Education/Newsletter/December 2015/Single

Wikimedia Education Newsletter – Volume 4, Issue 9, December 2015

Arab World • Argentina • Argentina • Armenia • Armenia • Bangladesh • Bulgaria • Central and Eastern Europe • Czech Republic • Egypt • France • Greece • Hong Kong • Israel • Israel • Mexico • Norway • Serbia • Serbia • Sweden • Uruguay • Global • Global • Articles of interest

Headlines · Highlights · Single page edition

Arab World Education Program at WISE Doha 2015

By Walaa Abdel Manaem (Wikipedia Education Program Egypt) & (Egypt Wikimedians user group)

Snippet: Education Leaders at WISE Doha 2015 introducing Wikipedia Education Program in Egypt to WISE Conference attendees, as an example of a program in the Arab World, to share their experience to inspire other universities and institutions starting new programs in the area.

WISE 2015 Sessions and Plenaries were designed around three main pillars such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals; education and the economy; fostering innovation in education systems. Each pillar examined a variety of key topics including: the linkages between education, employment, and entrepreneurship; education reform and innovation in the MENA region and Qatar; emerging models of education financing, attracting, rewarding and retaining quality teachers; and the importance of investing in early childhood development.

Representatives of Wikipedia Education Program Walaa Abdel Manaem and Reem Al-Kashif participated in WISE Doha 2015 in Qatar, the annual World Innovation Summit for Education is the premier international platform dedicated to innovation and creative action in education where top decision-makers share insights with on-the-ground practitioners and collaborate to rethink education. Also, WISE 2015 was the first global education conference following the ratification of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015. Contributions ranged from Arabic Brochure of Editing Wikipedia for students in WEP in Egypt and everybody who would like to edit Wikipedia without ‎problems, The Arabic version of Welcome to Wikipedia reference guideline, PDF of brochure handed out during Arabic Wikipedia Convening, Doha, Qatar, 2011 and Introduction to Wikipedia. These contributions are related to show a case study of Wikipedia Education program in Egypt and how it worked since February 2012 till the November 2015, as the seventh edition ended last October. All discussions were about the program's mechanism and what were the motivations keeping it going. The program helped increasing gender diversity and supported the featured content on Arabic Wikipedia. Wikipedia Education Program, like any other initiative, has achievements and dark sides, for that reason, the representatives had to locate both of them and how they influence the Arabic community and how the community interact with this phenomenon.

The collaborative production in open educational environments: Is Wikipedia an answer?

By Melina Masnatta, Wikimedia Argentina

Snippet: University professors become Wikipedians in an online course during just a week.

Educators with different profiles and from different latin america countries, but most of them professors at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) from different faculties, have just participated in the online training and free course "Educational scenarios with technology. Among the real and the possible" organized by the Center for Innovation in Technology and Pedagogy (CITEP) of this university.

Different educational activities were carried out simultaneously. During the week and under the topic “Open movement”, Wikimedia Argentina participated with three different proposals: starting with an interview of Patricio Lorente accompanied with a short text to know more about the movement. To make an immersive experience we designed " Knowing Wikipedia by first-hand or Wikipedia in the first person" to work directly on the platform translating articles from english to spanish from a list created especially for that purpose. Along with this specific proposal, educators participated in a videoconference with Galileo Vidoni (available in Spanish), where participants could talk and learn more about how are the first steps to become a Wikipedian and the importance of the movement at the local and regional level.

With only seven days and without being mandatory, different educators discovered how to edit on Wikipedia, indeed many of them mentioned that they had it as a pending to learn and participate on the free encyclopedia, but never had the time or the real chance. The enthusiasm was also present on social networks, where they shared the experience with the hashtag #escenariostec.

The result

More than 100 educators got involved and exchanged their experience in an online forum with more of 280 messages that reflected their learning process while experiencing with the activity. 80 of them were new users, and they created 61 new articles in spanish. An important fact: 78 of them were women, which means that working with educators is a key issue to continue closing the digital gender gap.

Finally from CITEP, they shared the following insights regarding the question that ran through all the activities that took place during the week dedicated to the open movement. Some thoughts can be sum up as follows:

The collaborative production in open environments: chaos or construction? (...) For the teacher also means accepting new challenges: encourage students to produce knowledge in an environment of divergent nature, it requires permanent operations and convergence. In a space that fosters interventions unmarked, the teacher needs to frame depending on the purpose of education and teaching purposes. (…) Wikipedia is the best example of the challenges posed by the digital era in the educational field, it forces us to rethink the relationship between technology and the production of knowledge and allows us to confirm that the collaborative work does not lead to chaos, if not to the construction. (. ..) [Authors: Angeles Solectic and Miri Latorre]

We share some of the voices of the protagonists in social networks with storify (available in Spanish).

Wikimedia Argentina, about the global and local in the digital and academic communities

By Christian Cariño (Wikimedia México) and Melina Masnatta (Wikimedia Argentina)

Snippet: Aprender para Educar writes about Wikipedia Education Program in Argentina.

The digital free magazine Aprender para Educar (Learning to educate) of the National Technological University (UTN) is recognized in the community of education and technology in Argentina to write about innovation issues in Spanish, which is not common in the academic dissemination and teacher training field.

Cristina Velazquez, general editor of the magazine invited Wikimedia Argentina to write an article that generally describes their activities in the Education Program, after reading the proposal she decided to publish it as the main article of the 12th edition.

To describe the education program, WMAR wrote two notes completing one another, as doing a zoom: from the local to the global and from the global to the local, showing how a movement of this magnitude does not stand alone, it is part of a huge network.

Melina Masnatta, education manager in WMAR and Patricio Lorente, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees wrote those two notes.The first one focuses on the Education Program, implementation, challenges and obstacles that they had at the beginning, plans to integrate it into the classrooms in Argentina and how different Wikimedia Projects are also relevant in education. The most important thing, Melina adds, is to strengthen the values that inspire them, show how the free culture give meaning to education in general and digital culture in particular.

Meanwhile in the second part, Lorente focuses on the global movement, the community pillars, the agenda of today's challenges and the effort of their volunteers as protagonists. It is not easy show the world what drives us and why we work as volunteers in different countries. In education very few people understand the value of building free knowledge. There is still a great prejudice or negative perceptions of Wikipedia in the classroom because teachers ignore how Wikipedia is built.

Everybody reads Wikipedia, but few people edit it. We can change this fact by spreading in spaces such as the Journal of the UTN and inviting more people to collaborate and be the protagonist of this huge collective work for humanity.

