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Grants:Project/FLG/History of Quebec and French-speaking North America/Final

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Report under review
This Project Grant report has been submitted by the grantee, and is currently being reviewed by WMF staff. You may add comments, responses, or questions to this report's discussion page.


Welcome to this project's final report! This report shares the outcomes, impact and learnings from the grantee's project.

Part 1: The Project

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Summary

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Link to the Fondation Lionel-Groulx website section dedicated to Wikimedia-related projects

Designed to allow the Fondation Lionel-Groulx to move up a gear regarding the development of high quality contents on the history of Québec and French-speaking North America in Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Commons, this project subsidized by the Wikimedia Foundation was a real success. In partnership with several important organizations in Québec, we organized four major training and contribution events and several smaller events. We assisted three history teachers: two university professors included training and contribution to Wikipedia as part of a regular course they give and one college professor asked us to give an introduction to Wikipedia in his classroom. Those events involved around 90 students. Moreover, during our major training and contribution events, we reached several key university professors who were attendees. We substantially improved around 40 articles and we brought moderate improvements to 40 other articles. Among the most important findings of the project is the fact that the demand for training has been overwhelming, to our great satisfaction. Indeed, following several major training events, we have been contacted by historical societies and non-profit organizations interested in the history of Québec and we were not able to satisfy all the requests. Finally, our efforts and leadership have paid off since we've advised two well-known journalists in Québec, Jean Benoît Nadeau and his wife Julie Barlow, to organize in partnership with Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, a major awareness event about Wikipedia (La Grande Wikiphonie, originally planned for March 16, 2020). The event has been postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis, but we will be fully participating and coorganizers when, later this year, it will take place with several major partners: Acfas, UNEQ, Hydro-Québec, Cinémathèque Québécoise, Université de Montréal, Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec among many others.

Here is a list of the most important outcomes and learnings of our project:

  • We have fulfilled or exceeded our goals and targets.
  • We have inspired and convinced several partner organizations to continue to hold events (on their own or in collaboration with us) in order to improve the contents on the history of Québec and French-speaking North America in Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Commons.
  • The demand for training has been overwhelming.
  • According to the participants who answered the survey we sent after each event, our teaching methods and training processes were highly appreciated.
  • Through our awareness efforts, all our partners have realized the importance of putting significant efforts and resources (human and financial) to improve articles on the history of Québec and French-speaking North America.
  • After several meetings with us, a well know journalist in Québec decided to coorganize with us (and other partners) a major event related to French-speaking Wikipedia ("La Grande Wikiphonie") which will involved several major organizations in Québec when the event will finally occur.
  • The French-speaking university community in Québec seems to be starting to realize the importance of putting effort into Wikipedia, in particular through graded works done by students. However, there is still work to be done to convince the greater part of the university community specializing in the history of Québec to consider Wikipedia as an essential source of information they need to take care of more closely.
  • Producing dedicated online educational ressources can help expand the Wikipedian community in Québec.

Project Goals

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With a Wikimedian-in-Residence, our organization will be able to achieve its main Wikimedia-related goal, which is (as quoted and translated from our 2018-2019-2020 Action Plan): "to contribute to the development of high quality contents on the history of Québec and French-speaking North America in Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Commons, and to build a community of institutional partners and individual volunteers willing to work concretely on such an endeavour". Through our action, more individuals and organizations will contribute to Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Commons with the desire and the means to improve and enrich contents concerning the history of Québec and French-speaking North America. Through the contribution events that we will organize with the help of institutional partners and volunteers, and through the professional and amateur historians, history teachers and students, etc., that we will train, we intend to have a strong impact on a) participation to Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Commons and b) the general improvement of content quality.

We achieved our objectives mainly by combining the creation and organization of training and contribution events with the establishment of strong partnerships with major organizations and individuals in the history community in Québec.

