Online Ambassadors serve as mentors, advisors, and helpers to the professors and students who are using Wikipedia in the classroom. The "Online Ambassador Program" has been coordinated by WMF through the Wikipedia Education Program. Their role is to keep the newcomers from being "bitten" and help them learn both the how and the why of editing Wikipedia and participating in the community. Wikipedians from around the globe are invited to apply to become an Online Ambassador. If you are interested in supporting students in countries other than Canada and the United States, please visit the WMF Outreach program for more information.
The Online Ambassador program supports instructors and their classes, where the classwork includes a requirement for the students to edit articles on Wikipedia. Each of the classes will have a class page where the instructor describes what the Wiki-assignment is for each student. Each course will have 1-3 Online Ambassadors assisting students in the course, and students will be able to ask technical questions of any Online Ambassador through an IRC chat room. The program is growing rapidly, and there are dozens of classes involved this term. Some of the students will create or greatly expand several articles during the semester. Others may make a substantial edit or addition to just one article.
If you're interested in recruiting new Online Ambassadors for the coming term, please join the Online Ambassador Recruitment Team.
Experienced Wikipedians who like working with newcomers or have an interest in reaching out to the academic community can apply to join the Wikipedia Ambassadors program as Online Ambassadors.
The Wikipedia Online Ambassador role is a volunteer position. The estimated time commitment is 2 hours per week or more. Ambassadors should have experience with the basics of Wikipedia—particularly creating quality content and giving detailed feedback on others' work—a record of being friendly and helpful with newcomers, and a desire to make Wikipedia better.
Active Wikipedia Online Ambassadors will be expected to be available at least two hours per week during a given university term. Since the students follow an academic schedule, their involvement at Wikipedia is sporadic, so some weeks, your student mentees may be completely inactive on Wikipedia, and other weeks, they may have a burst of activity that needs review, especially the last couple of weeks in the school term. Ambassadors are not expected to be online at the same time as their students, but should be responding to queries and requests for feedback in a timely manner as well as regularly monitoring student's contributions. Also, if Ambassadors are online and use IRC, extra time can be spent helping students in other courses.