Grants:Project/Rapid/IUP-Edit-a-thon2020/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2019-20 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/IUP-Edit-a-thon2020.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Recruit new editors, particularly multilingual speakers, female population, those interested in languages and translation, as well as arts and feminism within the academic community of Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Goal met, 42 editors participated in the edit-a-thon. The majority of these new were new editors, and more than half were multilingual, female editors. Our reach broadened beyond the immediate academic community of Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) to also include students and faculty at American University of Beiru (AUB)t. This was an outcome of a relationship with Abir Ward, who is currently a doctoral student at IUP and a lecturer at AUB.

Increase skills for existing editors

Yes, two trainings leading up to the main event, in combination with the event, led to more training opportunities and increased skills for editors.

Add or improve content on representation of languages across Wikipedia, especially articles on women artists around the world. Improve Wikipedia's accuracy of the same articles but in different languages.

Yes, 52 articles edited and 4 articles created. AUB contributors especially added diversity of content contributions, although all of the work was done in en-Wikipedia rather than other language editions. I would like to do more in this respect at future events. See articles edited

Integrate the Edit-a-thon into fall courses across academic disciplines

Not fully met. The original edit-a-thon was planned and scheduled for Spring 2020, and much of the work to integrate the event into classes was done in that semester. It was more difficult to re-do this work again in the fall though we did have participation from at least 3 classes.

Hold two editorial training workshops leading into the event in order to increase the success of the event

Yes, and this model proved to be very helpful for our participants.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Number of events - 3	Yes	2 trainings and 1 main edit-a-thon event, with editing activity before and after.
Number of new editors - 40-50	No	We had a total of 42 participants, but only approximately 30 new editors. Circumstances described above impacted promotion.
Number of of articles created or improved - 60	No	52 articles edited, 4 articles created. We came close to our outcome but many of these articles edited would need to be put aside as they don't represent work specific to the edit-a-thon (because the dashboard collects ANY activity).
Number of of articles created or improved - 60	No	52 articles edited, 4 articles created. We came close to our outcome but many of these articles edited would need to be put aside as they don't represent work specific to the edit-a-thon (because the dashboard collects ANY activity).
Number of participants - 70-80	No	We had a total of 42 participants, which is a significant drop from my 2019 edit-a-thon (with over 90 participants). This is partially explained by the cancellation and rescheduling of the event due to Covid-19, and could also be explained by the switch to virtual format. In addition to this, campus climate at IUP suffered overalll during the fall of 2020 due to announcements of massive layoffs of faculty and staff, termination of programs in the arts, and restructuring of the colleges. Faculty and student morale was low as a result of this. My own morale and motivation also suffered when I received news that I would be laid off as well, which impacted the promotion and marketing work I could do. This decision was later reverse but not until well after the edit-a-thon.
Number of repeat participants (for projects that include a series of events) - 30	No	Training events did not garner more than 10-15 participants, so we were not able to meet this goal either. This is reflective of how the fall event was not as integrated across various courses. Much of the promotional and organizational work I did in the spring was not reflected here due to Coronavirus impact on higher education.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

While the pandemic and events at the hosting University were major challenges to the organization and execution of this event, we did establish a social media presence and engage in social media marketing to promote the event. This was a major learning experience. I created a FB page for the event and worked to establish a modest follower count of 75. This is something that can be build on in future years. We also facilitated the entire event virtually due to the pandemic. While this limited certain incentives for participation (such as food, SWAG opportunities) it also allowed us to invite participants who are more geographically distributed. That students at American University of Beirut were able to participate was wonderful.

What did not work so well?

Promotion and outreach wasn't as successful as in events in previous years. I struggled to embed the event in others' courses (even in my own) since most of the organizational work I did in the spring was no longer valid/useful.

What would you do differently next time?

I'm really interested in a using what I learned about social media outreach and virtual edit-a-thon training and events to be able to offer more hybridization of the event. By this, I mean that I hope to have both all online and in-person events to maximize incentives and participation.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

We used 123.31 for social media advertising to promote posts and content related to the Edit-a-thon event.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Yes, USD $376.69 will be returned to Wikimedia.

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of US$376.69.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?