  • Four major training and contribution events (one final event split in two online events organized in mid-March) which gathered a total of 78 participants. These major training events have enabled us to establish partnerships with 13 organizations, some of them being key players of the academic, cultural and trade union communities. In addition, following our events, we have convinced some of these organizations to create and maintain their own community of Wikipedians.
  • Two training events within academic institutions: two professors (one from Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, one from Université Laval) included the writing of an article in Wikipedia as a graded work required for students to succeed in a course. A total of 54 students were involved.
  • One event at Cégep du Vieux-Montréal (college level) with professor Gilles Laporte: we presented the basics of contributing to Wikipedia to around forty students during two 1.5 hour lessons.
  • Two smaller training and contribution events with Fondation Lionel-Groulx's members and Fondaction, a major labour-sponsored fund in Québec. These smaller events allowed us to train eight participants.


To summarize

  1. Through these important events and partnerships we reached around 180 people: 140 people who participated to our four major events, two smaller events and two academic training and about 40 students at college level for a short introduction.
  2. we substantially improved some 40 articles and made moderate improvements to around 40 other articles in Wikipedia.
  3. We established a partnership with 13 important organizations during our major events and we reached several academic institutions.

Project Impact

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Important: The Wikimedia Foundation is no longer collecting Global Metrics for Project Grants. We are currently updating our pages to remove legacy references, but please ignore any that you encounter until we finish.

Targets

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  1. In the first column of the table below, please copy and paste the measures you selected to help you evaluate your project's success (see the Project Impact section of your proposal). Please use one row for each measure. If you set a numeric target for the measure, please include the number.
  2. In the second column, describe your project's actual results. If you set a numeric target for the measure, please report numerically in this column. Otherwise, write a brief sentence summarizing your output or outcome for this measure.
  3. In the third column, you have the option to provide further explanation as needed. You may also add additional explanation below this table.
Planned measure of success
(include numeric target, if applicable) 		Actual result Explanation
Significantly improve the quality of 40 articles in the French-language version of Wikipedia. 37 (see the detailed table) We reached 92 % of our goal of significantly improve the quality of 40 articles. We considered that creating something new and more than stub and moving to a higher grade (for example, from "Stub" to "Start") could be considered a significant improvement. In addition, by March 1, 2020, we moderately improved 40 other articles.
Organize four major contribution events. 4 We have organized four major training and contribution events, respectively in May, August and November 2019, plus one last event in March, split in two online events).
Involve 80 participants in our events. 180 Our events (four major and two small plus three academic events) involved a total of 180 participants. 162 participants through offline events and 18 through two online event (12 + 6).
At least 10 to 15% of the 80 participants to our events will continue to contribute from time to time. 11.67 % Based on three events for a total of 60 participants, 7 people continue to contribute. Please note that it doesn't include the two online event which took place on March 5 and March 27. At the time of writing this report, it is too early to deliver the results of these events.
Train 60 new wikimedians among professional or amateur historians, history teachers and students, who will be able to continue adding and improving contents later on 116 Following the organization of seven events and based on our data available through the dashboard, we trained a total of 116 new wikimedians.
Assist at least 2 new history teachers in the steps needed to bring student contributions to Wikipedia, Wikisource or Commons in the classroom. 2 By the end of the grant, we will have trained and assisted two university professors: Lucia Ferretti (Lancia_Spaghetti) from Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières for our training event in October 2019 and Aline Charles (Gaélant) from Université Laval for our training event in February.
5 new institutions or associations (public, charity, non-profit) will be inspired by our initiatives and continue to organize on their own (or co-organize with us) other contribution events to improve the contents on the history of Québec and French-speaking North America in Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Commons. 5 At least 5 new institutions or associations have declared that they want continue. (See the "Additional explanation" section below for quotes from some of these.)