Armenian students inspire their teachers to join Wikipedia

By Lilit Tarkhanyan (Wikimedia Armenia)

Snippet: Wikimedia Armenia organized wiki seminar for teachers.

On October 27 - November 1 Wikimedia Armenia gathered together teachers from different cities and villages of Armenia. The aim of the seminar was to spread wikimovement in different regions of Armenia and involve new editors and volunteers in WM AM projects, especially in Wikipedia Education Program. Following our previous successful workshops organized for Western Armenian teachers from Lebanon and Eastern Armenian teachers from different cities of Armenia, WM AM decided to continue involving more teachers to the program. More than 100 teachers applied to participate in wikiseminar but only 29 were chosen.

During the talks some of the teachers confessed that their students has inspired them to apply and join the program. Varsenik Danielyan from Mrgavan village secondary school said:

I have many students who want to learn editing Wikipedia and every time they ask me for help. I can't support them because I myself haven't edited before. I also have a very active student who all the time speaks about Wikipedia and tries to involve his classmates and when we learned that a wiki seminar is going to be organized he encouraged me to participate.

Gayane Gevorgyan - a Computer Science teacher from Stepanavan N1 high school revealed that about 4-5 years ago one of her students approached her and asked to help him create an article in Armenian Wikipedia. After some attempts they succeeded. Her former student has now become one of the active editors on the Armenian Wikipedia who created more than 700 articles and having 2300+ global edits. And when she learned about wiki seminar she applied with great pleasure.

During the seminar the teachers learned about wikimovement and wikiprojects, learned editing tools and the principles of editing in Wikipedia as well as improved and created a number of articles. Armenian Wikipedia experienced editors were their guides in Wikiworld during that period.

Even a month hasn't passed from the seminar and the teachers actively try to organize different events in their schools. On November 4th and 12th Varsenik Danielyan organized a workshop for her students. On November 7th Luiza Sargsyan organized a workshop in Yerevan N190 school. On November 8th Naira Zeynalyan organized a workshop in her school in Surenavan. On November 9th Narine Muradyan organized a workshop in Charentsavan school after M. Mashtots. On November 14th Lusik Dovlatyan organized a workshop in Sisian N1 school. Another workshops are expected to be held in future. In this way Armenian teachers together with their students will continue to share in the sum of all human knowledge.

Wikipedia Education Program participants commemorated the creation/discovery of the Armenian alphabet in Beirut

By Shahen Araboghlian, David Saroyan (Wikimedia Armenia)

Snippet: On Friday October the 23rd, Yeghishe Manoukian College, the high school section, commemorated the feast of the Holy Translators the creation/discovery of the Armenian alphabet, organized by the school’s WikiClub.

In 2014, Wikimedia Armenia started the "Western Armenian program" in order to introduce Western Armenian as a language on Wikipedia. The objective of the collaboration is to establish and develop an online community, in order to improve the quality and accessibility of a Western Armenian Wikipedia.

Part of the project was to organize a summer camp that would offer an open space for high school students to write articles and increase the presence of Western Armenian on Wikipedia. After the WikiCamp (see Lebanon Camp video), a number of wiki communities were formed in different Armenian schools of Lebanon including Yeghishe Manoukian College.

On Friday October the 23rd, Yeghishe Manoukian College, the high school section, commemorated the feast of the Holy Translators the creation/discovery of the Armenian alphabet, organized by the school’s WikiClub.

The opening speech was presented by Shahen Araboghlian, a previous WikiCamp participant, wiki editor, who emphasized on the importance of having the discovery of our alphabet, our dearest translators throughout history and their outstanding roles in our language. At the end of his speech, he noted how the Armenian wiki movement, the editing in our native language and the typing in Armenian is helping the language develop in our minds, adding a pinch of information, article by article, for the better of our future. “Our contributions in Wikipedia plays a huge role in the alphabet’s protectionist policies, saving it from language extinction endangerment.”

A small video clip was projected by the Club’s own Aram Trtrian, in which also club members Narod Najarian and Vana Hajimanoukian directed Armenian alphabet discovery questions to random students on regular school days indirectly teaching the audience of it furthermore.

The event was wrapped up by school principle Zohrab Ghazarian, who saw the Armenian school as the defending wall of the language, without which the language would crumble. He duly noted the atmosphere at an Armenian high school gives the student the chance to discover the language, culture, history and other national traits from a nearer and a broader perspective. He also reminded everyone how the WikiClub plays an important role in the development of language digitization.

Wikimedia Bangladesh's new secondary school education program aims to increase Bangla Wikipedia readers

By Nahid Sultan, Wikimedia Bangladesh

Snippet: Secondary school awareness programs drive Bangla Wikipedia usage

Wikimedia Bangladesh (WMBD) is conducting secondary level school programs in different schools in Bangladesh named a "Wikipedia Awareness Program". This program is specially designed to encourage students to effectively use Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects for their benefit, rather than to contribute to it. As part of Bangla Wikipedia 10th anniversary celebration, it is the first time in the country that Wikipedia-related events took place in secondary schools.

A total of nine awareness programs have been held in different secondary schools since it was started in June 2015. Local Wikipedians, school teachers, and cultural clubs helped to organize these events. Each event was attended by an average of 70 students from the 9th through the 12th grades. The participating schools are: Shaheed Police Smrity School in Mirpur in Dhaka, Motijheel Government Boys' High School, Agrabad Government Colony High School (Boys' & Girls' Sections), Chittagong Collegiate School and College, Government Muslim High School, Government Science College Attached High School and Rajshahi Collegiate School. The last event was held at Patgram upazila in Rangpur and attended by students from six different institutes. Some of the teachers at those schools have expressed their interest to suggest Wikipedia for gathering information for academic purposes to their students. And one school has started a WikiClub, which is moderated by a teacher and is filled by interested students from all grades.

People throughout Bangladesh are not aware of Wikipedia. These school programs and events directly address the issue of increasing readership among students. Because, in order to increase Wikipedia contributors, first it is necessary to increase Wikipedia readership. During the past several years in the Wikimedia movement in Bangladesh, we have seen that most of the regular contributors are students, either in university or in college. Some are also from secondary schools. We determined that, if a large number of the school-going students use Wikipedia for learning purposes, more Wikipedia contributors would emerge. But currently, not a majority of the school-students use Wikipedia at all.

To be more effective and sustainable as a Wikimedia community, we must increase readership among school-going students in Bangladesh. Our hope is that these sorts of school programs will entice students to use Wikipedia for their benefit, and bring in teachers that can expand the program and sustain it through the years.

