User:Sputniza/Interview guide line

Interview guide line

I suggest the oral conversations to be held as semi-structured interviews. This is to ensure there will be a common base for evaluation of the results, as well as enough place for individual ideas and comments of the participants. The following is to give an idea about the structure of the interview - to discuss it - without determined wording.

Introduction

Short introduction of myself and introduction of the participant.

1st part - Technical Info/ Personal Data

About the participant of the interview (if not provided yet in the introduction).

function (instructor, student, ambassador)
experience with the course page system (courses held/ participated in e.g. size of the courses, results of the past courses, frequency, amount, fields of study)
related experience/ background (use of wikis, wikipedia, use of other software in course administration)

2nd part - Structured Questions/ Experience with Course Pages

collecting overall impressions (look and feel)
concrete working experiences of the participant
documenting possible struggles/ problems concerning both functionality and design
going in detail on the quality of working with single aspects of course page software
ideas for improvement of given functionality
additional functionality (wish list)

added (from Sage's comments)

on-wiki feedback from the instructor to the students/ find out whether they have done that before (and if not, why not), and find out what (if anything) would make them more likely to do so (tools needed)
how to design software to help with the problem of grading
how important is cross-wiki-integration of the extension?

3rd part - Additional Questions

ask additional questions of the participant to gain greater detail in their responses
ask the participant, if there is anything, she/ he would like to add?

Notes

Two main experiences

»Getting started« (the treshold of implementation and »getting used to« should be low)
»Daily business« (what is my daily working experience as a frequent user? - Pleasure of using the tools.)

Pilot the Questions
Recording the interviews? Tools?

Feedback and Notions from the talk with Kacie Harolds

Kacie led some interviews on a wider scope (concerning not only the EP extension, but the education program as a whole) and I had the chance to talk to her and to profit from the observations and experiences she made

she provided me her script of the interview she led and stressed ...
how important it is to have the questions in advance
there might be need to reframe the questions after first experiences
the necessity to redirect your interview partner sometimes to the subject of the interview, as people tend to get carried away (and the point about mentioning this in advance - I may need to interrupt you..)
she mentioned some people, who might be interesting or helpful to talk to
what she was told about the extension (short short summary): people find it a considerable high barrier to use it, but if they made the effort, finally find it very useful and feel content about the functionality the EP extension provides (this agrees with our impression as well)

List of questions/ 1st

Introduction

Short introduction of myself and introduction of the participant. - open

1st part - Technical Info/ Personal Data

Maybe this part could be filled in by the Interviewee in writing in advance. (Pdf-form?) - open

2nd part - Structured Questions/ Experience with Course Pages

I want to start with some questions exploring your background and will then get into more detail concerning your experience with the education extension until now and ideas about how to improve the module in future. I put a time limit of 45 minutes on this, so I may need to interrupt you at some point, to manage all the questions we would like you to answer. After finishing the questions, I have prepared, there will be some time for you to add something or get into greater detail.

(To - teachers only), (So - students only)

What, if any, experience did you have with Wikis before starting to work with the extension of the Education program?
What, if any, experience did you have in using IT in your teaching before? (To)
..

What, do you find, makes educators interested in working with the CPS? (To)
How often and how intensively did you use the course pages?
What was your impression of the presence of your instructor online in the CPS? (concerning availability, feedback)(So)
Which other tools of communication except the course pages did you use outside of the classroom? (e.g. Mail, Chat, other wikis, Intranet) Please, describe the advantage of doing so!
What was the greatest positive impact of the extension on handling your courses? (To)
What was the greatest positive impact of the extension on participating in your courses? (So)
What have been the biggest blockers - in terms of the extension* --- What do you do when you run into technical issues?
What additional features would be most desirable to you?
What changes in the current system would be desirable to you?

Feedback

What kind of on-wiki feedback did you give to your students? (To) --- If none - why din’t you use this option? What improvements/ changes would you make more likely to give on-wiki feedback?
Would a tool that makes it simple to review student edits and leave on-wiki feedback quickly and efficiently help?
What kind of on-wiki feedback did you receive from you teacher? (So)

How important is it for you, to »re-use« courses? What would be the greatest benefit?(To)

Grading (To)

How did the CPS* so far help you in approaching the grading of the students? (To)
Are there possible features related to grading what would be helpful for you in this?
At the moment, are there constraints or struggles in the CPS* what makes it uncomfortable to use the wiki for grading?

