (talk) 00:11, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that collecting the "all editors" data is pretty easy (well, easy for me, since most of it would likely involve me asking @Cryptic at WP:RAQ to do all the work ;-) ). The education dashboard collects statistics on things like how many sources (i.e., pairs of ref tags) students add and how many articles they edit, so I assume that it would be possible to aggregate it. Wiki Edu may have already done that, since they publish some statistics on student activities. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:29, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very interesting idea - I'm not sure whether it's something the already-existing Wiki reporting tools can do, or if we'd need to either find someone who can create a tool or do it manually. The latter would, I suggest, be almost impossible considering how many new accounts are made. (It sounds like you might already have a plan to get this to work, WhatamIdoing!)

Tryptofish's point that criticism is usually aimed at specific poorly-managed assignments is one I completely agree with. Maybe the comparison we're looking for is how a well-managed student group behaves, and the benefit they bring to the Wiki, as opposed to how a poorly-managed student group behaves. This is not to cast any aspersions on the students themselves, who for the most part seem to be doing their best to comply with the rules they've been shown but quite reasonably do not have the time to go through all our policies and guidelines as an ordinary new editor could. Wiki has no deadline, but the students sure do!

My background is in student administration and in my experience we need to be able to reach the instructors - if not before the assignment begins, then as swiftly as possible afterwards. If we could find a way to step in the moment disruption begins to occur, and inform the instructor that they need to stop their students until ground rules can be put in place, we would have a much better shot at reaching the entire class or even convincing the instructor to change the form of the assignment before things get out of control. Student projects gone wrong create a focus of disruption and veteran-editor annoyance, rather than the everyday small irritant of vandals and NOTHEREs and all the rest. StartGrammarTime (talk) 01:42, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WhatamIdoing - the stats for Wiki Education classes can be downloaded here. Brianda (Wiki Ed) or I get notified when a student in one of the classes we support gets blocked and it's an extremely rare occurrence.

As far as heading off problems before they devolve into disruptive behaviour, the most valuable tool for us is community members who know we exist. Yesterday someone informed me that a student had assigned themselves the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which allowed me to contact the instructor immediately and warn the student off.

The Dashboard also provides a way for students to contact us with questions easily, and sends us alerts when students make certain types of edits. These allow us to look at what they've done and intervene sometimes. We can also filter classes based on how active they've been (both in terms of edits and activity in mainspace). A lot of the time those are classes making solid contributions, but sometimes a flurry of activity is a warning that there's something happening that needs a closer look.

Of course we can't monitor every class that closely, especially at the busiest times of the semester, and there's nothing more valuable than community members who ping us when they see something happening that could benefit from an intervention. And more importantly, we can't do much for classes that are outside the US or Canada, or those who are in one of those countries but choose to proceed without our help.

And while a poorly-managed course can become a problem, a well-managed class should be relatively invisible. Helaine (Wiki Ed) provides a lot to support the instructors who work with us, including running weekly office hours for them. Building trust matters, especially if we're forced to tell them "this group of students need to stop editing". Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:01, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ian (Wiki Ed), that looks good. "Fall 2023" seems to have ~6,200 account names, so I assume that's an aggregate list. If we combine the Spring, Summer, and Fall, would that pick up all the classes during 2023, or are there some that don't appear in those three lists?

I pulled the names for a short one as a test run, and found nobody blocked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:44, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WhatamIdoing - yes, combining those three will include all the 2023 students. Anecdotally I'd say most blocks are either username blocks, and most of the rest are older accounts like this one which I suspect are compromised accounts with weak passwords. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:02, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Quick update with the numbers we've collected so far:

• In 2023, 812,635 registered editors made at least one edit.
• In 2023, 1,968,290 new accounts were registered.
• In 2023, 478,218 editors both registered an account and made at least one edit here. (This means that more than half of the editors who made any edits last were making their first [and frequently only] edit.)
• In 2023, 12,661 students were enrolled in a class supported by the Wiki Education Foundation. (About 20 of them didn't make a userpage. A few of them had created accounts before taking a class. One name in the list didn't register an account; another didn't get recorded correctly. I noticed three [~1 in 4,000] that are currently blocked: username, copyvio, and spam, but we haven't determined how many of them were temporarily blocked.)
• In 2023, 82,865 registered editors got blocked at least once. (Not all of them made an edit during 2023, but this is on the order of 10% of the people who made an edit last year.)
• In 2023, 73,528 editors created a new account, made an edit, and got blocked one or more times. (This number includes people who got blocked in January 2024. This is around 15% [~1 in 6] of new accounts that made any edits.)