View photos from the schools on Commons here.

First Wiki Education Workshop in Bulgaria

By Vassia Atanassova (Wikimedians of Bulgaria) and Anna Koval (Wikimedia Foundation)

Snippet: Bulgarian educators collaborate at the country's first wiki education workshop

On 8 September 2015, just prior to the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015 in Estonia, Wikimedians of Bulgaria organized the first ever wiki education workshop in Bulgaria at the Academic Complex of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

For the first time since Wikipedia and wikis entered the academic space, teachers who over the years have included Wikimedia projects in their educational practices, met to exchange experiences and ideas. The seminar was organized on the occasion of the visit in the region of Anna Koval, the Wikimedia Foundation's education program manager for the regions of Eastern Europe and Asia.

The meeting included a brief presentation of the Bulgarian experience with educational activities in the wiki environment, which is quite comprehensive compared with many other countries.

The first university course involving Wikipedia began in 2007 on one campus. It was followed by courses at the New Bulgarian University, Plovdiv University, Sofia University, the Telerik Software Academy, the University of Library Studies and Information Technologies, and the University of National and World Economy.

Courses ranged from "Art and Culture" to "Electronic Learning", Political Science, Political Philosophy, "Psychology", "Online Media and Public Relations", and "Knowledge Sharing and Teamwork". In all of them, wiki software and Wikipedia were used as a platform in which students had the task to develop a topic within the academic discipline as an alternative to traditional coursework transmitted on paper.

In two other university courses, Wikipedia was present as an object of study by students. The first of these courses "Wikipedia and Wiki Technologies", which has been offered for 7 trimesters through the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Information Technology at Plovdiv University. The other course was "New Media and Participatory Culture" for students majoring in European Studies at Sofia University. In both courses, the students were acquainted with the details of Wikipedia, its online volunteer community, its collaborative nature, its mission to create encyclopedic content, and the fact that it is one of the largest projects under a free license.

One last wiki educational project was discussed at the workshop: a unique collaboration between the Bulgarian Wikipedians and Masters and PhD students at the Sofia Zoo's Environmental, Educational and Research Centre. It was partially funded by a Wikimedia Foundation Project and Event Grant. And it resulted in a QRpedia project that made biological and ecological information more readily available to young learners who visit the zoo, as well as notable impacts for the Wikimedia movement.

The wiki education workshop on September 8th considered the perspective of both the teachers and the community of Wikipedians. Participants shared success stories and common problems and discussed best practices in the design of university wiki projects. Participants learned about the global Wikimedia Education Program as well as the Wikimedia Foundation's mechanisms of support for wiki training, resource development, and plans for future work.

The workshop was highly motivational. Professor Justine Toms aptly summarized the sentiment shared by the participants at the end of the day: "I now have so many new ideas!" :)

Participation: Spiritia (wiki mentor and teacher), Maymay (wiki mentor), Laveol (wiki mentor and assistant), Justine Toms (New Bulgarian University), Katerina Zareva (Educational and Environmental Centre at Sofia Zoo), Plamena Popova (University of Library Sciences and Information Technologies), and Anna Koval (Manager, Wikipedia Education Program, Wikimedia Foundation).

Communication/Coordination: Announcement in the Village Pump, Announcement in the User Group's blog, Facebook event page

Slides from the Presentation

Read the blog post in Bulgarian here.

Education Program at Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015 in Estonia

By Anna Koval (Wikimedia Foundation)

Snippet: Education Programs were a highlight of the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015 in Estonia

In September 2015, Central and Eastern European Wikimedians traveled to Estonia for the 4th annual meeting of the regional working group known as Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe — or CEE. The Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015 was attended by approximately 70 people from 32 countries and 28 language communities, in addition to 4 staff members of the Wikimedia Foundation.¹ At the meeting, there was great interest in sharing and analyzing the local experiences of the many countries in the region participating in the Wikipedia Education Program²

Currently, there are Wikipedia Education Programs — or WEPs — in 21 CEE countries, and 25% of all WEPs worldwide are in CEE. Education Program leaders from CEE countries have 47 years of combined programmatic experience in the Wikimedia Movement. They support +6,750 students, +186 educators, +95 volunteers in 48 cities, 42 universities, 90 secondary schools, 10 primary schools, 5 adult schools, and the movement's only senior education program is in a CEE country. CEE WEPs have created +82,001 articles, improved +525 articles, translated +770 articles, uploaded +2,270 files, and contributed +225M bytes of content to the Wikimedia projects.³ It was announced at the meeting that education program pilots will begin in 2 new CEE countries — Belarus and Turkey.

Education Program Sessions

A pre-conference survey asking community members about main topics of interest for the meeting revealed education programs as the second most popular topic. Education session submissions outnumbered all other topics except technical and language tools and lightning talks. As a result, the education program track comprised a considerable proportion of the sessions, which focused much on program-related issues.⁴ In fact, notes Vassia Atanassova, a leading member of the international programme committee, education was the only topic that was given 2 slots in the programme: Part I and Part II.⁵

The meeting's education programme began with a question-and-answer conversation with the Wikimedia Foundation's education program manager for the region, Anna Koval. This talk was titled "Putting education on the map and nurturing a culture of documentation, collaboration, and mentorship." The discussion covered a range of topics, including: an overview and a history of the program, advocacy in academia, the Wikimedia Foundation's relationship with the Wiki Education Foundation, the Wikipedia Education Collaborative, and support available from Anna.

There were 5 presentations given in the education programme track. Slidedecks and etherpads are all linked here.

How to talk to teenagers about Wikipedia – and why should you by Krzysztof Machocki from Poland
How the Wikipedia Education Program works in a WikiClub by David Saroyan from Armenia
Possibilities for university cooperation: the Estonian Example by Ivo Kruusamägi from Estonia
Remarks on teaching adults using Wikipedia by Marios Magioladitis from Greece
Roadmap to designing a wiki education course by Vassia Atanassova from Bulgaria

Education Program Extension

The Education Program Extension for MediaWiki was presented by Anna Koval during one of the tools rotation sessions, and the talk was rated highly by participants in session feedback forms. Currently, this extension is being used on 20 Wikimedia projects — 40% of which are on WIkimedia projects in CEE languages.⁶

Since the meetup, there has been much interest in the extension in the region.⁶

Deployments to 2 new CEE projects — Serbian and Macedonian Wikipedias
Translations by 2 more CEE projects — Bulgarian and Slovak Wikipedias
Interest from at least 2 other new CEE projects — Albanian and Belarusian Wikipedia

Nevertheless, community members expressed concern and disappointment that this tool is not being supported by the WMF.⁷

Engaging the Region; Inspiring the Movement

Just prior to the CEE Meeting, Wikimedians of Bulgaria welcomed Anna Koval to their country and hosted the first wiki education workshop in Bulgaria for educators in Sofia.

