planning meeting and at the event itself. The debrief meeting is an opportunity to share the number of participants, the editing statistics, and any particularly inspiring anecdotes. The team reflects on what worked well and what could be improved. Sometimes the issues discussed actually came up before the event, but there wasn’t enough time or resources to pre-emptively fix them. By revisiting these, the planning team can evaluate how serious the problems ended up being and then plan appropriately for the next edit-a-thon.
The relationship-building and culture-creating necessary for this kind of collaboration do not happen overnight or even over the course of planning one event. It is ongoing work that begins each time a new peer coach or a new library faculty or staff member starts working in the department. It is also not the most efficient way to organize an outreach program. Having one person in charge who unilaterally makes decisions would be far less time-consuming. However, the edit-a-thons would not be as inclusive or continue to improve as they have without input from each member of the team.
Hearing from the Peer Coaches
Library faculty and staff learn from the peer coaches through the practice of critical reflection. Their feedback informs many aspects of how the department does its work, including the edit-a-thons. Coauthor and peer coach Eduardo recently asked seven peer coaches to reflect on their experiences in helping prepare for and facilitate these events. Four themes emerged: (1) their identities, interests, and experiences at a diverse university influence their relationship with their jobs; (2) planning edit-a-thons utilizes their strengths and increases their skills; (3) their familiarity with Wikipedia as a resource and as a community has grown; and (4) each peer coach faces unique challenges in this work. He also explicitly asked them for what advice they have for other student employees and for librarians who are interested in collaboratively planning a Wikipedia edit-a-thon. We share and summarize their reflections and responses here.