Additional explanation

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At least 5 new institutions or associations (public, charity, non-profit) were inspired by our initiatives and decided to continue to organize on their own (or co-organize with us) other contribution events to improve the contents on the history of Québec and French-speaking North America in Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Commons. Here are quotes from some of them:

  • On October 10, 2019, we gave a training as part of the course HST1094 of professor Lucia Ferretti at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. She plans to repeat the experience during another course during fall 2020. Here is a translation of her email:
"I was very happy with the experience in my course HST1094: Democracy and citizenship: historical perspectives on current issues. Students have improved several articles in Wikipedia on democracy and human rights. I also really appreciated the support provided by the Lionel-Groulx Foundation (Mathieu Gauthier-Pilote and Jérémy Bouchez).
It was an opportunity for a partnership between the University of Québec at Trois-Rivières and the Lionel-Groulx Foundation as part of a Community Intervention Project (PICOM). In short, I will give this course again in the fall of 2020 and certainly I will repeat the experience.
Thank you so much."
  • In 2019, the Fondation Lionel-Groulx was a partner of the Rendez-vous d'histoire de Québec (Québec City's History Conference) which involved a training and contribution event on August 14. The historian Catherine Ferland, director of the event, confirmed to us the desire of the Rendez-vous d'histoire de Québec to perpetuate the partnership with the Lionel-Groulx Foundation concerning Wikipedia:
"The Rendez-vous d'histoire de Québec will be effectively interested in continuing this great partnership. Indeed, the very mission of our organization is the enhancement of Québec history and heritage in all its forms and by all possible means, including digital. The holding of training events aimed at improving content relating to Québec's past, its characters, events and historic places in the Wikimedias is therefore in line with the aim of the Rendez-vous d'histoire de Québec."
  • On May 31, 2019, we organized our first major event with several major partners including the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ). Isabelle Gareau, who was the Director of Communications and attended our event, assured us of the FTQ's desire to include training in Wikipedia among its staff. Here is what she mentioned in our 2020-2021 grant proposal:
"Thanks to Jérémy for the contribution to the community. The work that Jérémy did with the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ) was very useful in helping us improve the content of the pages concerning the Québec union movement. We intend to continue these efforts with our affiliated unions. 204.101.218.252 14:56, 27 February 2020 (UTC)"
  • As part of our first major event, the Centre d'histoire et d'archives du travail (CHAT) were one of our major partners. Our training event convinced the Centre d'histoire et d'archives du travail to continue to play a major role in improving the history of Québec unionism in Wikipedia. Here is what Jacques Desmarais, secretary-treasurer, wrote about the involvement of the organism:
"The Center for Labor History and Archives (CHAT) has made it its mission to act as a memory of unions in Québec, in particular by helping to improve the content of wikimedia on unions in Québec."
  • As part of our third major event, the Société historique de Montréal (SHM, Montreal Historical Society) was one of our major partners. Mario Robert, President, reiterated the SHM's desire to continue contributing to Wikipedia in partnership with the Fondation Lionel-Groulx:

"The Société historique de Montréal is very keen to continue helping Wikipedia to reflect French-speaking North America, especially the history of Québec and Montreal. The SHM wishes to contribute more specifically to the history of the characters associated with the history of Montreal. This desire to participate in the Foundation Lionel-Groulx's project will be included in our strategic and action plan that we are currently developing for the next few years."

  • On February 19, 2020, we gave a training as part of the course HST2001 of professor Aline Charles (Gaélant) from Université Laval. Aline Charles really appreciated the experience and she plans to repeat it during her future courses. Here is what she wrote:

"This project, which aimed to improve Wikipedia content on the history of French-speaking America, was really appreciated by my students. Given their enthusiasm and the efforts they have made to write new pages in the online encyclopedia, I very much hope to be able to do it again, with the invaluable support of the Fondation Lionel-Groulx."

Story

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Looking back over your whole project, what did you achieve? Tell us the story of your achievements, your results, your outcomes. Focus on inspiring moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes or anything that highlights the outcomes of your project. Imagine that you are sharing with a friend about the achievements that matter most to you in your project.

  • This should not be a list of what you did. You will be asked to provide that later in the Methods and Activities section.
  • Consider your original goals as you write your project's story, but don't let them limit you. Your project may have important outcomes you weren't expecting. Please focus on the impact that you believe matters most.