And on the first morning of the CEE Meeting, before the bus left Tartu for Voore, Anna Koval and Ivo Kruusamägi met with the Vice Rector for Academic Affairs at the University of Tartu, Dr. Mart Noorma, to discuss continuing and expanding their now 5-year-old Wikipedia Education Program⁸ — potentially collaborating with neighboring countries. In November, Dr. Noorma visited San Francisco for an academic conference. While there, he met with Lila Tretikov, Anna Koval, Floor Koudijs, Rosemary Rein, Katy Love, and Asaf Bartov at the Wikimedia Foundation to continue the conversation around regional collaboration.

The CEE Meeting was discussed during the Wikimedia Foundation's October 2015 Metrics and Activities Meeting⁹. CEE's Education Programs were called "a highlight of the meetup." According to María Cruz, Communications Coordinator for the Community Engagement department at the Wikimedia Foundation, "The Wikipedia Education Program is one of main gateways to engage knowledge societies outside of the movement to get engaged in the Wikimedia projects." (See slides 6-7 here.) (Watch video from 4:09 to 5:13 here.)

There was great interest at the 2015 CEE Meeting in sharing and analyzing the local experiences of the many countries in the region participating in the Wikipedia Education Program² — and we hope that will continue to be the case. :)

David Saroyan and Anna Koval review the WikiClubs presentation
Education Program Extension session
Krzysztof Machocki from Poland talking about teaching teenagers
Marios Magioladitis from Greece talking about using Wikipedia in adult education

See more photos from the WMCEE 2015 Meeting here.

Collaboration with Masaryk University turns official

By Vojtěch Dostál (Wikimedia Czech Republic)

Marek Blahuš, Wikipedian in residence at Masaryk University

Snippet: The second largest university in the Czech Republic has employed a Wikipedian in residence, leading to a boom of Wikimedia activities in the city of Brno.

Collaboration between Wikipedia and Czech institutions has always been a priority for Wikimedia Czech Republic, but the year 2015 has taken this to another level. First, an official memorandum of collaboration with the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) was signed in May 2015, to be followed by official collaboration with Masaryk University in Brno (the second largest city and university in the Czech Republic), which was contracted in November 2015. In fact, Wikimedia activities in Brno have been blooming for several years now, mainly as a result of the community's own development, but aided substantially by the external interest in Wikipedia by Masaryk University alumni society, demonstrated as early as March 2013.

In February 2015, the university employed one of the most experienced Czech Wikipedians – Marek Blahuš (Blahma) – who was appointed to become the university's first "Wikipedian in residence". Marek Blahuš has been in the center of the Wikimedia community in Brno for about two years, organizing regular Wikipedia meetups, the 2014 edition of the annual WikiConference (more in English here) and creating the Czech-Slovak Wikipedia translation tool, which has famously led to the creation of >9000 articles on Czech and Slovak Wikipedias (more in English here). His current work as Wikipedian in residence is funded by Masaryk University and runs under the patronage of Wikimedia Czech Republic as well as Masaryk University's rector Mikuláš Bek.

Since February, Wikipedia has taken a prominent role within Masaryk University. Marek Blahuš started a "Masaryk University Wikipedians team", gathering local Wikipedians and facilitating contacts with the university, aided by his status of a graduate and current employee in its language center. Articles about Masaryk University alumni and faculties have been identified and improved after consultations with Masaryk University archives and libraries which provided helpful resources. Wikipedia citation templates can now be directly generated from the university's on-line archive of theses. In September, a public conference called "Masaryk University Is Getting High on Wikipedia" took place on university grounds, featuring the experienced Wikipedian Jan Sokol (Sokoljan), who is a philosopher, university teacher and a former presidential candidate. The talks focused on the use of Wikipedia in university education, in line with the successful Czech "Students Write Wikipedia" program. One of the teachers, Jiří Rambousek, expressed his desire to organize a Wikipedia Club as a regular meetup where articles would be improved in a collaborative effort and new editors introduced to Wikipedia.

The program is actively preparing for 2016 when we expect Wikimedia Czech Republic to take a more active role in overseeing the initiatives as well as the creation of a position of a "Wikipedian in Brno" – person officially in charge of the wide array of Wikimedia activities happening in the city. The chapter's annual plan includes initiatives to increase the number of university courses which incorporate Wikipedia into the curriculum, public presentations of Wikipedia at various events, scanning and uploading of images from institutional and personal archives, and much more. Let's wish that our plans come true!

Online ambassador played a prominent role in helping Egyptian students to nominate their excellent content

By Walaa Abdel Manaem (Wikipedia Education Program Egypt) & (Egypt Wikimedians user group)

Snippet: Online ambassador helped spanish students course in Cairo University to nominate their articles, scoring an exceptional record of WEP excellent content.

Bassem Fleifel, an online ambassador of Cairo university spanish course, played a prominent role to help all students to encourage them to nominate their excellent content to be a featured and good articles in Arabic Wikipedia. Those articles are History of bread (Featured article); Walt Disney; Daniel Radcliffe; Al-Andalus; Poet in New York; and Popol Vuh.

The seventh term, the program started in Cairo University with promoting posts on Wikipedia and social media websites to help new participants understand the general idea of the program as well as holding meetings with professors from the departments of History, chinese, English language and Spanish language. Walaa Abdel Manaem (program leader in Cairo University) and Bassem Fleifel (online ambassador) have held some workshops in campus and online for the whole students to teach them "How to edit Wikipedia". On the other hand, Prof. Abeer Abdel-Hafiz has exerted great efforts with her students in addition to introducing Walaa to new classes of senior students for whom she has organized general seminars about Wikipedia and the education program. At the same time Walaa was assigning her Spanish department students of the first and second year to edit Wikipedia.

This term, Prof. Abeer let the chance to her students to choose any articles they would like to translate from the Spanish Wikipedia to the Arabic Wikipedia or working on articles about history. They already have chosen some articles to translate with the target of nominating them to be a featured and good articles.

