A Proposal for Education Team endorsement criteria

Author: VMasrour (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Summary: This is a proposal for discussion within the community regarding the criteria that the Education Team at WMF should be using when assessing proposals for funding.

Goals of the education team for creating this rubric

The Education Team at the Wikimedia Foundation receives requests on a regular basis to “take a look” at projects proposals from Affiliates and Program Leaders, be it for Rapid Grants, Annual Plan Grants or Multi-Year Programs. Based on discussions inside the team, it is apparent that criteria be explicit and, because of the open nature of the Wikimedia Movement, it is valuable that the set of criteria be discussed with the community (especially those actors in the movement that focus their time and energy in Education programs).

With that in mind, we (the Education Team at WMF) hope to achieve two qualities as we “look at” proposals:

Consistency
- When looking at grant requests, the team wants to have comparable points of reference to give feedback and make a decision on endorsing.
Transparency
- The team makes sure the community members and Affiliates share in the creation and use of the criteria, ensuring better preparation for endorsement requests, and direction for the feedback.

We hope that a constructive conversation can emerge around the proposed set of criteria.

It is important to underline that this is not a “definitive” set of criteria: as the movement evolves, and the shared understanding of it in the community changes, it is to be expected that a set of criteria to assess programs would evolve as well.

Finally, with this post, the Education Team aspires to start a conversation that will enhance shared understandings of what Education Programs supported by the should consider and include as part of their planning. This means that we hope that a fruitful conversation will be had about this set of criteria, leading quite probably to improvements, clarifications, and adjustments where needed.

The set of criteria has been tested by the Education Team at WMF in a first round of evaluation of proposals and were found to be useful.

In the Talk Page you will find another way to look at the criteria, through a set of questions.

The Education Team welcomes your feedback on the talk page of this article, and looks forward to improving this set of criteria thanks to fruitful conversation on the Talk Page.

Considerations / Criteria

Note: While it is understood that smaller grants (ie. “Rapid grants”) will have less detailed proposals than a Annual Plan Grant, we propose it still makes sense to think about how it is aligned with the rest of the movement (not that it does have to conform to every aspect of it), if it is requesting support from the Foundation.

Rubric

Criteria	High (clear)	Mid	Low (unclear)
Alignment with the Wikipedia Education Program	Aligned with WMF team’s (or Movement’s) education vision	Some clarity but needs improvement. Could work with team member to make clearer.	Not clear what they think about Wikipedia and Education
Alignment with 2030 strategy	Explicit aspect of the strategy are addressed	Can be connected to aspects of the 2030 strategy	Hard to connect to the strategy
Context reading/ awareness	Relevant curriculum and governmental education goals are identified, and analysis regarding the field of education in the country/locality is presented	There is an implicit acknowledgement of education department goals	The request does not present any element regarding education department goals
Expertise	Strong community experience (program implementer, Wikimedian, educator, researcher), and has a clear idea of how sharing their experience can benefit others Strong professional presentation skills, presentation materials	Some experience implementing education programs, but has not clearly articulated how their experience can benefit others	Unclear if they have implemented a program, participated in a program, or have commitment to our projects Presentation and materials do not use clear language and are not organized in a way that sends a clear message
Program size	Size of the project makes sense within the trajectory of the education program of the Affiliate	The program’s size is disconnected from trajectory, but this is justified in the project’s description	The size of the program seems disconnected from the Affiliate’s trajectory
Internal organization	The request has a list of staff/volunteers that will support the program	Indications of staff/volunteers are general/vague	No indication of volunteer support
Risk management / problems to solve	The request identifies risks/problems and proposes ways to work through them	Risks mitigation is not discussed, or poorly discussed, showing little connection between risks and possible courses of action	Risks are not identified
Advocacy (Outreach potential)	Defines where it wants to impact and how it wants to go about it	Description of advocacy activities is vague	The proposal doesn’t consider impact beyond its direct activities
Outcomes	Has clear goals, commitment to follow up on new opportunities	Goals can be assumed, but could be more clear. Explicit goals will help this request.	No goals specified
Learning outcomes	Request is clear in articulating what it’s intending to achieve with regards to students and teachers. This is important in communicating with the educators.	Outcomes are defined in Wikimedian terms only.	The proposed program has not given thought to learning outcomes, in terms participants can understand (teachers and students)
Wikipedia Education impact	Committed to sharing back learnings with the community.	Implicit feedback loop (connected to community, affiliate) but not explicit? No explicit sharing in the education space	Unclear if this experience will be documented or shared
Wiki community impact	Has strong connections to the wiki community they work with, and can communicate seamlessly with key participants	Has enough presence to potentially engage in conversations with the community, but doesn’t have a plan.	Has not considered preparing the wiki community for the possible impacts of the program, and has no practical means of interacting with it.
Focus on educators	Teachers’ participation is clearly identified and their needs and capabilities are explicitly described. There is a follow-up plan to sustain their future involvement in Wikimedia-related activities.	Teachers are mentioned peripherally, and are not expected to play a key role in sustaining the project in the future.	Educators are not mentioned, and no follow-up regarding their participation is taken in consideration.

Your feedback on this proposal on the Talk page is welcome!

Tags: WMF; Education