One of the main motivations for the project was the observation by Fondation Lionel-Groulx of important gaps and weakness concerning the history of Québec and French-speaking North America in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons or Wikisource. Whenever we had to convince our future partners to take part in the organization of a training and contribution event, we insisted that Québec and French-speaking North America cannot remain the "poor cousins" in Wikipedia. Thus, the most important trade union centers in Québec, historical societies and professors specializing in the history of Québec, specialists in the history of the Montréal and Québec City or even professors and students who are interested in the history of Franco-Americans were always surprised to note the extent of the gaps in their respective academic or professional specializations. Paradoxically, it is thanks to this recognition that organizations and individuals have been highly motivated and responded to our events. As we mentioned in the summary, the demand was overwhelming due to the awareness of the work that needs to be done.

The specificity and rarity of the presence of the French language in North America means that Quebecers are keen to participate in the improvement of content on their history and heritage in Wikipedia once they challenge the weakness or the absence of articles on major figures or major events.

We have managed to achieve and even exceed the goals we set for ourselves, but what encourages us the most is to realize that we have motivated people and organizations to contribute to Wikipedia. Thus, among the great achievements of our project, we can cite two examples among others:

  • One of the participants or our 2nd major event in Québec City, RaphaëlFFL, was a new wikipedian. Following our training, he managed to create the new article Maison Drouin and brought it to the level "Bon article" which can be compared to the GA class in English-speaking Wikipedia. He added 63 % of the text of the article.
  • Jean-Benoît Nadeau and his wife Julie Barlow (both writers and famous journalists in the newspapers Le Devoir and L'Actualité) asked us some advice in order to organize (for BAnQ) a major event called "La Grande Wikiphonie" (the Great Wikiphony) which was supposed to take place in March 16, 2020. Please note that due to the COVID-19 crisis, this event has been cancelled and postponed to a later date. Jean-Benoît Nadeau attended our 3rd major training and contribution event (November 2019) which helped him better understand Wikipedia and the challenges related to the gaps in the content on the history of Québec and French-speaking North America. The Fondation Lionel-Groulx would have been coorganizer and part of this important event with several major partners. We consider this major event as a continuity of our own events and a high point of our achievements. Even though we still don't know the new date, we look forward to participating to this great event and we are proud to have helped Jean-Benoît Nadeau.

Survey(s)

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If you used surveys to evaluate the success of your project, please provide a link(s) in this section, then briefly summarize your survey results in your own words. Include three interesting outputs or outcomes that the survey revealed.

A couple of days after each event, we sent a survey to all participants in order to collect their opinions and feedback through a scale from 1 (bad) to 5 (excellent). Here are the links to the results for each survey:

* 1st major training and contribution event (May 2019): https://framaforms.org/sondage-suite-a-la-formation-wikipedia-syndicalisme-quebecois-1559066810/public-results

* 2nd major training and contribution event (August 2019): https://framaforms.org/sondage-suite-a-la-formation-wikipedia-histoire-des-quartiers-de-quebec-1566417944/public-results

* Training and contribution event dedicated to Fondation Lionel-Groulx's members (October 2019): https://framaforms.org/sondage-suite-a-la-formation-wikipedia-dediee-aux-membres-de-la-fondation-lionel-groulx-1571164623

* Training and contribution event during the course HST1094 at UQTR (October 2019): https://framaforms.org/sondage-suite-a-la-formation-wikipedia-dans-le-cadre-du-cours-hst1094-1571770034

* 3rd major training and contribution event (November 2019): https://framaforms.org/sondage-suite-a-la-formation-wikipedia-figures-feminines-marquantes-de-lhistoire-de-montreal/public-results

* 4th major training and contribution event (splitted in two online events, March 5 and March 27):

---> 1st online event on the history of Franco-American in New-England (March 5): https://framaforms.org/survey-following-the-wikipedia-training-on-the-history-of-the-franco-americans-of-new-england/public-results

---> 2nd online event on the Francophonie in North America: https://framaforms.org/sondage-suite-a-la-formation-en-ligne-a-wikipedia-du-27-mars-1585591125/public-results


Interesting outcomes:

  1. A vast majority of participants found the training very relevant and helpful.
  2. Our training strategies and methods have obtained good evaluation scores overall.
  3. A vast majority of participants answered "Yes" when we asked if the training session convinced them to continue contributing to Wikipedia in the next 6 months.