Many thanks to Cryptic for doing most of the work and correcting errors I've made. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Except for the first (the 812,635 figure), "made an edit" wasn't necessarily in 2023. —Cryptic 23:19, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this correction @Cryptic. What else could someone do to turn up in that count, with a 2023 timestamp, but not make an edit during 2023? Would an action like a page move be counted? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Register in 2023, (maybe get blocked in 2023 or 2024), make an edit in 2024. —Cryptic 02:33, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I thought that "#/users w/any edits in 2023" didn't check when the account was created. Are you saying that creating the account itself is an action that could be found in WHERE rev_timestamp LIKE '2023%'? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's the first, the one I said was described correctly. It's the third "In 2023, 478218 editors both registered an account and made at least one edit here" and sixth "In 2023, 73,528 editors created a new account, made an edit, and got blocked one or more times" that aren't. The only thing about either of those that was necessarily in 2023 is the registration. —Cryptic 22:37, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I find myself agreeing with Tryptofish. It is a distracting from real issues, which should be addressed. (I am critical of the teachers, not the students, who are only doing what they've been told to do, which is often beyond their abilities).

We have a little window on what people do while logged in with accounts, but not on people themselves. So we don't really know how many of these accounts are the same person, getting blocked multiple times, say. If malicious bot accounts are a problem on twitter, do we have any idea how big that problem is on Wikipedia? Or some hacker collective somewhere creating 100 accounts a day to post pro-Russia vandalism, say.

I don't think comparing students behaviour on class assignments to the behaviour of "accounts" is a valid thing to do. We don't generally in real life decide that problem behaviour X is ignorable because problem behaviours Y and Z hugely outnumber it or are hugely worse. Misogynistic behaviour in the workplace is a problem, and the number of murders in the community don't change whether that's a problem or not or whether we should do something about it or not. I think the stats on what random "accounts" do and how many get themself blocked on the first edit or soon after are as entirely irrelevant to whether there is a problem with some class assignments, as the number of murderers are to whether office behaviour needs improving. That the problems with class assignments rarely lead to blocks is to be expected (they'd have been shut down along with paid account editing long ago if that was the case) but that doesn't mean the problems aren't real and causing editors real pain. We don't generally block people if their only edits to Wikipedia article space are three paragraphs of copyvio in one article and two paragraphs of confused content in another article and then no further edits whatsoever. In fact, our blocking policy is specifically unable to deal with "hit and run" behaviour, which is typical behaviour for all classes.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, we only see these students in class. Students in a real classroom are not taking illicit drugs, are not getting drunk and driving or fighting each other, are not assaulting people, or getting parking tickets. Analysing their behaviour in the classroom tells us practically nothing (and would be very concerning if their behaviour in class was criminal). So I think these stats are a bit like going "Wow, look at these students, they never get parking tickets". So? -- Colin°^Talk 08:37, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We don't generally in real life decide that problem behaviour X is ignorable because problem behaviours Y and Z hugely outnumber it or are hugely worse. Except that we do? The police in my area, for example, have stopped enforcing the speed limits on highways until you are traveling at least 150% the posted limit. They have decided to ignore problem behavior X (traveling at 101% to 149% the speed limit) because problem behavior Y (traveling at 150% or more the speed limit) is hugely worse.

Before editors complain that students cause particular problems, shouldn't we find out if it's actually true? For example, we know that non-students are more likely to have copyvio problems, simply because there were 40x as many new non-students editing last year, and 65x as many non-student accounts (of all ages/experience) editing last year. New student editors, new non-student editors, and experienced non-student editors all cause copyvio problems. It is IMO likely (but currently unknown) that new non-students editors are disproportionately likely to cause copyvios compared to the other two groups, and that experienced non-student editors cause the largest problems (see, e.g., approximately every case at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations ever). If my suspicion is proven true, and non-students are much less likely to violate copyrights, would it be rational to focus our anti-copyvio efforts on students or non-students?

More generally, before we deciding that our limited time and energy should be invested into addressing student editing, shouldn't we decide whether student editing is high or low on the community's priority scale? If we've got x hours of volunteer time that we're willing to spend to solving problems with other editors' contributions, maybe we should be asking ourselves whether those hours need to be spent on student editing or on political misinformation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I used https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/campaigns/fall_2023/alerts and https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/campaigns/spring_2023/alerts (filter for "blocked user") to find blocked students. It found, in addition to the above, Sedvabs (pblocked), Anemic_Walrus (later unblocked), Seongyeon_Song (block expired), Steadii_n.kum, and Darthrevan2023. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:58, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On More than one occasion I have run across content with no source and saw these instances were student assignments. I found this article and saw where it states Of particularly high importance, please read carefully what this page says about plagiarism and copyright infringement below, and please take it very seriously! Seems pretty straight forward

so maybe it would help to highlight it for prominence? -- Otr500 (talk) 17:39, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. How would you suggest highlighting it? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:17, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Since this is a how-to page for people who may be new to Wikipedia, I've been working on wikifying (and/or explaining) examples of wiki-jargon, as well as direct links to specific sections of guidelines and policy wherever possible.

Help in this would be most welcome : ) - jc37 03:55, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]