Grants:Project/NCTE/CCCC Wikipedia Initiative 2020-21

This project is funded by a Project Grant

proposal

people

timeline & progress

finances

midpoint report

final report

statusselected

Project Grants

CCCC Wikipedia Initiative 2020-21

summaryEstablished in 2019, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Wikipedia Initiative proceeds from the conviction that it matters to edit Wikipedia, especially for academics committed to knowledge equity as a fundamental groundwork for social justice. We are developing skills, cultivating inclusive community, and building structures of support and recognition for scholars of writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies who want to engage with Wikipedia as a form of global public scholarship.

targetEnglish Wikipedia

amount$83,490 USD

nonprofityes

grantee• Drkill

contact• mkillumd.edu• lavetisianncte.org

organization• National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) - CCCC is an official conference of NCTE and NCTE serves as CCCC's fiscal agent.

this project needs...

volunteer

grantee

advisor

created on13:15, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Friendly space expectations

This Wikimedia Foundation grant has a fiscal sponsor. National Council of Teachers of English administered the grant on behalf of Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

What problem are you trying to solve by doing this project? This problem should be small enough that you expect it to be completely or mostly resolved by the end of this project. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) aims to be “a clear, trusted public voice for the teaching and learning of writing, composition, rhetoric, and literacy” (https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/about). Yet, it’s well-understood among the scholars, professors, and writing program administrators who make up CCCC membership that Wikipedia articles on key concepts like “writing,” “linguistic discrimination,” and “literacy” — to name a few — remain persistently underdeveloped. We also know that commonly held but reductive notions of concepts like “literacy” severely limit educational policy and the implementation of progressive and empirically sound curricula at all educational levels. Moreover, such reductive constructs lead people to devalue the significance and sophistication of their own diverse and rich literate lives. Without the ability to influence public understandings of the terms that define the work of our profession and the possibilities of millions of literate lives, we are sharply constrained in our educational mission and potential global impact.

As experts on writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies, we are well-positioned to develop this content on Wikipedia, BUT:

1. While there is powerful alignment in the educational mission and knowledge equity goals of Wikimedia with those of CCCC, there remains significant misunderstanding of Wikipedia in the academic humanities. We need to develop training and help resources that more fully support participation by content experts.
2. We lack a space on Wikipedia to coordinate collaboration with other Wikipedians and organize efforts to improve high impact articles, addressing content gaps and citation imbalances in Wikipedia's coverage of writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies.
3. In a publish-or-perish academic environment, it is not practical from a professional standpoint for faculty members and PhD students to do work that will not factor in hiring, tenure, and promotion processes. We need to establish official mechanisms of professional recognition that make contributing to Wikipedia something that can be listed on academics' CVs.

What is your solution to this problem?

For the problem you identified in the previous section, briefly describe your how you would like to address this problem. We recognize that there are many ways to solve a problem. We’d like to understand why you chose this particular solution, and why you think it is worth pursuing. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

Established in 2019, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Wikipedia Initiative proceeds from the conviction that it matters to edit Wikipedia, especially for academics committed to knowledge equity as a fundamental groundwork for social justice. We are developing skills, cultivating inclusive community, and building structures of support and recognition for scholars of writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies who want to engage with Wikipedia as a form of global public scholarship.

The CCCC Wikipedia Initiative is unique among the Wikipedia initiatives of academic professional organizations in two key ways:

• The initiative is focused on engaging faculty members and PhD students (and, by extension, serving generations of undergraduates). Because we publish research (and edit academic journals and book series) in writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies, we are particularly well-equipped to develop high quality content that addresses content gaps and underlying citation imbalances (i.e., failure to cite significant scholarship from marginalized groups and international communities) in these topic areas. We know and remain current with the literature of our fields as a matter of course. Moreover, we teach writing courses and direct writing programs (i.e., general education writing requirements) that reach the vast majority of undergraduate students attending U.S. colleges and universities. In these roles, we are exceptionally well-positioned to replicate our capacity building with generations of students and future teachers.
• The initiative is faculty initiated and run. This initiative has grown out of our research on and teaching with Wikipedia, and we are working to create a culture in which scholars feel a professional responsibility for knowledge equity and global public access to the knowledge of our fields.