Most of students worked on articles about different topics like history, writers, actors, history of food and drink, mayan literature, islam and politics, etc. This course itself achieved an exceptional record of Wikipedia Education program excellent content and the best term ever in the history of WEP in Egypt in general and in the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University in specific. Walaa has held 2 online webinars to follow up with her students in addition to the workshops held at the campus. Regarding numbers, 38 students joined this course, of which 35 are female and 3 are male students. They worked on 1748 articles adding more than 12,282,943 million bytes to the article namespace on the Arabic Wikipedia, with the help of the online ambassador, who also participated as a student.

See the course page of this group on the Arabic Wikipedia here.

Full statistics of WEP in Egypt the first term in 2012 till the seventh term in 2015 which include numbers of created articles, featured and good articles, featured portals and lists.

A portal for teachers and education institutions on the French Wikipedia

By Jules Xénard, Chargé de projet Éducation, Wikimédia France

Snippet: Wikimedia France and some Wikipedians created a portal for the teachers and education institutions, on the French Wikipedia, listing the benefits of developing wise use of Wikipedia among students.

In this new academic year, Wikimédia France is giving special attention to supporting the education community, with whom a big number of projects is growing. One of these prominent projects is Wikiconcours lycéen, taking place for the third consecutive year.

This summer, Wikimedia France and some Wikipedians created a portal for the teachers and education institutions, on the French Wikipedia. This portal, works as a toolkit, listing the benefits of developing wise use of Wikipedia among students — development of critical thinking, collaborative work, information research skills, introduction on copyright, etc.— as well as examples of projects conducted by university and secondary school teachers. It also provides helping booklets to empower them. Moreover, the portal includes a forum where it is possible to interact with volunteer editors of Wikipedia who are familiar with the education system.

Creating this portal is part of a broader strategy to raise the awareness about Wikimedia projects in the classrooms, from primary school to university, especially since Wikimedia France was certified as a complementary educational association of public education by the French Education Ministry, about a year ago.

Two Wikimedian adult educators and an adult student present paper on Wikimedia editing at CIE2015 in Greece

By Marios Magioladitis, Mina Theofilatou

Snippet: How adult learners from the Ionian Islands of Corfu and Kefalonia shared cultural heritage on Commons and Wiktionary

On Sunday 11 October 2015 Marios Magioladitis of Corfu Second Chance School and Mina Theofilatou of Argostoli Evening Secondary School presented their paper “Adult Learners from the Ionian Islands of Corfu and Kefalonia Share Cultural Heritage on Wikimedia Commons and Wiktionary” at CIE2015. This year the Conference on Informatics in Education, organized jointly by the Informatics Departments of the University of Piraeus and Ionian University in cooperation with the Greek Computer Society, was held from 9-11 October at the University of Piraeus campus. With over 350 participants and a wide array of parallel sessions and workshops, CIE2015 is one of the most important annual events for Computer Science and ICT in Education in Greece. The paper Marios and Mina co-authored was the only one related to Wikimedia editing and adult education. Marios talked about the Wikiexpedition he held in the area of Lefkimmi with his students and the material they contributed to Wikimedia Commons and Greek & English Wikipedia, while Mina talked about how her students created the “Kefalonian dialect” category on Greek Wiktionary and contributed 50 articles.

The two Ionian Wikimedians collaborated for the first time last year with their paper “OERs in Secondary and Adult Education: the case of Wikipedia”, which was presented at CIE2014 at the Ionian University in Corfu. This year they finally got to meet in person and created a stir with their lively presentation and innovative teaching suggestions… but the Argostoli Evening School student Soula Synodinou was the one who stole the show. Soula is a 55-year-old assistant nurse, grandmother and honor 10th Grade student. The audience was impressed with her passion for knowledge, which literally follows her “round the clock”: she usually works night shifts at the hospital and during the project she would ask the elderly patients to tell her Kefalonian words, which she would jot down in her notebook and then register on Wikitonary in the school computer lab. Says Soula: “I would like to thank my teacher Ms. Mina for encouraging me to join her in the presentation. It was an amazing experience, to be at the University of Piraeus to talk about the Kefalonian dialect. It was perfect!”

After the presentation the team was approached by a teacher from another charming Ionian island: Mr. D. Leventis of Kythira Secondary School expressed his interest in exploring the possibility of collaboration on a joint Wikimedia project. By means of team-based learning and the Wikipedia Education Programs, the rich cultural heritage of the Ionian Islands is adding value to the world of free and open knowledge!

The authors would like to thank the Wikimedia Foundation for providing TPS grants to cover their travel expenses and the Teachers’ Association of Kefalonia & Ithaca for covering the student’s expenses. Thanks also to Dr. V. Belesiotis of the CIE2015 organizing committee for his positive response to our request to have Soula join us in the presentation.

Full paper (in English): Adult Learners from the Ionian Islands of Corfu and Kefalonia Share Cultural Heritage on Wikimedia Commons and Wiktionary, CIE 2015, pp. 361-370 and in the Conference proceedings (ISBN 978-960-578-010-4)

The very first Wikipedia Education Program of Wikimedia Hong Kong

By Venus Lui (Wikimedia Hong Kong)

Snippet: Wikimedia Hong Kong just finished the very first Education Program.

Wikimedia Hong Kong had the very first Education Program from March to August. At the beginning, we offered a seminar to the students from the English Department of Hang Seng Management College, to share how to use Wikipedia with the appropriate attitude. In this program, We encouraged the students to edit the articles about literature and linguistics in this program, as the articles related to literature and linguistics are not as numerous as other topics. We collected 17 entries from the students, mainly related to linguistics. All the entries are informative and we are so happy to have the students participating in the program.

Here is the list of the articles the students edited in the Wikipedia Education Program.

Suffix
Gender in English
Articulatory phonetics
Fricative consonant
Manner of articulation
Schwa
Speech organ
Stress and vowel reduction in English
Part of speech
Finite verb
Turn Constructional Units
Contrastive Analysis
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Order of Acquisition

Wikipedia in Higher Education in Israel: A new for-credit elective course focusing on contributing to Wikipedia at Tel Aviv University

By Shani Evenstein (WMIL)

Snippet: A first-of-its-kind, for-credit, elective course that focuses on contributing to Wikipedia has opened at Tel Aviv University and is now available to all B.A. students on campus

On October 19th a new for-credit elective course called "Wikipedia: Skills for producing and consuming knowledge"^[1] has opened at Tel Aviv University (TAU). The semester-long course (13 weeks) is available to all B.A. students on campus and this semester about 50 students from various disciplines are taking part in this first-of-its-kind course in Israel.

