CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2018 - June 2019/Skill Building Initiatives

Executive summary

CIS-A2K believes that skill-building activities and initiatives play a very crucial role to empower Wikimedia communities. This observation is based on the analysis of the requests that A2K has received towards technical training, tech trouble shooting and resolution of bugs. In the past CIS-A2K has conducted and supported several skill building initiatives. In this work-plan CIS-A2K proposes the following skill-building activities.

Notes

Train the trainer is an initiative that will come under the process of building on our work. TTT has been instrumental in producing new leaders across Indic communities and projects.
MediaWiki Training is specialised training that has been conducted in collaboration with WMF employees and GSOC Fellows to develop patches and come up with other tech solutions.
IPWT is an initiative under Invest in a new idea process of A2K team. While events like TTT are effective in spreading general awareness, they do not have adequate follow up measures. A2K team will identify promising participants and arrange (virtual and real time) training as per the Wiki aptitude of the Wikimedian
Regional MWT and TTT: We aim to implement our Capacity building and Retention process with this initiative. A2K team shall be supporting TTT alumnus in organising and mentoring regional TTT and MWT along with the support of a community/A2K team member.
Wiki Technical Training: Wikimedians come with all kinds of interests and learning curves. While some might be inclined to conduct outreach activities and orient new users, some other Wikimedians would like to optimise their work and contribute to the content. WTT is a program to introduce and test tools, gadgets that can assist Indic Wikimedians in their activities.

Train-the-Trainer

Train-the-Trainer or TTT is a residential training that attempts to groom leadership skills among the Indic Wikimedia community members. Based on internal needs-assessment conducted annually CIS-A2K tweaks and improvises the design and expected outcomes of TTT. TTT is an annual workshop and has been conducted in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Train-the-Trainer (advanced)

After conducting 5 iterations of the Train-the-Trainer, this year we'll have a special Train-the-Trainer iteration with the TTT alumni, who are still actively contributing to their projects. This workshop will train and discuss advanced topics related to Institutional Partnerships, GLAM, Event management, User groups etc.

The table below shows the differences between general Train-the-Trainer and Train-the-Trainer (advanced).

Area	Train-the-Trainer	Train-the-Trainer (advanced)
Participants	Any active participant, with at least 500 edits	Senior Wikipedian who are already leading a community
Experience as a community leader	Expected but not mandatory	Mandatory
Pre-knowledge on topics like Grant structure, reporting	Not needed	Absolutely essential
Pre-work	Easy with a few tasks	Comparatively difficult, including community's needs-assessment
Follow-up	Periodic follow-ups	Continuous follow-up

Target

Conducting a national-level workshop with
at least 12 participants (TTT alumni)
from at least 8 communities and
Ensuring bridging gender gap and diversity

Annual Train-the-Trainer

In 2019, CIS-A2K proposed to conduct the 6th iteration of the training workshop. This year CIS-A2K will conduct Train-the-Trainer with these changes:.

Involving community members in the entire process: This year we'll involve communities or community members in planning, and organizing the event. The member(s) might be TTT alumni or any senior Wikipepdian.
Selection committee: This year selection committee will comprise at least 1/3rd experienced Indic Wikimedians non-A2K members.

Train-the-Trainer 2017 participants
TTT 2018 participants during field trip at Mysuru Zoo

Targets

conducting annual Train-the-Trainer in the between January-March 2019 with;
minimum 20 participants;
from 8 Indic language community;
20% female Wikimedians' participation

MediaWiki Training

In 2018 CIS-A2K conducted an advanced MediaWiki Training. In this workshop topics such as MediaWiki extensions, parts of MediaWiki extensions, localization etc were discussed (see last year's full agenda). This year we'll continue this with more participants. Following the workshop, we got mostly positive feedback from the participants. User:Bodhisattwa thanked CIS-A2K for conducting the workshop and told that although he was new to MediaWiki he learnt new things such as structure of MediaWiki, patches etc.. User:01tonythomas, who was a resource person, told:

This was a learning event for me as well, as my recent contributions to Mediawiki was mostly code review and not a lot of PHP code writing as such. I found out couple of issues that can come up while live demo-ing writing a functional extension.

MediaWiki Training 2017 participants in Bangalore
Participants of MediaWiki Training 2018

Targets

This year also CIS-A2K proposes to undertake MWT (or Wiki Technical training). These are our targets

One national-level MWT
Around 10 participants
From at least 5 different Indic communities

Intensive personalised Wiki Training

Intensive Personalized Wiki Training (or IPWT, pronounced as EepWeeTee) is a project where CIS-A2K attempts to provide support to communities and individuals based on their need. Unlike Train-the-Trainer, this is not a national-level program, and support is provided to individual communities and Wikimedians.