Multi-Wiki

What, if any, are the challenges and needs of cross-wiki work (that means the integration of other wikis, e.g. Wikimedia etc) for your course?

3rd part - Additional Questions

open

Notes

(*)What would be the best (and for the interview only) name to refer to the extension?

Course page system
- I think "course page system" is probably the clearest description.--Ragesoss (talk) 00:35, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
Extension of the Education Program
..

Personal data - pdf form

Draft for a form with personal data of the interviewee.

Interview results

Interviewee: Ryan McGrady

About the consusion with the 'name', either th extension of the Education Program or the course page system ...

I'm familiar with both [..] but probably most professors, who aren't familiar with Wikipedia or Mediawiki would be more familiar with the term 'course page system'. But either way works for me.

What, if any, experience did you have with Wikis before starting to work with the extension?
A lot. I've been studying and using Wikipedia since about 2006 and held my first class 2011, so a few years.

What, if any, experience did you have in using IT in your teaching before?
Well, I teach media studies, so digital media is a big part of it. I used computers, of course, but I never had a whole assignment on a website. We had moodle as a course management system and that's all.

What, do you find, makes educators interested in working with the CPS?
I think .. , that sounds kind of simple, but that it exists - if I were teaching with Wikipedia or thinking about it and I found out, that there is this whole system. that's build just for teachers, I would ..(?) .. to explore what this is.

How often and how intensively did you use the course pages?
I feel bad about it, because I work here now, but I didn't use it as much as I thought that I would. In fact I didn't use it at all for the first course that I taught. I made my course page on just the user subpage. And when I did use it for the most part I used it just to be part of the program, just to get the support that's there. I redirected to my user subpage and I did use it to track student activity sometimes, but I'm already comfortable with watch lists. so I frankly didn't use it as much as thought that I would. But when I designed my first course I was not yet aware of the existance of the extension, I knew that the Education Program was there, I think I was aware of ambassadors, but by the time that I found out that the course page extension existed, I had already kind of designed everything and so it seemed particularly difficult - not in a technical sense - but just information scattered everywhere, so that I wasn't sure, what would be worth me doing. Because I already had designed everything.

Which other tools of communication except the course pages did you use outside of the classroom? (e.g. Mail, Chat, other wikis, Intranet) Please, describe the advantage of doing so!
E-mail, I had used google chat a couple of times with students and moodle, again.

What was the greatest positive impact of the extension on handling your courses?
It's hard to answer, because again, I din't use the extension as much, as I should have, I would say - the first thing that comes to mind, that seems like the most positive impact, is that it gave us some organisational definition, like it created a central place on Wikipedia, at which now we had information about the class, at which students could go to and click on a button, that says 'enroll' and be part of that class and have a way to show that they are doing this thing and for me to also kind of heap all that together without just having keep track of a bunch of users myself. The activity feed was kind of interesting and I think that this was also useful to have there to signify to volunteers and people within the program what I'm doing, in order to attract help or give people information if I wanted to ask for help.

What have been the biggest blockers - in terms of the extension?
I'm just gonna base it on my early experience rather than speaking from my kind of privileged point of view now, but in my earliest experience I found that the information about the extension was not clear and not obviously available - in terms of how to use it, as well as, what it could do, how to use it effectively especially. I felt that it was kind of on me to go find all bits of information and put it together. This was few years ago and it is of course different now, but I think that's where I have to base that on.

What do you do when you run into technical issues?
I wouldn't say that I ran into technical issues, it was more a matter of not really having a good idea about how best to use it. It wasn't that I wanted to do something and I just couldn't figure out how to, I din't see all the things that I could do, I guess.