The course draws from "flipped classroom" concepts and uses "blended learning" methods, which practically means combining in-class lectures, workshops and small-group activities, as well as online individual learning. Both the Moodle learning management system (LMS) and the Wikipedia Education Extension are used to monitor the students' work and progress throughout the course.

The course has 2 main assignments - expanding an existing stub, as well as writing a new article, in the hopes that the content added during the course will assist not only the students themselves, but also future generations of learners as well as the general public. Though the course focuses on adding quality content to Wikipedia, it also aims to help students sharpen their academic skills and their 21st century skills, highlighting collaborative learning, joint online research and interdisciplinary collaborations in the process of constructing knowledge.

This course was initiated and is led by Shani Evenstein, an educator, Wikimedian and member of the Wikipedia Education Collaborative, in collaboration with the Orange Institute for Internet Studies, as well as the School of Education at TAU. The syllabus for the new course builds on the success of Wiki-Med, a for-credit elective course, which was designed in 2013 and is led by Evenstein at the Sackler school of Medicine for the third consecutive year. While Wiki-med is focused on contributing medical content to Wikipedia and is only available to Medical Students on campus, the new course is designed to accommodate students from different academic disciplines and varying backgrounds.

The course was chosen to be part of TAU's cross-discipline elective courses system ("Kelim Shluvim") and was approved by the Vice-Rector, who heads the program. In that, the course marks an important precedent in the collaboration between Academia and the Wikipedia Education Program, as it is the first time a higher institution acknowledges the importance of a course focusing on Wikipedia on a university level, offering it to all students, rather than a faculty level or individual lecturers as mostly practiced. It is our hope that other higher education institutions will follow this example and offer similar courses to students both in Israel and around the world.

Israel: Dozens of articles were created by dint of a structured teaching process that incorporates new training tools and involvement of scientists

By Shai Katz (WMIL)

WMIL's education volunteer guides students in editing Wikipedia

Students of the Alfa gifted program in a Gala editing workshop

Snippet: Dozens of articles about scientists were created by students in an intensive workshop that was the highlight of an educational process led by Wikimedia Israel in cooperation with the Youth Unit at the Tel Aviv University

Over 50 scientists who are laureates of the most prominent awards and prizes in the scientific world (such as Nobel and Wolf Prizes) have recently been acknowledged through an article about them in the Hebrew Wikipedia. This was achieved thanks to the work of 10th graders from all over Israel, Arabs and Jews, who are participants of the Alpha gifted program that is being operated by The Dov Lautman Unit for Science Oriented Youth (Hebrew site) at Tel Aviv University (TAU).

The writing process was directed by WMIL's staff and volunteers, in cooperation with the staff of the Science Oriented Youth Unit that includes scientists carrying out research in TAU. One of the unique features of this work process was separating between article content creation and providing the students with technical editing skills: first, the work on content was done using a Word file draft, and only when the content was ready for upload did the workshop take place, providing students with technical editing skills. The separation proved to be quite effective: writing the drafts using the familiar Word platform, enabled the staff and students in the program to concentrate on creating content without distractions and technical challenges - and arrival of the students to the workshop with content that is already completed, was equally effective in allowing them to be more open to learning the technical editing skills.

One of the keys to success in this project was the construction of a structured process for assisting students in several stages. Initially, the teams of the two leading organizations created lists with names of accomplished scientists who do not yet have entries in the Hebrew Wikipedia. The next steps took place during a Summer Camp for the students, held at TAU: the students were given an Introduction to Wikipedia lecture followed by an “Auction” game, in which the students selected their writing topics from the list of scientists that was created in advance.

Towards the final stages of the summer camp, the students were given a workshop in writing articles about scientists. In the spirit of the project, the workshop did not deal with technical editing skills but was rather devoted only to issues relating to the content: what information we, as readers of an article about a scientist, would want to obtain about her or him? Which sources of information are acceptable and valid? According to which layout should the information be formatted? A written guide with practical instructions for content writing was created by WMIL and distributed to the students after the workshop to assist them in their independent work (for the English version of this tutorial, click here.)

After the summer camp was over, the students went on to independently work on the drafts they created. The students sent their drafts to scientists from the program team for revision and were required to correct them according to the corrections or comments. When the drafts reached an adequate level, they were approved for uploading to Wikipedia.

At this point a Gala editing workshop was held during which the students experienced editing the content they have created using drafts in Wikipedia. Towards the end of the workshop, to the sound of roaring applause of their friends, one by one the students transmitted the outcome of their work, to the article sphere. WMIL has created on behalf of this workshop, a useful presentation that guides users how to transfer an article from a Word document to Wikipedia (for a Hebrew version of this presentation, click here.)

Following the success of this project, the Unit for Science Oriented Youth at Tel Aviv University announced that they would like to continue the collaboration around the writing of articles about scientists. Much to our delight, the unit’s team requested that the next project will focus specifically on women scientists in order to increase their visibility in the Hebrew Wikipedia, and to provide science enthusiastic girls who participate in the program, with female role models. Thus, the Unit for Science Oriented Youth joins forces with the “HaNagid” middle school in Herzliya, who is going to have their gifted students write entries in Wikipedia about women scientists.

Wiki expeditions, animation clips about alebrijes and more at the Tec de Monterrey in Mexico

By Leigh Thelmadatter (Wiki Learning-Tec de Monterrey)

Snippet: Student participation is more than just text!

For the Fall 2015 Wiki Learning-Tec de Monterrey held two wiki expeditions in Mexico City and began a collaboration with the Museo de Arte Popular. We also received our first grant!

Wiki expeditions

The 32-campus Tec de Monterrey system has each semester an event called "Semana i" (i Week), when students forego normal classes for an entire week to work on challenging projects called "retos." For the Mexico City and Santa Fe campuses, one option for students was to work with Wikimedia, with the aptly named projects "Reto Wikimedia." Both campuses opted to do wiki-expeditions to different parts of Mexico City. The Mexico City campus had the larger group with almost 90 students registered, who covered the two southern boroughs of Xochimilco and Tlalpan. The Santa Fe group had 35 participants, and covered the San Ángel neighborhood found not far from this campus.

Both campus took photos of landmarks with the Mexico City campus also focusing on photos of everyday life in the south of the city. The Mexico City campus tallied 5264 photos, 8 videos and 36 articles, including articles related to the area into French, Swedish and Danish. The Santa Fe group tallied 605 photos, and ten articles in Spanish on landmarks in San Ángel.

In addition, the Mexico City campus had a special speaker the borough chronicler of Xochmilco, Sebastián Flores Farfán. A short montage video of the event is in the works.