In 2020-2021, our focus will be on developing infrastructure to support the continued growth and sustained success of the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative. We plan to:

1. Continue improving understanding of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement, developing participant editing skills, and drawing attention to issues of knowledge equity through online and in-person training events and programs.
2. Create community support structures including: a) a WikiProject to coordinate collaboration with other Wikipedians, prioritize high impact articles, organize editing efforts, and sustain ongoing content improvement, and b) a central Wikipedia meetup page to freely share materials and resources for outreach, training, and teaching with academic editors and those supporting them.
3. Establish an award and fellowships to make contributing to Wikipedia a form of public scholarship that is professionally visible in the research profiles of participating faculty members and PhD students.

Project goals

What are your goals for this project? Your goals should describe the top two or three benefits that will come out of your project. These should be benefits to the Wikimedia projects or Wikimedia communities. They should not be benefits to you individually. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

Developing skills and understanding

We will continue to offer introductions to and promote capacity building on Wikipedia in a range of formats to faculty and PhD students who are current, past, and future members of CCCC. Our programs and events emphasize the importance of editing to address issues of knowledge equity in terms of both content gaps and citation imbalances. We will target high impact topics prioritized in collaboration with CCCC member groups (for example, the American Indian Caucus, Appalachian Rhetorics and Literacies Standing Group, Black Caucus, Feminist Caucus, Latinx Caucus, Standing Group for Disability Studies, and Transnational Composition Standing Group). Events and programs include:

• Two (2) 12-week sessions of CCCC Wikipedia Scholars online courses run in partnership with the Wiki Education Foundation.
• Four (4) half-day online editing workshops.
• Online support for groups of scholars collaborating on high impact articles (with an emphasis on international collaborations).
• An edit-a-thon at CCCC 2021 (our flagship national conference with approximately 3,000 total attendees).
• An editing workshop at CCCC 2021.

Creating community support structures

We have a web page and a listserv, but would like to develop further support structures for our growing community:

• A WikiProject to coordinate collaboration with other Wikipedians, prioritize high impact articles, organize editing efforts, and sustain ongoing content improvement in writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies.
• A central CCCC Wikipedia Initiative meetup page to freely share materials and resources for outreach, training, and teaching with academic editors and those supporting them.

Recognizing the value of global public scholarship

We hope to try out a few different models for professional recognition of contributions to Wikipedia in order to increase the satisfaction and productivity of academic editors. In the following ways, we can make this work show up on participants’ CVs and thereby “count” in hiring, tenure, promotion, and annual review:

• Establishing a CCCC Wikipedia Scholar Award — to be awarded for the first time at 2021 CCCC.
• Establishing Wiki Scholars Fellowship funding — to cover tuition for twenty (20) participants over two sessions of CCCC Wikipedia Scholars online courses.
• Sending official letters that can be used to document participation in initiative events and programs along with recommended language participants might adapt to add their award, fellowship, contributions, and completed training to their CVs.

Project impact

How will you know if you have met your goals?

For each of your goals, we’d like you to answer the following questions:

1. During your project, what will you do to achieve this goal? (These are your outputs.)
2. Once your project is over, how will it continue to positively impact the Wikimedia community or projects? (These are your outcomes.)

For each of your answers, think about how you will capture this information. Will you capture it with a survey? With a story? Will you measure it with a number? Remember, if you plan to measure a number, you will need to set a numeric target in your proposal (i.e. 45 people, 10 articles, 100 scanned documents). Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

We are tracking the impact of the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative using the Programs & Events dashboard: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/cccc_wikipedia_initiative/overview.

