Grants:Project/Rapid/Wakoma/13th eLearning Africa Conference 2018/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 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/Wakoma/13th eLearning Africa Conference 2018.
• 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?

We are very happy with the results of the project. The eLearning Africa Conference was well worth attending, and many of our goals were met or exceeded. I was able to meet many contacts from education/academia, the private sector, and government - far more than anticipated. Through the sessions and discussions I learned a great deal about the eLearning and education sectors in the region, and gained insights into those working in the “offline” space. I'm in the process of sharing these insights and contacts with WMF staff.
I managed to lead a series of smaller workshops around the WikiBox and WikiFundi, and had countless discussions around offline content and services, especially Kiwix and Wikipedia, and Internet-in-a-Box. Nichole Saad (WMF) and I teamed up to lead one such workshop on the final day of the conference.

We’re very pleased to have increased awareness of and awareness in Wikimedia projects, and strongly believe this will correlate to a bump in new users and editors. This project has also paved the way for further engagements at eLearning Africa.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

1. Increased number of new readers and editors, offline and online.
   1. Anticipated Number of new editors: 2-3. Actual number: 5. In one of the smaller workshops over dinner I met with 9 participants to discuss editing Wikipedia both on an offline. Roughly 5 were academics from Nigeria, who expressed the difficulty in editing in code. We pulled up the visual editor which they had not yet seen. After this they said they would both make an effort to edit, and teach their students how to edit in their classrooms. We also looked at WikiFundi which they were impressed by but said they would rather just edit online instead of moving content over.
   2. Anticipated Number of new users: 5-10. Actual number: 20. Through discussions, outreach activities, and participants connecting to the WikiBox, we were able to reach a multitude of participants who had never or rarely used Wikipedia. At least 20 participants were first time users.
2. New awareness of WikiMedia projects and services in the eLearning community. I estimate that we were able to bring awareness to over 200 participants at eLA, and another 20 or so after the conference in Kigali at K-Lab and the Impact Hub.
3. Anticipated Number of outreach activity participants: 10-20: Actual: 40. Instead of one large workshop, I ran a series of smaller more intimate workshops with around 10 people each.
4. New partnerships and collaboration for Wakoma and WMF
   1. Anticipated Number of new potential partners: 4-6. Actual number: 6. We engaged with far more relevant and interested organizations than anticipated. 6 of these were identified as “key” potential partners for WMF.
5. New content for the commons: I wasn’t able to take many photos worth uploading, and since we didn’t have a formal workshop session there is no presentation file to share.
6. Number of participants exposed to WikiBox: We weren’t able to record the number of participants, but we are able to see that over the course of the week 2,733 pages on the box were accessed.

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:

At the next conference we will ensure that we have a formal speaking slot, but we will also continute to do smaller more informal workshops/discussions. This will enable us to reach a broader audience in the larger sessions, and conduct more in-depth trainings with interested parties. We were able to connect with conference organizers who agreed that we should have a speaking slot at the next conference.

Social media outreach was not as important as word of mouth. We advertised a few of the workshops/discussions through Twitter and LinkedIn, but most participants joined after being personally invited or hearing from other participants.

The WikiBox was a hit - and we will continue to explore ways to get more people connected. Many participants said they noticed the WikiBox SSID, and those who connected were mostly using Windows (7 & 10) (58%) and android devices (34%). Only 7% were using iOS. In the future we will have boxes running in different locations in the conference venue.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

The funds were spent as expected.

• Flights: $485
• Conference Registration: $680
• Local Transportation: $61
• Accommodation: $420
• Total: $1646

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of 351 USD.

There are $351 in remaining funds. I would like to put these funds towards a project with our Wikimedia South Africa chapter.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

It might be worth WMF having a booth at future conferences. The exhibition space was full throughout the week.