Some student photos:

Some video clips of the event:

Animation clips with the Museo de Arte Popular

Animation about alebrijes

Wikiservicio, students working with Wikimedia for their community service requirement, added a new component. To attract more students and encourage more students to do all of their community service hours with Wikimedia, a collaboration was set up with the Museo de Arte Popular (MAP)... the first of many we hope! Six students from the digital art and animation major (see last newsletter) have continued working with Wikimedia, but focusing their efforts in creating short animation clips in relation to the mission of promoting and preserving Mexican folk art. One clip has been completed and can be see to the right of this text. So far, the video has subtitles in English, German, French and Punjabi. A second clip is nearing completion at the time of this writing.

Classes and Wikimetrics

Fifteen students completed work with Wikiservicio doing translations, writing new articles and doing photography projects. As of this date, 7 have indicated interest in working with Wikiservicio on campus and another six with MAP.

Five university level classes and one high school class on the Mexico City (South) campus have had projects, all in writing and translation, with some video work.

Wikimetrics for the semester are:

According to Wikimetrics tool....

9,589,918 bytes to Spanish Wikipedia
3,098 edits to the mainspace of Spanish Wikipedia
367 pages created in the mainspace of Spanish Wikipedia

Manual count

302 student and teacher participants
281 Spanish Wikipedia articles created or expanded
6,057 photographs
10 videos
9 articles in English Wikipedia
2 articles in French Wikipedia
1 article in Swedish Wikipedia
1 article in Danish Wikipedia

First grant Wiki Learning received its first grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. The long-term goal of this grant is to establish a system for financing Wiki Learning. The grant, which totals a modest 12,500 Mexican pesos, will be used for swag, such as t shirts, stickers, buttons, etc, especially for Semana i activities and promotion of wiki activities to other campus. The money will also be used for incidental travel expenses, especially for projects needing to move expensive camera equipment.

Norwegian Masters students in History and Archeology twists their brains on Wikipedia

By Jorid Martinsen (Wikimedia Norge)

Snippet: This fall masters students in History and Archeology at the University of Oslo take on the task of Wikipedia editing as one of the main parts in a subject on communication of History.

The University of Oslo is Norway’s largest higher education institution, and it is the first time Wikimedia Norway collaborates with this University in forming and using Wikipedia editing as a integrated part of higher education. The collaboration started by Wikimedia Norway contacting assistant professor John McNicol, who already had gotten some media attention on his eagerness to make students skilled in knowledge sharing.

Starting off with a two hour lecture on the secret world of Wikipedia and a two hour editing workshop in mid-September, and in October the students will evaluate the life of their articles. Has there been many additional edits on their articles? Discussions? Request to delete everything? For Wikimedia Norge it is fun to see the students both engaging in Wikipedia editing and using the ways of Wikipedia to discuss how knowledge is formed.

What I Learned: Wiki Photo School in Serbia

By Ivana Madžarević and Ivana Guslarević (Wikimedia Serbia)

Snippet: Wikimedia Serbia organised Wiki Photo School in cooperation with Petnica Science Center in order to generate content about chemical experiments

One of Wikimedia Serbia’s (WMRS) goals this year was to partner with Petnica Science Center, an autonomous and independent organization engaged in the development of scientific literacy, education and culture. As a first step, WMRS planned a Wiki Photo School, a three-day photo school with lectures and workshops organized in Petnica Science Center, for all participants who were interested in training to photograph chemical experiments.

The aim was to generate high-quality multimedia content on Wikimedia Commons regarding themes that were not well covered on the project. Then, next step was to include this content in Wikipedia articles in order to animate volunteers, and introduce them to Creative Commons licenses and Wiki projects. These target groups included not only students, but also professors and collaborators who have been involved in promoting Wikimedia’s mission.

Participants attended lectures and workshops on photography, WMRS projects, Wikimedia Commons, and CC licences for three days. The idea was for each person to successfully choose a license and upload at least one piece of content of good quality on Commons, and use that content in some other Wikimedia project. Workshops went great, atmosphere was excellent, and participants were highly interested in learning from their lecturers. The most exciting thing for them was using their photos on an article on Wikipedia, not just in Serbian, but in other languages as well. High quality content was produced, measured both by Commons’ “Good Photos” tool, and professional photographers through photo analysis at the photo school itself.

Also, Participants were highly invested in quality photography, and uploading imperfect photos was not an option for them. They decided to upload photos after editing them, but there was lack of time for editing the content and after the workshop ended, follow-up with participants failed, so there weren't as many photos on Commons as previously estimated.

For 2016, the Wiki Photo School also had positive outcomes in terms of outreach efforts: Marija Gajić and Vladimir Pecikoza, two of the instructors and newly converted editors to Wikimedia projects, have each proposed an annual project to Wikimedia Serbia, named Valjevo Mountains Through the Lens and Wiki Loves Dragonflies, both have been accepted.

When asked why they continue to work on Wiki projects, Gajić said, “it was the Wiki Photo School that inspired me and gave me the idea of how to take something that I do (insects) and get it closer to a large number of people of different ages and interests.” Gajić has become a very active editor, taking part in Wiki Loves Earth, WikiCamp, and also recently became a Wikipedian in Residence for the Belgrade Botanical Garden. In this sense, even though this activity did not have the outcomes expected in terms of content, it seems to be a positive outreach event.

View photos from the workshops on Commons here.

Teachers in Serbia professionally trained to use Wikipedia in the classroom by Wikimedians

By Milica Žarković & Ivana Guslarević (Wikimedia Serbia)

Snippet: Wikimedia Serbia organized first professional development trainings to teach teachers in Serbia how to use the Wikipedia in the classroom.

Wikimedia Serbia, in addition to regular Education Program activities - which include supporting student editors at 11 secondary schools and five universities in 14 faculties on two Wikimedia projects, have organized and facilitated four trainings for over 100 teachers in three different cities in Serbia, developed for teachers to learn about the use of Wikipedia in the classroom. The seminar is a recognized course option in the official teacher-development training catalog since the school year 2014/2015, and it is accredited by the State Institute for Improvement of Education. Participants were teachers from primary and secondary schools from all over Serbia, so training was designed to address their specific needs and experiences. Since using wiki tools is now a legislated/required component of the national educational curriculum for the second year of secondary school, these seminars are a great opportunity for teachers to get support and knowledge about wiki technologies.

View photos from the trainings on Commons here.

