Ask me & Tell me Anything

hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation Education Team

Monday, November 20, 15:00 UTC

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Agenda

Which topic would you like to share/discuss/ask about? Add your suggestions here:

Wikipedia Education Program in Bangladesh Open University (On going planning)
Introduce new Education Team Program Officer, Melissa!
New logo decided, how can you use it?
Newsletter!
Slack

Participants:

Nichole
Sailesh
Melissa
Galib
Tanim
Florencia (WMAR)
Krishna
Arianit (WoALUG)

Minutes of the meeting:

Florencia: To share what we do and to learn what other projects
Krishna: I am from India, I volunteer for English Wikipedia and I'm in the Education Board
Melissa: I'm from Peru and I joined the WMF and will help in developing the Educational resources and Curriculum
Galib:
Tanim: I'm getting involved in the WEP and w
Nichole: I lead the Education team at the WMF.
Arianit: I'm from Wikimedians of Albanian Language UG (WoALUG).
Galib: I would like to welcome Tanim, He is interested in WEP and helping me in the activities in Chittagong. We're planning to start a program in Bangladesh Open University. I have speaking to Ananth and Krishna from India, and have received a copy of MoU. Hopefully we will start the EP by next week.
NS: What are you planning to do in the program?
Galib: We will involve 2 faculty members, the faculty members will help to conduct the program , one of the experienced Wikipedian will help in the process. The Dean wants to run the program in English as an assignment.
NS: You should also make sure that people know the editors are students, because it can create some problems with the English community
NS: Education team always encourages to work in local languages. It is harder to work on language which isn't the first language.
Galib: The training materials and tutorials are in Bangla, so it is easy for the volunteers to understand the WIkimedia programs, when we speak about specific programs, I'm not sure whether we have such resources in English. It easier to work on translation project.
NS: Office hours is just Q&A for Education team and a platform for the Wikimedians and Education leaders to share their work.
Florencia: We also work in the native language that is Spanish, this year we worked with an University but we involved the machine translation in the process.

This year we worked with 12 different Universities, for quality addition. We have very good experience this year. We always use Spanish Wikipedia for the Education Program.

Melissa: Do you find some faculties more interested in the program than others and how they get engaged in the program?
Florencia: We start with an Open call with the faculty members and we work on different diverse subjects and topics. We have really good experience.
Florencia: We involve Wikimedia Commons, and this year we involved Wikispecies. When we worked with the media students we worked with Wikidata.
Arianit: We are starting very new, we were working with students they're not Wikipedians, how do you involve instructors in the process? training them online, or work with the 1:1.
Florencia: We first work with teachers, in a small workshop face to face on how to edit Wikipedia. Sometimes we do some online training. We usually refer small groups with 20-30 students in a group. In large groups we divide them into small groups with one account before starting the programs.
Arianit: How does the Outreach Dashboard works for you?
Florencia: I was referring to the wikipedia dashboard, "taller" in spanish, maybe i ws confuse in the question. We teach the editing tools and suggest to edit in this space, and then when we check it it ok we ask to publish the edition. We don't use outreach dashboard to work with the profesors or student.
Arianit: We still in the planning phase in Kosovo. In Albania w're working with Peace Corps volunteers. We have contacts in several Universities here, The classes are from 35-70 people and we are wondering what the best route is. We could have Wikipedia editing as an extra credit assignment or do workshops ourselves in class or teach the instructors. Our capacity is quite limited to reach more instructors during class hours.
Melissa: Are PeaceCorps volunteers working in rural areas with lack of infrastructure, and how are they getting around those barriers?
Arianit: Some volunteers work in the highschool level, some teach English. In Kosovo and Albania there are around 40-50 volunteers, the network among these volunteers helps us get network effect.
Krishna: It's difficult to work in English, and you have to take it slow and careful. Don't go all at once to a full lenght education program if you're planning it to do on English Wikipedia. Start with small tasks like a citation addition, fixing errors etc.
Galib: Next week we have a meeting with the professors and the dean of the University, and we can think about which format would be best. Access to information is a challenge, so we plan to try to get the educational materials under CC license.
Krishna: Is it a requirement that you can only use the existing educational resources?
Galib: Yes.
Krishna: try to use other resources, because textbooks are not considered as reliable sources, especially on English Wikipedia.
Nichole: We want to welcome Melissa to the education team, and are very excited to have her join us. Her work will be focused on creating educational materials and resources that will support the work of local communities around the world. We hired someone with this specific focus because of research that was done last year that indicated that curriculum and instructional materials were things that people really wanted and felt were missing.
Melissa: I'm super excited to be working with the WMF. My academic and professional background is in education, I've worked in community outreach programs in Peru, education initiatives with indigenous communities in Panama and managing leadership development and cultural immersion programs for teenagers in Ecuador. I recently got my MA in Education, Gender and International Development. As you can see my whole career's been dedicated to education! I'm really looking forward to learning about your experiences in the Wikimedia movement and to support you with everything you need to carry out education programs successfully!
Sailesh: We have a new logo! The community can use it on their presentations and swag, but there are some guidelines you must follow. We'll share more about the guidelines in the next newsletter.
Galib: How can the community participate in the newsletter? How can we increase engagement?
Sailesh: We want people to be involved and will be coming up with some strategies in the next weeks.
Sailesh: Slack
Arianit: How do we find out about newsletter deadlines?
Sailesh: We announce it on all of our channels.