Other

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Is there another way you would prefer to communicate the actual results of your project, as you understand them? You can do that here!

Methods and activities

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Please provide a list of the main methods and activities through which you completed your project.


 
screen capture of our last training event held online on March 27, 2020, using Jitsi Meet.

In order to meet our objectives, several key steps were necessary and a methodology was put in place to facilitate the organization of our training and contribution events and to measure their results.

  • We hired JBouchez as our Wikimedian in residence (March 14, 2019)
  • On April 2019, we selected an intern in collaboration with Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ). Indeed, Isabelle Gareau, Director of communications at FTQ, suggested to lend an intern who could help us organize the first event and contribute directly to article improvements, file uploads, etc. On April 4, we met and chose Hamza Tabaichount, master's degree student in history at Université du Québec à Montréal. (Hamza was hired by FLG the next year. See below.)
  • Several weeks prior to each event and in collaboration with our partners, we prepared a project document (finalized as a PDF) containing all the details (date, location, theme, program, links) to be shared to kick off registrations.
  • For each event, we created a list of articles to improve relevant to the theme selected with partners. The lists were sent to the registered participants alongside our own suggestions of newbie tasks to improve the said articles. The lists can be seen here for the first major event, and there for the second event.
  • For each event, we brought a collection of relevant books for the theme which participants could use in order to improve articles by citing sources.
  • Using the Programs & Events Dashboard made by the Wiki Education Foundation and hosted on the Wikimedia Cloud Services, we created a campaign entitled "History of Québec and French-speaking North America". As part of this campaign, we created a program page for each event in order to monitor data related to the edits and other actions of participants.
  • A few days after each event, we sent a survey to collect the comments of the participants and their degree of satisfaction. To generate our surveys, we used Framaform from Framasoft, a free-software based online service (please see the poll results for each event in the section below).
  • While moving forward with our events, we took time to prepare and write down (at the end of August) a clear and diversified training program to Wikipedia, Wikisource and Commons that helped us as well as our partners. In addition to making clear the kinds of training we have to offer, this preparation allowed us to reflect on the type of open educational resources (OER) we could produce to support our training.
  • We gave two trainings to Wikimedia Commons which involved three institutions. The first training occurred on May 2019, prior to our first major event, several members of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) and the Centre d'histoire et d'archives du travail (CHAT) were present. The second training occurred on October 9, 2019 with two archivists of the Division des archives de la Ville de Montréal (Montreal's archives department). The training was part of our third major event.
  • On February 2020, Hamza Tabaichount, project manager for the promotion of history at Fondation Lionel-Groulx since January 2020, produced an article titled "10 principes essentiels pour parler d’histoire dans Wikipédia" ("10 essential principles for talking about history in Wikipedia"). The text was first published for Acfas on their platform RaccourSci: https://www.raccoursci.com/astuce/10-principes-essentiels-histoire-wikipedia/
  • On February 22, 2020, Mathieugp and Pierre Graveline (now retired) attended the Annual conference of the societies that are members of the Mouvement national des Québécois et des Québécoises (National Movement of Quebecers). They presented the expertise of the Fondation Lionel-Groulx regarding Wikipedia, especially the organization of training and contribution events.
  • To be published: an article from Hamza Tabaichount on the bulletin of the Centre d'histoire et d'archives du travail (CHAT): https://archivesdutravail.quebec/bulletin/

Project resources

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Please provide links to all public, online documents and other artifacts that you created during the course of this project. Even if you have linked to them elsewhere in this report, this section serves as a centralized archive for everything you created during your project. Examples include: meeting notes, participant lists, photos or graphics uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, template messages sent to participants, wiki pages, social media (Facebook groups, Twitter accounts), datasets, surveys, questionnaires, code repositories... If possible, include a brief summary with each link.