Science Outreach on Wikipedia has impact on the Education Program in Sweden

By Sara Mörtsell (Wikimedia Sweden)

Snippet: Wikipedia Education Program kicks off in Linköping University

In October, Linköping University launched their activities to engage their faculty in editing Wikipedia as part of their research communication now starting at Linköping University. This is a milestone in the Science Outreach project where five Swedish universities have set out to engage their research staff in contributing their expertise to Wikipedia. The project is based on previous experience at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), where training is about to start by systematically giving every PhD student an individual introduction to editing Wikipedia and how to improve topics in their research area. There has been significant overlap and impact on the Education Program in Sweden as Wikipedia is gaining credibility in Academia; three new university courses and one new high school, directly linked to the activities of this project, have enrolled in the program since autumn began.

Background

2013 Wikipedian in Academy at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
Since then, 149 users affiliated to SLU have registered on Wikimedia projects and some of these have added themselves on the list of participants on Meta, and together they have made 1500 edits.
In early 2015, the project run by SLU staff, received considerable funding from The Swedish Research Council Formas to scale the work to include four more institutions; Linköping University, Gothenburg University, Karolinska Institute and the National Veterinary Institute. Wikimedia Sweden supports the project with expertise and User Profile templates as requested by participating universities.
Autmn 2015 Two new universities join the Education Program enrolling three courses and one high school class joins. All courses are related to activites from this group of universities.

Linköping University:Researchers improve Wikipedia (eng)

Education students in Uruguay reflect on Wikipedia as a learning tool

By Roxana Sordo

Snippet: Wikipedia Education Program helps as both, a learning tool and an evaluation tool as well.

Every year in late October, the second semester tests take place as part of a formal assessment tool at Instituto de Profesores Artigas in Montevideo, Uruguay. Once again, we can see students struggling to graduate. They would sit for several semester tests, they hand in the paper and hopefully, make a grade. Most of the tests are content-based and there is little room for metacognitive strategies, discussions or reflections on the course. Can we make a change as teacher trainers? How can we include e-assessment in a creative way?

Bottom-up innovations seem to be the answer. It´s been the second year in a row that senior education students attending English as a Foreign Language classes at Instituto de Profesores Artigas have used alternative assessment. Professors Beatriz Teijeira and Roxana Sordo have been using Wikipedia as a teaching tool and as an evaluation tool, as well.

Once students have learned about Wikipedia and some edition tools by means of workshops, they work on an article on their minors or majors that needs improvements or they create an article on their own in the Spanish Wikipedia based on an article in the English Wikipedia. They use self-evaluation forms, peer evaluation and at the end of the process, they make a presentation of the article which includes a reflection on their learning process. They create a pdf presentation as a visual aid to develop their speech. Moreover, Education students are given some guiding questions in advance so that they can organize their presentation and reflect on the article search and criteria selection, their reading strategies, their collaborative work, their learning processes and Wikipedia in education:

Student presentation of Wikipedia Education Project at Instituto de Profesores Artigas in Uruguay, 2015

A teacher-to-be in Uruguay making a presentation of his Wikipedia assignment, 2015

1. Article search and selection criteria

What search and selection criteria have you used in order to find and select the Wikipedia article?

Describe the article. Include how and why you have selected it.

2. Reading strategies

What reading strategies have you used when doing the task? Mention how you have approached the texts, the actions you have taken and the resources you have used to understand the text.

3. Collaborative work organization

How have you organized your work when writing the article? Why have you decided to do so?

4. Evaluation

How do you evaluate your work? What have you learned? What do you need to improve?

5. Reflections

Reflect on your learning process and the goals you have achieved by using Wikipedia.

Reflect on Wikipedia in education. Would you use Wikipedia in your classes?

The author would like to thank Professor Fernando Da Rosa for his leading role in the Education Program in Uruguay, his commitment and his positive feedback.

The Wikipedia Education Program now on Twitter

By Sara Mörtsell (Wikimedia Sweden)

To complement the the Facebook group for WEP, there is now a twitter account associated to the global education program - @WikiEduProgram. The account will tweet the newsletter and the individual news, it will also be able to share news, announcements and calls in the Facebook group that are of interest to followers outside of group members.

A couple of things you can do to help get @WikiEduProgram going:

If you're a twitter user, make sure to follow the account as it will help the account curate an informative feed of users who have knowledge about WEP and events going on around the world.
Whatever language you tweet in, if your tweets have information relevant to @WikiEduProgram, make sure to mention the account in the tweet and it will be able to retweet your news to others and endorse your activities.
Encourage other twitter users in your networks to follow the account, this is an opportunity for WEP to communicate to a new audience.
If you are not a twitter user...
Do you want to help manage the account? Contact me and I'll share the account details.

Recent improvements to the Wikipedia Education Collaborative bear fruit

By Samir Elsharbaty (WMF)

Snippet: Wikipedia Education Collaborative implements successful improvements to its model.

Last summer the members of the Wikipedia Education Collaborative (also known as the Collab) and the Wikimedia Foundation’s education team worked together on designing and implementing a sustainable plan to improve the joint work of education community leaders. Thanks to the quick response, enthusiasm and dedication of the Collab members, the idea worked! This group of program leaders were able to use their expertise in mentoring other education leaders and to use the experience from their education program to help others learn and grow their own programs. The transition of knowledge leads to healthier programs and communities.

The Wikipedia Education Collaborative started in early 2014 aiming to use education program leader experience to provide guidance and mentorship to new programs. Building a group of international program leaders who can define the scope of the Collab and design its own model was considered a top priority. The recent improvements were a milestone in fulfilling this goal.

The changes to the collab model included clarifying the membership criteria and facilitating the membership request process. As a result of this change, ten new membership requests were received in just five months, bringing the total number of Collab members to 23. Several new members have been contributing to the Collab actively since they joined the group.

Building a new task management system on Phabricator for the Collab allowed members to suggest, choose, claim and complete the tasks they want to work on. The Collab project on Phabricator encourages members to be more active by seeing the work their colleagues are doing as well as supporting the transparency of the Collaborative. Until the moment of drafting this post, the Collab members worked on nearly 90 different tasks. The tasks included one to one mentoring sessions for new program initiators, providing different types of resources, building new communication channels, and many other jobs. See more examples in the full list here.

The recent improvements to the Education Collaborative turned out to be a booster for the two-year old initiative and exceeded all expectations with its initial results. The changes encourage members to participate in designing their own model and to take part in the decision making process. The collaborative spirit Collab members and coordinators have, was also a key to the success achieved.

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