Process
Hi Peter,
I agree -- process needs careful consideration. I wouldn't offer a conclusive response to the challenges of community involvement and engagement in different initiatives, but I do have a few hunches.
- We need to do a better job of educating and supporting our community in participation -- that is helping educators develop the skills and confidence in how this all works. Its quite daunting for newbies -- and its not only a technology issue. Open transparent collaboration is a cultural change for many educators working in the formal education sector.
- I wouldn't be too hard in judging the QA & Review project in terms of active engagement --- this is an innovative development that in hindsight, was a little ahead of its time. Nonetheless we have the foundations in place to take this to the next level.
Watch this space -- WE is beginning to rock in ways we haven't experienced in the past. Its a maturation thing -- mass-peer collaboration on the development of educational materials is an order of magnitude more complex than developing an encyclopaedia article. WE has very relevant experience in this field and we're building on our experiences. Three years ago WE had 1 registered user -- we're now on the threshold of 10000 registered accounts and learning by the day :-)
Wayne,
In response to your first bullet: "We need to do a better job of educating and supporting our community in participation" I propose that we add the section "Supporting Official WikiEducator Workgroups" to our guidelines. Not every Workgroup would need support, but it seems like the guidelines should describe a mechanism/criteria for regular evaluation of Workgroups, a process to identify a Workgroup that is struggling and then specific actions that the Council/community can take to offer support.