Pre-training resources and documents

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  • On June 2019, we created a dedicated page which centralizes all the information related to the project: past and future events, reports, training offer, useful links before training, lists of suggested articles, lists of suggested bibliography, link to our dashboard. This page helped us to present and share our project to our partners and allowed us to publicize our events. Here is the link of the page: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:FLG/WeR
  • A couple of days before each event, we sent an email to registered attendants with several useful links:
  1. A list of suggested articles to improve related to the theme: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:FLG/suggest
  2. A list of suggested bibliographic resources: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:FLG/biblio
  3. A link to a subpage with the procedure to be followed to open an account: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:FLG/compte
  4. A link to a subpage with several useful pre-training resources such as two videos created by Wikimédia France in order to present the 5 pillars of Wikipedia, the page which explains why and how to cite sources (WP:CITE), a link which guide new wikipedians regarding their first steps, and finally a text written by Mathieugp which aims to demystify Wikipedia ("Démystifier Wikipédia"): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:FLG/preformation

Post-training resources and documents

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  • In order to get feedback from our participants,we created a model of survey with Framaforms which was sent a couple of days after our training events. The survey consisted of five questions with, for each, an evaluative score ranging from 1 to 5: 1 = bad, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent.
  • 4th major training and contribution event (splitted in two online events, March 5 and March 27):

---> 1st online event on the history of Franco-American in New-England (March 5): https://framaforms.org/survey-following-the-wikipedia-training-on-the-history-of-the-franco-americans-of-new-england/public-results

---> 2nd online event on the Francophonie in North America: https://framaforms.org/sondage-suite-a-la-formation-en-ligne-a-wikipedia-du-27-mars-1585591125/public-results

Wikimedia Commons uploaded medias

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During the grant, 38 photographs or medias have been uploaded on Wikimedia Commons, either by the Fondation Lione-Groulx or by the participants of our training events. Here are the links to consult the uploads related to each of our events:

First major training and contribution event (May 31, 2019): https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Fondation_Lionel-Groulx/%C3%89v%C3%A9nement_de_formation_Wiki_-_Syndicalisme_qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois_et_son_histoire_(31_mai_2019)/uploads

Second major training and contribution event (August 14, 2019): https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Fondation_Lionel-Groulx/%C3%89v%C3%A9nement_de_formation_Wiki_-_Histoire_des_quartiers_de_Qu%C3%A9bec_(14_ao%C3%BBt_2019)/uploads

Third major training and contribution event (November 23, 2019): https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Fondation_Lionel-Groulx/%C3%89v%C3%A9nement_de_formation_-_Figures_f%C3%A9minines_marquantes_de_l'histoire_de_MTL_(23_novembre_2019)/uploads

Fourth major training and contribution event (March 5 and 27, 2020): https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/En_ligne/%C3%89v%C3%A9nement_de_formation_Wiki_-_Francophonie_(27_mars_2020)/uploads

Training event at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Universit%C3%A9_du_Qu%C3%A9bec_%C3%A0_Trois-Rivi%C3%A8res_-_UQTR/%C3%89v%C3%A9nement_de_formation_Wiki_-_Cours_de_Lucia_Ferretti_HST1094_-_UQTR_(10_octobre_2019)/uploads

Training event at Université Laval: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Universit%C3%A9_Laval/%C3%89v%C3%A9nement_de_formation_Wiki_-_Cours_d'Aline_Charles_HST2001_-_ULaval_(19_f%C3%A9vrier_2020)/uploads

Training event for Fondation Lionel-Groulx's members: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Fondation_Lionel-Groulx/Formation_Wiki_-_Figures_et_%C3%A9v%C3%A9nements_marquants_de_notre_histoire_(October_3,_2019)/uploads

Learning

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The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you took enough risks in your project to have learned something really interesting! Think about what recommendations you have for others who may follow in your footsteps, and use the below sections to describe what worked and what didn’t.