In 2019-2020, the initiative has focused on community building through in-person editing workshops at national conferences. As of February 20, 2020, we have edited 151 articles, created 4 articles, added 295 references, and uploaded 11 images. The following short list of articles that initiative participants have edited provides a snapshot of the range of expertise they have to offer: African-American women’s suffrage movement, Collaborative writing, Creole language, Della Keats, Doğan Güzel, Genre studies, Intersectionality, Intertextuality, Literacy, Standard English, Writing, Writing process.

In 2020-2021, the initiative will focus on developing infrastructure to support ongoing growth and sustained success.

Outputs:

• Formulate a basic training curriculum, training material templates and models, and resource collections designed to support academic editors.
• Create a central CCCC Wikipedia Initiative meetup page to organize outreach and share curriculum, materials, and resource collections for anyone to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute.
• Provide four (4) online training workshops and two (2) 12-week courses (in partnership with the Wiki Education Foundation) focusing on issues of knowledge equity for 60–90 faculty members and PhD students with expertise in writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies.
• Provide one (1) in-person editing workshop and one (1) edit-a-thon at the 2021 CCCC annual convention (April 7-10, 2021 in Spokane, WA).
• Provide online support for individuals and collaborative editing groups targeting high impact articles in writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies.
• Create WikiProject: Writing and Rhetoric to coordinate collaboration with other Wikipedians, prioritize high impact articles, organize editing efforts, and sustain ongoing content improvement in writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies.
• Present research findings about academic writing practices and collaboration on Wikipedia at the 2021 CCCC Convention in Spokane, WA in April.
• Create one (1) award and twenty (20) fellowships to be bestowed by CCCC, the flagship professional association in our field, in recognition of the value of contributing to Wikipedia, the largest and most consulted global knowledge resource.

Outcomes:

• Establish an active and inclusive community of academic editors in writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies.
• Improve articles related to writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies with particular attention to issues of knowledge equity.
• Share outreach, training, and teaching materials to support academics editing Wikipedia with particular attention to issues of knowledge equity and professional recognition.
• Contribute to research on Wikipedia, knowledge equity, collaborative writing, and writing pedagogy.
• Present the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative as a model for how academic professional associations might engage with Wikipedia, address content gaps and issues of knowledge equity, and recognize the value of public scholarship.

Do you have any goals around participation or content?

Are any of your goals related to increasing participation within the Wikimedia movement, or increasing/improving the content on Wikimedia projects? If so, we ask that you look through these three metrics, and include any that are relevant to your project. Please set a numeric target against the metrics, if applicable.

Total participants

• 60-90 faculty members and PhD students registered on the initiative dashboard and trained via online editing workshops and courses.
• 100+ faculty members and PhD students registered on the initiative dashboard and introduced to Wikipedia editing via CCCC 2021 editing workshop and edit-a-thon.
• 50+ faculty members and PhD students registered on the initiative dashboard and editing with support from our digital training materials and resources, WikiProject, and Wikimedian-in-Residence.

Target = 250+ new registered participants

New accounts registered

Target = 200+ new active editors (of 250+ new participants registered on the initiative dashboard)

Content pages created and improved

• 200+ pages tagged and ranked for quality and importance by WikiProject: Writing and Rhetoric.
• 500+ references added with a focus on citing significant scholarship from underrepresented groups and international communities.
• 300+ pages edited with a focus on high impact topics and content gaps.

Project plan

Activities

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing? What will you have done at the end of your project? How will you follow-up with people that are involved with your project?

This is a 12-month project. We will:

June–July 2020

1. Hire a Wikimedian-in-Residence (with an August start date). As soon as we have secure funding, we will move forward to interview and hire a Wikimedian-in-Residence from a short list of candidates already identified. Candidates have both advanced academic and significant Wikimedian experience.
2. Draft curriculum and training materials for online editing workshops.
3. Plan our inaugural Fall 2020 CCCC Wikipedia Scholars course to be offered in partnership with the Wiki Education Foundation.
4. Request and review applications for our Fall 2020 CCCC Wikipedia Scholars course, awarding CCCC Wikipedia Scholar Fellowships to ten (10) of the 10-15 participants selected.
5. Promote initiative accomplishments, events, and programs via social media (#CCCCWI), WPA-L (flagship professional listserv), nextGEN (graduate student listserv), TechRhet (digital rhetorics listserv), and CCCCWI-L (initiative listserv).