What additional features would be most desirable to you?
This is another questions, where by working for the foundation I have kind of a privileged point of view, but one of the things that I really wanted, is being worked on right now, I believe, which is a mechanism that allow the community to very easily help out classes. So when I was not teaching, being sympathetic to teachers with Wikipedia, I would sometimes search out articles where students were working and to see if there is any way I can help out. Maybe .. (?) on the talk page. Maybe fix some minor formatting things. So what I really wanted was a way to either use the category system or some other kind of page to organise tasks that the community apart from the class could help with. And my idea a while ago, was based on categories of allowing more parameters and categories based on the educational assignment template, that goes on (?) talk pages, but it sounds like what Sage was talking about was categories for things like classes needing copy editing or typo .. just minor sorts of details that people can help put with. I think that's a great idea. That would have really helped me. I go with that.

What changes in the current system would be desirable to you?
(little unclear, what is considered. the scope .. including the dashboard development or apart from it?) Again, I guess I have to go to when I was doing it, one thing that I really wanted, was for it to do a better job tracking all student edits versus just student edits to the article that they have selected or in a certain name space, I can't remember exactly what my objection was. We do have the dash board, it's sort of beta version, I think, which does address that somewhat. I would be interested to see any edits made by a student enrolled in a course.

What kind of on-wiki feedback did you give to your students?
There are some feedbacks that I left about the edits, they have made, on the article. But more feedback was at the (? 17.25) the end of the semester, when I had them completed a draft of the article and I would then give detailed feedback on the article content - wording, tone, copying, everything basically. And another way I can think of is that through the course page, that I had set up, and the user space that I asked discussion questions, that they would answer each week, that sometimes I would also respond to their answers. The detailed feedback I gave on the article talk pages mostly but also in class.

What improvements/ changes would you make more likely to give on-wiki feedback?
I think maybe that question is targeted less towards me, because I had much more experience with wikipedia than I did with teaching. And so leaving a message on wikipedia - the challenge is to get students to check their talk pages. And so maybe a greater emphasis and training on that, built into the course page extension, somehow? But I felt very comfortable leaving them messages and feedback on wiki.

Would a tool that makes it simple to review student edits and leave on-wiki feedback quickly and efficiently help?
A: This part is more targeted on people who feel not as familiar with wikipedia as you do, more about how to make it more attractive to get involved and using the given wiki structures... This came up in e-Mails recently, when somebody on the noticeboard suggested, that we make all the communication between the education foundation and the professors transparent and on their talk pages, by forcing them to use their talk page. As a professor, or an instructor, I don't feel comfortable at times interacting with them, I feel comfortable with my students on wiki, but it's a weird relationship .. some kind of an authority thing (≈ 21:00)[?]... but I also think it's just less effective if you are a new user, that is professor, if you try to use the talk pages for the most important kind of communication.

How important is it for you, to »re-use« courses? What would be the greatest benefit?
I think, that's an important thing. The greatest benefit of it, of course is less work. Because I'm more familiar in my user space, I more or less copy everything that I have done to a new page for a new semester [..?] I think I would say that it is important, if that could be mechanized, that could be great and especially updated it for the different digs (?) of the semester. A: Could there also be a point in having some continuity, comparing courses, making grading easier for example?
Those are both good points, I personally did change it a little bit, each time I did it, just based on, what I felt worked and didn't work, it required grading it slightly differently and just approaching the new assignment slightly differently, which does create more work for me and I bet that I only did that because I'm so interested in Wikipedia and that as if I were just a teacher then I might want it to be more simple.

How did the CPS* so far help you in approaching the grading of the students?
I didn't use it at all for grading.

Are there possible features related to grading what would be helpful for you in this?
I don't know how you could do that, it just seems like, teachers always want to go by a word count or an amount of text edits, something like that but it seems like it would be difficult, aside from just providing a spread sheet or something. I guess I don't really understand from my perspective what the benefit of having a grading mechanism build into the course page extension would be. Because I feel comfortable with my other grading mechanisms. I just keep an Excel Spreadsheet.

At the moment, are there constraints or struggles in the CPS* what makes it uncomfortable to use the wiki for grading?
The great benefit of anything related to Wikipedia for teaching is, do both, teach students about how Wikipedia works, but also the collaborative element of it and the particular kind of writing, you have to factor in other people and negotiate with people and I wouldn't want to have grading anything .. I wouldn't want that to be public. I wouldn't feel comfortable to make that part of the class. So even though they do their assignments on wiki and have it all available, their grades they get either in class or Email. So I would probably hesitate to do any kind of grading, which is why I guess I am confused about what the course page extension would do, because if none of it is public, than chances are, that Moodle or Excel just does it better.