IPWT also explores training capability of Indic Wikimedians. There are several Wikimedians whose Wiki-knowledge and experience might be of great help for other communities, however for logistical and other reasons this experience has not been explored properly. The first support of this kind was in Maharashtra in February 2017 for Marathi Wikimedians, where Bengali Wikimedian User:Bodhisattwa traveled to Pune to train advanced Wikisource topics. After that and specially during Train-the-Trainer 2018, a necessity was felt to conduct such events.

Objectives

Dedicated personalized support and training for Indian Wikimedia community members
Utilize community members expertise and skill as resource person or trainers

Targets

At least 6 IPWT training sessions
At least 4 community members invited as resource person
At least 12 members participating
At lest 4 female Wikimedians as participants

Wikipedia Resource Center

Plan

To support the efforts to improve retention, A2K will continue to create resources necessary to help Newbies and Learners in learning various aspects of "How to edit Wikipedia". Video, text and presentation forms of these resources will provide "Know-how" about Wikipedia right from "Creating account", "Logging in", "Creating User page", "Using Sandbox" to advanced aspects of Wikipedia editing. These resources should be effective, interesting, and sharable material. But, They are primariliy intended to support efforts of community and program persons to groom interested new users.

Activities

Creating a road map on what all the aspects that should be covered in these resources
Developing Video, PDF booklets & PPT Booklet forms of resources covering the aspects
- Every aspect should be covered in both Visual Editor and Mobile Editor. Some of these video resources will cover text editor too.
- Resources will be created for a beginner level users and will not be more than 2 minutes each (if video) or 10 pages (if pdf) to enable a quick view & quick share.
Publishing the resources on Wikimedia Commons and making them available for Wikimedians to utilize them to groom Newbies & Learners.

Projection

Creating & publishing more than 30 small screen record videos that help "How to edit Telugu Wikipedia"
Creating More than 10 small & handy eBooks about Editing Telugu Wikipedia
Creating a Wikipedia Resource Center in Telugu Wikipedia with these resources

How to create userpage - KnowHow - Telugu
Video resource about Reliable References

Telugu Wikipedia Mahilavaranam

Telugu

Project page: Telugu Wikipedia Mahilavaranam

Like many other Wikipedias around the globe, Telugu Wikipedia is also having a serious gender imbalance in participation. Only one contributor among 10 Very active Wikipedians with the highest number of edits is women. Also, 2 in 25 and 3 in 40 editors with the highest number of edits in Telugu Wikipedia are women. Taking inspiration from Telugu Wikipedia's previous attempts to bridge gender gap in content, A2K is planning to bridge it in participation.

Activity

Conducting series of mini-workshops in several places targeting women who are already could type in Telugu and writing in some digital platforms.
Collaborating with women groups who are already in women studies or activism and contributing to digital platforms.
Encouraging New Women Wikimedians started contributing to project to hold Wiki Kitty parties to learn new skills and improve collaborations.

Projection

Bridging gender gap in participation by Bringing and Grooming at least 5 New Women Wikimedians becoming very active Wikipedians in Telugu Wikimedia Projects.

Regional TTT and WTT

Mini TTT and MWT or Regional TTT and MWT are regional (smaller/mini) edition of the TTT and MWT program conducted of different cities of India. The mini versions of the workshop are conducted as follow-up of the main event.

Objectives

The objectives of these events are:

To increase expertise of active editors
To build technical resource persons to resolve technical issues
To develop strong relationships between the offline and online Wiki Communities

Targets

This year we'll conduct or support 4 regional TTT and MWT workshops.
There will be at least 40 participants in total in these workshops.
We'll ensure minimum 20% female participation

Wiki-Technical Trainings

Plan

Conducting wiki-technical training sessions to Existing and New Wikipedians interested to improve Telugu Wikimedia Projects in Technical aspects. Event will help participants to learn about basic technical aspects that help Telugu Wikimedia projects

Activities

Conducting Wiki-Technical training sessions where Participants will learn aspects like how to file an issue in phabricator, etc.,
Identifying Interested Wikimedians from community and connecting them to Volunteers who are improving Broader technical issues of Wikimedia projects.

Projection

At least 5 Wikimedians who have not contributed to Media-Wiki or Technical side of the project learns Basic Technical aspects.

Wikisource Conference (India)

Plan

The Wikisource Conference India will be the first conference of its kind being held in India and is intended to become an annual national flagship event for Wikisourcers in the country. It is meant to provide a common platform for all Indian Wikisourcers to meet and share their views, discuss challenges and exchange useful tips, best practices and other information. The Conference will be open to participation for Indian and neighbourhood countries' Wikimedians
CIS-A2K would work on a Wikisource handbook

Goal

One National Wikisource level event.
Around 28 participants
From at least 10 different Indic communities
The participants will be conducting and leading minimum of one outreach activity.

Target

At least 5 ideas planned or discussed during the workshop will be taken forward/supported. CIS-A2K would like to financially support the idea and help in evaluating the event. This will result in all the community-driven independent Wikisource-events.