August–December 2020

1. Onboard the new CCCCWI Wikipedian-in-Residence.
2. Run our Fall 2020 CCCC Wikipedia Scholars 12-week online course (serving 10-15 new or continuing editors).
3. Run two (2) online editing workshops (serving a total of 20–30 new or continuing editors).
4. Propose the creation of WikiProject: Writing and Rhetoric (to support and coordinate the improvement of articles related to writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies with particular attention to issues of knowledge equity in content and citation).
5. Set up a basic version of a central CCCC Wikipedia Initiative meetup page to support and coordinate outreach, training, and teaching.
6. Request and review applications for our Spring 2021 CCCC Wikipedia Scholars course, awarding CCCC Wikipedia Scholar Fellowships to ten (10) of the 10-15 participants selected.
7. Promote initiative accomplishments, events, and programs via social media (#CCCCWI), WPA-L (flagship professional listserv), nextGEN (graduate student listserv), TechRhet (digital rhetorics listserv), and CCCCWI-L (initiative listserv).

January–May 2021

1. Conduct our first CCCC Wikipedia Initiative Annual Survey to assess initiative impact and community needs.
2. Run our Spring 2021 CCCC Wiki Scholars 12-week online course (serving 10-15 new or continuing initiative participants).
3. Run two (2) online editing workshops (serving a total of 20–30 new or continuing editors).
4. Announce WikiProject: Writing and Rhetoric and get to work.
5. Expand the central CCCC Wikipedia Initiative meetup page.
6. Request and review nominations for the CCCC Wikipedia Scholar Award to be awarded at the 2021 CCCC Convention in Spokane, WA.
7. Plan and run an editing workshop (serving 20 participants) and a two-day edit-a-thon (serving >50 participants) at the 2021 CCCC Convention in Spokane, WA in April.
8. Present research findings about academic editors contributing to Wikipedia at the 2021 CCCC Convention in Spokane, WA in April.
9. Promote initiative accomplishments, events, and programs via social media (#CCCCWI), WPA-L (flagship professional listserv), nextGEN (graduate student listserv), TechRhet (digital rhetorics listserv), and CCCCWI-L (initiative listserv).

COVID-19 Planning

In person events planned for the April 2021 CCCC Convention will be moved online if need be. All other elements of the project are already online and set up for remote participation.

Budget

How you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. (You can create a table later if needed.) Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!

Wikimedian-in-Residence

• Salary for a full-time, remote Wikimedian-in-Residence employed by NCTE/CCCC on a 10-month contract - $40,000

The Wikimedian-in-Residence will work with CCCC Wikipedia Initiative leadership to provide targeted training for academic editors of Wikipedia, create community support structures, establish effective ways of recognizing the value of global public scholarship, assess the impacts of initiative efforts, and develop strategy for the next stage of the initiative.

CCCC Wikipedia Scholars Program

• Funds to create CCCC Wikipedia Scholar Fellowships to cover tuition for 20 initiative participants across two sessions of 12-week, online Wiki Scholars courses offered in partnership with the Wiki Education Foundation (20 x $1,400) - $28,000
• Costs for four (4) half-day online editing workshops serving a total of 40-60 faculty members and PhD students, including materials and postage (4 x $150) - $600
• Funds to create a CCCC Wikipedia Scholar Award to recognize the efforts of an individual or collaborative team of initiative participants who generate outstanding content in one or more key articles (1 x $2,500) - $2,500

In-Person Events

• Costs for a half-day editing workshop (20 registered participants, Wednesday) and a two-day edit-a-thon (100+ participants, Thursday and Friday) at the 2021 CCCC Convention (April 7-10 in Spokane, WA), including materials and airfare, hotel, and registration fee for one lead facilitator (1 x $1,500) - $1,500

Fiscal Sponsor Administrative Costs

• Administrative costs of 15% to NCTE to act as our fiscal sponsor - $10,890

TOTAL = $83,490 USD

Community engagement

How will you let others in your community know about your project? Why are you targeting a specific audience? How will you engage the community you’re aiming to serve at various points during your project? Community input and participation helps make projects successful.