What, if any, are the challenges and needs of cross-wiki work (that means the integration of other wikis, e.g. Wikimedia etc) for your course?
I have had them used the commmons, I wouldn't say there is any particular challenge about it being cross wiki though, it's more just a challenge of uploading a file, so it's not like a wiki technicality thing, it's more of providing the right licenses, describing things properly, categorizing things, I don't really fell that those are much different. I haven't had them use any other wiki, aside from a course wiki one time [].. - so I don't know what challenges I would face. A: Would it be helpful to have a tracking on edits or on uploaded files for example on other wikis as well? It would be very helpful actually to have a mechanism to upload files to the commons build into the course extension. Something that makes providing licenses and ensuring that students know what they're doing build in. We have a brochure for illustrating Wikipedia, we have a brochure copyright/ plagiarism, but to have something, where you just could go to the course page and click upload file and have a wizard that way, seems like that were really helpful.

Interviewee: Avery Dame

What, if any, experience did you have with Wikis before starting to work with the extension?
Not much. I had done a little work with wikis and was familiar with the basics, but I was not a highly active user. I did actually go to a session during a Digital Humanities workshop held at my university on Wikipedia the summer I designed the first version of this assignment, which inspired me to try it out.

What, if any, experience did you have in using IT in your teaching before?
I use a variety fairly frequently. My academic research is primarily focused on online discourse and systems design, so I frequently involve technology in my teaching.

What, do you find, makes educators interested in working with the CPS?
For me, it works as a centralized location for all of the links and resources they need for Wikipedia. It gets them to go to the site and use it more regularly than if all the assignments were hosted on my university’s Learning Management System (LMS), Canvas.

How often and how intensively did you use the course pages? Which other tools of communication except the course pages did you use outside of the classroom? (e.g. Mail, Chat, other wikis, Intranet) Please, describe the advantage of doing so!
I primarily use the course pages to host my assignments, manage their subject selection, and sign up as a reviewer. All communication and all assignments are turned in through the LMS. I do this for several reasons: Firstly, students are more familiar with it, so I feel it lowers the intimidation factor, which I do have to overcome with some students to get them using Wikipedia. It also which ensures they can’t use the excuse of not knowing how to turn things in. Secondly, the LMS allows me to keep track of all communication, page usage, grades, in a university-maintained environment etc. This is also, to be perfectly honest, in some ways self-protective; by keeping all communication and grades on a university-maintained system, I’m not open to the risk of it factoring into a semester-end grade challenge.

What was the greatest positive impact of the extension on handling your courses?
It’s been great to have a centralized location for all of the necessary information students need on Wikipedia. It helps to have one place to send them to.

What additional features would be most desirable to you? What changes in the current system would be desirable to you?
An easily-usable private communication system. Because of both my own personal pedagogy and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a federal US law that restricts access to student education records. I try to keep as much of my communication with students private--particularly that which relates to graded assignments. Also, many of my students are non-majors who are very unfamiliar with my field (Gender Studies), and may be resistant or uncomfortable with the topics we talk about. While I might be more comfortable with collaborative, public comment in a small, specialized topics class, for this course I feel private comment is more effective.

What kind of on-wiki feedback did you give to your students? (To) --- If none - why didn’t you use this option? What improvements/ changes would you make more likely to give on-wiki feedback?
I do encourage students to do so when they are editing others’ wiki projects, but I give very little to no on-wiki feedback. As to why, see my comment above regarding private communication. Students see me as the “authority,” and are often uncomfortable with public comments that they interpret as “shaming” if done in public. Especially when I’m dealing with a student who has not followed instructions or completed an assignment as they should, private comment is best.

Would a tool that makes it simple to review student edits and leave on-wiki feedback quickly and efficiently help?
It would, especially if a level of privacy could be built into it. Something that would allowed in-line comments and references would provide a level of granular detail I can’t get to right now in my more general comments.

