Learning4Content/Workshops/eL4C54/Workshop Report

Background
The  Learn Wiki Skills for leveraging the potential of Open Educational Resources  free online workshop was held from June 26 - July 10, 2013. The workshop's objectives were to provide basic training to the participants in learning Wiki skills so that they can create, develop, search or adopt Open Educational Resources and make use of WikiEducator platform in their teaching learning setting. Truly the theme "leveraging the potential of Open Educational Resources" is so fitting for this purpose.

Expected Output
The expected outcomes of the workshop were:
 * Help participants to acquire basic wiki editing skills which they would practice and demonstrate on their User page;
 * Provide them with an authentic WikiEducator experience
 * Help them to achieve the community certification (and community kudos) of a WikiApprentice Level 2 or even WikiBuddy during this workshop. The skills participants will demonstrate on their User page would be used for our community certification according to our WikiMaster typology.
 * Provide opportunities for the participants to give the gift of knowledge by developing or donating a teaching resource for our community.

Resource Requirements
This free wiki workshop was presented online over 8 working days and required approximately 15 - 20 minutes per day of practical exercises after reading the instructions. We advised all participants to dedicate about 1 hour a day to ensure good practice of the instructions and guidelines provided. This time period also made allowances for the sometimes low internet connectivity. The course was presented asynchronously -- so as to allow participants to work at times which fit their own schedule. Daily instructions were provided to the participants and WikiEducator Moodle platform was also used to establish interaction with the participants.

Programme Schedule

 * 2 June 2013: Registrations began

Day 1: Wednesday, 26 June 2013
 * Instructions for Day 1

Day 2: Thursday, 27 June 2013
 * Instructions for Day 2: So what about quality in open wiki authoring?

Day 3: Friday, 28 June 2013
 * Instructions for Day 3: how to personalize your own WikiEducator preferences

Day 4: Saturday, 29 June 2013
 * Instructions for Day 4 - Achieving your first WikiEducator certification!
 * Online Session eL4C54: Learning Wiki Skills for leveraging the potential of OERs
 * Registrations for eL4C54 closes

Day 5: Monday, 1 July 2013
 * Instructions for Day 5: Internal and External links

Day 6: Tuesday, 2 July 2013
 * Instructions for Day 6 - Images and your 2nd wiki certification!

Day 7: Thursday, 3 July 2013
 * Instructions for Day 7: Collaborative Editing

Day 8: Friday, 4 July 2013
 * Instructions for Day 8: Communication and Interaction
 * Online Session Mastering Wiki Editing Skills

Day 9: Monday, 5 July 2013
 * Instructions for Day 9: Working offline, converting and uploading teaching materials

Day 10: Tuesday, 6 July 2013
 * Instructions for Day 10: Share your experiences, thoughts and suggestions

Target Participants
The training programme was targeted at educators who wish to use online mode of instructions for the benefit of their students, teachers who wish to have online collaborations with other colleagues, and anyone who has interest in learning more about WikiEducator.

Outcome and Demographics
The workshop consisted of the following demographics:

Total Participation by Gender and Country Distribution
 Total participants: 111 (including facilitators) There were three registrations, which could not be accomodated this time because their registrations were received at the stage when the workshop was in advanced stage. All such interested colleagues were requested to keep looking for announcement for our next WikiEducator Learning4Content Workshop.
 * Female = 57
 * Male  = 54

This workshop was facilitated by Ramesh Sharma, Dr Gita Mathur and Dr Pankaj Khare. Facilitators

Countries
'''This workshop was truly international in character as we had participants from 21 countries.... '''

Online Interactive Sessions
To support our participants for providing them with relevant information about Wikieducator, Wiki commands and syntax etc, two live sessions were organised:
 * 1) First live session was conducted on Sat, Jun 29, 2013. Please see recording of the session by visiting this link. This session was attended by 14 participants.
 * 2) Some of the participants could not attend our first live session on 29 June 2013, therefore we conducted another live session on Thursday, July 4, 2013 Mastering Wiki Editing Skills which was attended by 18 participants.  The recording of the session "Mastering Wiki Editing Skills" can be seen here.

Wiki Discussions

 * General Forum

Important questions were raised by colleagues like They wanted clarifications about image upload on userpage, image insertion in infobox, how to bookmark the user page,  feedback after each session and how to add  large number of essays on community organizing to wikieducator pages.
 * Deepty Gupta,
 * Katarzyna Geraghty,
 * Kamani Samarasinghe,
 * Vanita Chopra,
 * Joyce McKnight and
 * Sonali.

Useful discussion was held at the page on Thoughts on Quality. Main participants who expressed their views are:
 * Concerns about the quality of educational resources developed using an open authoring approach
 * Francis glasgow
 * Raymond Martin
 * Susan Dixon
 * Jasmeet Kaur
 * Edward Anisitolo
 * Lakshmy
 * Denton Enriko
 * Mexxy Iapara
 * Deepty Gupta
 * Vanita Chopra
 * Katarzyna Geraghty
 * Sangeeta Gulati
 * S K Pulist
 * Anjali saxena

The colleagues expressed their intention of working on a Community Development Learning Project.
 * Ideas for a wiki project

Top high performing participants
We noted that participants were enthusiastic about updating content on their pages or leaving comments on other's userpages. Congratulations to the top high performing participants in terms of number of edits so far on the wikieductor site! Below mentioned are those colleagues who got edit count for more than 60 in this workshop:-


 * 1) Susan Dixon                  388 edits


 * 1) jasmeet Kaur             110 edits


 * 1) Vanita Chapra                86 edits


 * 1) Kamani Samarasinghe 79 edits


 * 1) Seema Sirpal                   74 edits


 * 1) Katarzyna Geraghty          67 edits


 * 1) Deepty Gupta              65 edits


 * 1) Malabika Sen                  62 edits

Reflections
At the outset I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to Dr Wayne Mackintosh and Jim Tittsler for their support at every stage of this workshop. Be it configuring Moodle instance, registrations or seeking extra information, both Wayne and Jim  were always there. I understand Wayne is busy in conducting two micro Open Online Courses (mOOCs):Scenario Planning for Educators i.e.SP4Ed 13.07(to be held from 29 July - 8 August 2013) and Open content licensing for educators i.e.OCL4Ed 13.09 (to be held from 4 to 18 September 2013).

Further I thank my co-facilitators Dr Gita Mathur and Dr Pankaj Khare who wonderfully and skillfully provided their guidance to all the participants by visiting their userpages, advising them on wiki skills, interacting with them during both the live sessions and via emails. It was for the first time that there were two live and interactive sessions on wiki skills. Thank you Dr Gita and Dr Pankaj! It was a wonderful experience once again to work with you!!

My deep appreciation is for all colleagues who joined this (first of 2013) workshop. It is sure a huge response to our call and further reflects the need for such online collaborative skills for content development for elearning. Most of the organisations are now adopting elearning practices and are gearing up for creating content to be released as Open Educational Resources. I am sure this workshop will go in a long way to fulfill this dream of such individuals and institutions. We wish to congratulate all of you who have been awarded with certifications and hope that other shall get inspiration from you to develop their pages. Many of you have indicated to keep working on community development projects. Keep doing good work. WE community is at your service whenever you need any help,do let us know.

Keep coming back to WikiEducator main page. Do join both the free micro Open Online Courses as indicated above. I am sure learning would be a fun there!

With best wishes

--Ramesh Sharma, PhD 11:10, 14 July 2013 (UTC)