We are a community of established and emerging academics publishing scholarship, teaching graduate and undergraduate courses, and directing writing programs at colleges and universities across the United States. This initiative has grown out of our research and teaching with Wikipedia, and we are working to create a culture in which scholars feel a professional responsibility for public access to the knowledge our research and teaching aims to circulate.

We will promote initiative accomplishments, events, and programs via social media (#CCCCWI), WPA-L (flagship professional listserv), nextGEN (graduate student listserv), TechRhet (digital rhetorics listserv), and CCCCWI-L (initiative listserv). We will conduct our first CCCC Wikipedia Initiative Annual Survey in January 2021 to assess initiative impact and community needs. We will also hold an annual meeting of the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative task force open to all attendees of CCCC 2021 in Spokane, WA.

Get involved

Participants

Please use this section to tell us more about who is working on this project. For each member of the team, please describe any project-related skills, experience, or other background you have that might help contribute to making this idea a success.

CCCC Wikipedia Initiative Wikimedian-in-Residence:

The person we hire for this 10-month, remote position will have both advanced academic and considerable Wikipedia/Wikimedia experience.

Project Lead and CCCC Wikipedia Initiative Task Force Chair:

• Melanie Kill, University of Maryland - Drkill

I have been teaching with and editing Wikipedia since 2007. In 2011, I was a Wikimedia Summer of Research Fellow and served on the Wikimedia Research Committee. My current book project offers a rhetorical analysis of the ways Wikipedia both carries forward and modifies the genre of the encyclopedia. I have many years of experience organizing edit-a-thons, facilitating editing workshops, and introducing students and scholars to Wikipedia's technical, procedural, and cultural practices.

Current CCCC Wikipedia Initiative Task Force Members:

• Dylan B. Dryer, University of Maine - Compositionist

Since joining this initiative last year, I have edited widely on writing- and language-related articles, but have recently become more focused on improving articles in a cluster pertaining to language ideology (Standard English; Standard language; Usage; Literacy etc.). I have helped train editors for this initiative in events both officially associated with this initiative and informally in self-sponsored small-group settings.

• Tarez Samra Graban, Florida State University - Rhetorica19

I have been teaching with Wikipedia and explicitly building assignments around the platform off and on since 2006. I incorporate a fairly significant Wikipedia unit in a class I teach in Public Discourse, and in that context I primarily ask students to consider Wikipedia as a vehicle for editorial learning and for contesting and negotiating claims to knowledge, and to understand how complex and encultured that negotiation can be. From these experiences, I became interested in best practices for Wikipedia documentation, which often involves questioning Wikipedia's unwritten practices alongside its articulated practices.

• Alexandria Lockett, Spelman College

• Matthew Vetter, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

In 2019, I helped facilitate two Editing/Training workshops as part of this initiative. I have taught numerous courses that partnered with Wiki Education, and have organized and facilitated multiple Edit-a-thons and training events in academic contexts. Matthewvetter (talk) 16:36, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Community notification

You are responsible for notifying relevant communities of your proposal, so that they can help you! Depending on your project, notification may be most appropriate on a Village Pump, talk page, mailing list, etc.--> Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. Need notification tips?

Endorsements

Do you think this project should be selected for a Project Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project below! (Other constructive feedback is welcome on the discussion page).

• good outreach to educational community, large impact from convention demonstration of digital humanities best practices. Slowking4 (talk) 01:20, 11 March 2020 (UTC)