How important is it for you, to »re-use« courses? What would be the greatest benefit?
Quite. It makes it much easier to tweak my assignments each time, as I teach the same course each semester.

How did the CPS* so far help you in approaching the grading of the students?
As noted earlier, I don’t use it for grading; I do (*and will continue) to all my grading on our LMS for practical and self-protective reasons. Their overall grades are calculated automatically by the LMS, so that reduces any risk of miscalculation. I can also guarantee that, as per FERPA rules, their grades are kept private. This is not to say that Wiki and the CPS doesn’t keep them private, but a university-maintained system meets the appropriate FERPA standards for my department and the university.

At the moment, are there constraints or struggles in the CPS* what makes it uncomfortable to use the wiki for grading?
See my comments on grading and FERPA for the question above.

Interviewee: James Council

What, if any, experience did you have with Wikis before starting to work with the extension?
- Used wikis like Wordpress for group writing projects. - Started with American Psychological Society Wikipedia Initiative. I did not like the support they were providing so unhooked. I did continue to register my class and students and use the editing tutorial. This was how I got connected to Wiki Ed.

What, if any, experience did you have in using IT in your teaching before?
Not that much. I’ve been using Blackboard (LMS) for many years, since that is the system NDSU supports.

What, do you find, makes educators interested in working with the CPS?
Can’t speak for others. I am the only one doing this at my university.

How often and how intensively did you use the course pages? Which other tools of communication except the course pages did you use outside of the classroom? (e.g. Mail, Chat, other wikis, Intranet) Please, describe the advantage of doing so!
So far, just at the beginning of the project. I am mostly interacting with students directly on Wikipedia. As I learn more about CP functions, will surely use it more. Already mentioned this. Use Blackboard course management system. Post assignments, announcements, grades, email, surveys, quizzes. Have also developed large Wikipedia resource page on Blackboard where I post instructions, pdfs., lists of psychology stubs to use for writing project. Use Blackboard group wikis to get students used to interacting online and to choose articles to improve.

What was the greatest positive impact of the extension on handling your courses?
it is a good way to track students’ activity. I look forward to discovering functionality of the dashboard. I like the signup system, activity tracker, tutorials, links to meta-data

What have been the biggest blockers - in terms of the extension?
Defaults do not map onto the way I organize my course. I was pretty much forced to use the Course Design wizard, but it does not correspond to the way I organize my course’s Wikipedia writing assignments. I am in the process of editing the modules so they work for me.

What additional features would be most desirable to you? What changes in the current system would be desirable to you?
Have been using Blackboard to give instructions for assignments in past, making transition now. Some way to integrate with Blackboard, not sure that’s possible. More flexibility. I like the CPS concept, but I don’t like changing my course to make it fit the system. Menu with plug-in modules, interface with course management systems like Blackboard.

What kind of on-wiki feedback did you give to your students?
I am finding it easy to give feedback on students’ talk pages. I give feedback continuously. Choice of topic, reference materials, writing style, dealing with other editors, etc. I am doing this on user talk pages now.

Would a tool that makes it simple to review student edits and leave on-wiki feedback quickly and efficiently help?
Yes. It gets tedious to go from page to page for different groups.

How important is it for you, to »re-use« courses? What would be the greatest benefit?
Very important. I plan on spending a bit of time editing the CP to get it to my liking. I don’t want to have to do this every semester.

How did the CPS* so far help you in approaching the grading of the students? Are there possible features related to grading what would be helpful for you in this?
Don’t feel like I need this. Scores for Wikipedia assignments are recorded on Blackboard, along with other scores for the course. Students are used to tracking grades on Blackboard. I think it would be hard to automate the way I grade. However, I have not tried grading with the CPS. If there is a CPS grading tutorial, I would like to know about it.

At the moment, are there constraints or struggles in the CPS* what makes it uncomfortable to use the wiki for grading?
Can’t say. Don’t know enough about the system.

What, if any, are the challenges and needs of cross-wiki work (that means the integration of other wikis, e.g. Wikimedia etc) for your course?
Don’t know, unless this has to do with things like importing illustrations. Would like to learn more about cross-wiki work.