What worked well

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What did you try that was successful and you'd recommend others do? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.


Regarding one of our successful strategies, creating a prelist of relevant articles before each training session really helped our participants during our events. Moreover, it allowed us to be better prepared prior to the event. Here is the link to our learning pattern in order to guide the Wikipedia community to better organize training events:

What didn’t work

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What did you try that you learned didn't work? What would you think about doing differently in the future? Please list these as short bullet points.

  • To our great surprise, the demand was overwhelming. However, despite all our efforts, we didn't have time to follow up on all the requests, which included for instance several historical societies in Québec. Thanks to the experience acquired in this project, we believe we could remedy this problem by implementing the following strategies: 1) offering more self-training, for example through short video tutorials like those we already started producing and 2) grouping together several organizations during online trainings.
  • From the start of this project, we were aware that it would prove difficult to control the quality of the contributions and texts produced following the trainings. Indeed, there is a large percentage of participants who do not have sufficient writing skills to reach a qualitative level that matches the level expected in Wikipedia. We have reached our quantitative goals, but we are aware that it's important to train more Wikipedians who will have the capacity to produce high quality content on Wikipedia, such as people who have gone through university. Of course, we appreciate small improvements to Wikipedia, but our goal was and still remains to produce substantial improvements. This is the main reason why, for future projects related to Wikipedia, we plan, for our training component, to focus on participants from the academic community, both students and professors or lecturers.
  • We had hoped to give more trainings to Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. We did train a few institutions on the specific of Wikimedia Commons, such as the Centre d'histoire et d'archives du travail (CHAT) (Center for labor history and archives), the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) (a major trade union organization in Québec) and the Archives de la Ville de Montréal (Montreal's archives department). These two trainings were an integral part of two major events and the objective was twofold: a) to train these institutions before each event so that they could upload medias to Wikimedia Commons, which gave future participants the possibility of including medias in the training exercises, and b) allow several people within these organizations to become resource people and continue to feed Wikimedia Commons after our events. There are two main reasons why it was difficult for us to reach our goal regarding training to Wikimedia and Wikisource. First, the lack of time. As we mentioned before, enthusiasm for our project was more important than expected and this forced us to focus on Wikipedia with less time for Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. The second reason (and the main one) relates to the complexity and specifics of Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource which, therefore, make it necessary to organize dedicated training events separate from Wikipedia. Consequently, the Fondation Lionel-Groulx's team dedicated to Wikipedia-related projects thinks that putting together a specific online training offer for Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource (for example a recorded webinar) should be part of the solutions to remedy this problem.

Other recommendations

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If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please list them here.

  • As we pointed out in our midpoint report, "keeping participants active after our training and contribution events is a real challenge" and we will continue to apply our strategies and our methods while making them evolve according to the learnings of this project. Sending a newsletter reminding people of the advances in articles while thanking active people is one of the future strategies to be implemented.

Next steps and opportunities

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Are there opportunities for future growth of this project, or new areas you have uncovered in the course of this grant that could be fruitful for more exploration (either by yourself, or others)? What ideas or suggestions do you have for future projects based on the work you’ve completed? Please list these as short bullet points.

Yes, following what we mentioned in the summary, we plan to better reach the university community specialized in the history of Québec and French-speaking America. We are clearly witnessing a positive evolution in the way the university community reacts about Wikipedia. Considering this evolution, the experiences and the fruitful discussions we had with several professors or people involved in the university community, we believe this is the right time to strengthen the ties with those people.

Another relevant point concerns the organizations which are interested in the improvement of the content on the history of Québec and thus are key players such as historical societies, heritage conservation organizations, museums, or even trade unions. We believe there is still a lot of work to be done in order to create strong ties between those communities. Hence, we suggest the following points:

  • Increase the number of training events for students in history within the university community in Québec. To achieve this, propose training sessions for university professors in several major academic institutions in Québec, as we have already done with two professors during the grant.
  • In continuity with what we already did during the grant, reach more organizations concerned with the history of Québec and French-speaking North America in order to help them build a community of wikipedians, among their own employees for instance.
  • Continue our production of open educational resources (such as video tutorials) in order to help improve our training sessions with university students and organizations.

Part 2: The Grant

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Finances

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Actual spending

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Please copy and paste the completed table from your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed the actual expenditures compared with what was originally planned. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided to explain them.

Expense Approved amount Actual funds spent Difference
Conference Cam (Logitech Meetup) $1,000.00 USD
($1,338.00 CAD) 		$1,031.16 USD
($1,379.69 CAD) 		-$31.16 USD
(-$41.69 CAD)
Large TV screen (LG 49UK6300) $500.00 USD
($669.00 CAD) 		$439.57 USD
($588.14 CAD) 		$60.43 USD
($80.86 CAD)
Portable computer + accessories (ThinkPad E590 + Wireless Laser Mouse + security lock & cable + sleeve + HDMI cable + USB key + backup drive + ethernet-powerline adaptors + laptop metal support) $1,500.00 USD
($2,007.00 CAD) 		$1,499.90 USD
($2,006.87 CAD) 		$0.10 USD
($0.13 CAD)
Contract revenue of the Wikimedian-in-Residence (32 hours per week, 8AM to 5PM, Monday through Thursday) $40,000.00 USD
($53,520.00 CAD) 		$40,000.00 USD
($53,520.00 CAD) 		$0,000.00 USD
($0,000.00 CAD)
Travel expenses for Wikimedia projects $4,000.00 USD
($5,352.00 CAD) 		$1,698.49 USD
($2,272.59 CAD) 		$2,301.51 USD
($3,079.41 CAD)
Prizes for Wikimedia contribution events $2,000.00 USD
($2,676.00 CAD) 		$2,045.13 USD
($2,736.39 CAD) 		-$45.13 USD
(-$60.39 CAD)
Total $49,000.00 USD
($65,562.00 CAD) 		$46,714.26 USD
($62,503.68 CAD) 		$2,285.74 USD
($3,058.32 CAD)


Remaining funds

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Do you have any unspent funds from the grant?

Please answer yes or no. If yes, list the amount you did not use and explain why.

  • Yes, we will be returning $3,058.32 CAD to WMF. We did not use all of our "Travel expenses" (transport + hosting + space renting) budget. Space renting, which tends to be not cheap, was not required as often as expected. Our event partners were often able to provide for us. We used videoconferencing in several occasions, even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to go 100% online.

If you have unspent funds, they must be returned to WMF. Please see the instructions for returning unspent funds and indicate here if this is still in progress, or if this is already completed:

  • In progress. Completed
Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of 3,058.32 CAD.

Documentation

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Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grantsadmin wikimedia.org, according to the guidelines here?

Please answer yes or no. If no, include an explanation.

  • Yes

Confirmation of project status

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Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

Please answer yes or no.

  • Yes

Is your project completed?

Please answer yes or no.

  • Yes

Grantee reflection

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We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on what this project has meant to you, or how the experience of being a grantee has gone overall. Is there something that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed, or that you’ll do differently going forward as a result of the Project Grant experience? Please share it here!

The Fondation Lionel-Groulx recognizes the privilege it had to obtain a major grant which gave it the opportunity to create a community enthusiastic about improving the presence of the history of Québec and French-speaking North America in Wikipedia. Of course, fortified by its success and its learnings, the team would very much like to keep its momentum and continue to foster an even greater dynamics with the help of major partners. We had the intuition of it from the start, but now experience proves it: what we want to achieve is ultimately a long-term effort. In addition, we firmly believe that this grant has laid the groundwork for building a community of Wikimedians who are passionate about the history and the culture of Québec and French-speaking North America.


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