Grants talk:Project/Africa Centre/Integrating Wikipedia Content Creation and Editing into University Curriculums

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2018

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2018 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through January 2, 2019.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for round 2 2018 will occur January 3-January 28, 2019. Grantees will be announced March 1, 2018. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Some questions to clarify your proposal

This is an interesting proposal. Can you answer a couple questions about it?

• Can you provide some evidence so we know more about the status in your claim, "Africa is disproportionately represented on Wikipedia, principally because the community of Wikipeidians has not grown organically to produce and edit content to accurately reflect the continent."
• In the problem you identified, "There is currently no widely adopted system in place anywhere in Africa that assures a significant and consistent intake of new Wikipedians, that they are trained sufficiently and motivated to stay active," can you explain why you perceive there should be a widely adopted system in place for onboarding new Wikipedians across the continent? I may be misreading what you wrote, but some clarification here would be helpful.
• It is unclear what steps and schedule are involved in this proposed project. Can you break this down over the period of time of the proposed grant so we can better understand what you plan to do over what period of time?
• Can you describe what will be involved in what you will do in the "increase the regular and ongoing creation of new and edited articles on Wikipedia about Africa and to establish a formal system to train new Wikipedians that is linked to the current higher education structure in the country. Given the success of this project, we will like to take the learnings to expand it to more institutions in the country and on the continent." These are large goals, though it is unclear what will be done by when to accomplish them.
• Can you explain how the proposed budget items were calculated? They are listed, but no explanations are provided for how they were determined.

I look forward to hearing more about your planning for this project. --- FULBERT (talk) 02:39, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

I want to make sure you saw this Eloah Ramalho. --- FULBERT (talk) 22:25, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Quick questions

Hi @Eloah Ramalho:! This sounds like a very interesting and ambitious project! I have a couple of questions to complement the ones previously left by another user in your talk page. First, I'm curious to learn about the number of teachers you've selected for this pilot (10), is it because you already have a relationship formed with 10 professors in these universities? Or is this what you've considered to be the most realistic expectation based on previous experiences? Also, do you expect the "500 new and 1,000 edited articles written by 300 University students over a 12 month period" to come from classes that the trained professors will lead or as a total from the impact of the didactic resources you'll be creating as well? Finally, in regards to the line where you mention "even students who are not directly registered with the trained professors will become aware of a place where they can go to learn more about easy steps to become a Wikipedian and join onto the movement at their Universities". I'm wondering if this means that you'll be organizing events/spaces where students can freely join in and learn about editing Wikipedia in addition to the classes given by the professors involved in your project, it's just a little unclear. Thank you in advance for your time in reviewing these questions! Best, --MGuadalupe (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Reminder

@Eloah Ramalho: Thanks for the working on this proposal. It sounds interesting. However, some points of the proposal are unclear to me, and I just saw that FULBERT and MGuadalupe (WMF) have already requested some clarifications, which cover mine as well. I am writing this message to remind you that these comments still remain unanswered. It would be great if you can reply to them at the earliest possible. Looking forward to hearing from you. KCVelaga (talk) 09:30, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Please Review This Proposal After January 21st - Questions Will Be Answered by Then

We are thrilled that our proposal made it to this new round of evaluation and will get back with answers to all your questions by Monday January 21st 7PM GMT. Thank you for the opportunity and for waiting until then to score the proposal.

Answers to Questions

1. Can you provide some evidence so we know more about the status in your claim, "Africa is disproportionately represented on Wikipedia, principally because the community of Wikipedians has not grown organically to produce and edit content to accurately reflect the continent."

There are various articles citing the publication statistics on Wikipedia by region/country and language and in all of these analyses the content written by Africans in their own native languages is very low. This issue is not simply one of indigenous language contributions but also on the English version of Wikipedia. The content written by Wikipedians in African countries in English is very low compared to the volume of information written in countries outside the African continent. In a three month period, for example, more edits are made by editors in Hong Kong than in the whole continent of Africa, and only 25% of edits about Sub-Saharan Africa are written by Sub-Saharan editors.

References:
1. Wikipedia Statistics, 30 November 2018
2. Just how many people are reading Wikipedia in your country, and what language are they using? Blog entry by Erich Zachte October 27, 2017
3. Who writes Wikipedia
4. The Startling Numbers Behind Africa's Wikipedia Knowledge Gaps June 21 2018

2. In the problem you identified, "There is currently no widely adopted system in place anywhere in Africa that assures a significant and consistent intake of new Wikipedians, that they are trained sufficiently and motivated to stay active," can you explain why you perceive there should be a widely adopted system in place for onboarding new Wikipedians across the continent? I may be misreading what you wrote, but some clarification here would be helpful.

This is related back to the first question in that Africa is underrepresented because there are not enough Wikipedians contributing to Wikipedia. The African context is very different to Europe, North America and even parts of Asia where a large number of articles are written from a significant pool of volunteers who have the resources, time, and inclination to create articles and answer the comments/changes required in order to reach the approval stage for their articles. There is also a strong imbalance in what is deemed as worthy of publication on Wikipedia caused by the negative colonial legacy of the last 500 years. It takes mentoring, time and support to encourage people to write about African stories that have been suppressed in the past or ignored. This legacy also makes moving African’s from being knowledge consumers to knowledge creators more challenging.

By 'system' we are suggesting that the only way to meaningful change the imbalance of African contributions onto Wikipedia will be by designing an approach that targets the most likely candidates to contribute, providing a motivation to contribute and make this process self funded. Thus the university ‘system’ we have designed.

3. It is unclear what steps and schedule are involved in this proposed project. Can you break this down over the period of time of the proposed grant so we can better understand what you plan to do over what period of time?

Detailed timeline

This timeline is based on 12 months. Two months of preparation, one month for training, 9 months of project actions and one month for final evaluation and reporting. The numbers in front of each step indicate the corresponding months in which we propose they be performed (from 1-12).

Pre-launch preparation: 1
Partners communications strategy finalised and launched: 1-4
Research: State of the Wiki (current content, editors, potential activators): 1-2
Approach university management structures (deans and head of departments) about the project and how to best invite lecturers and students: 1-2
Open invitation to lecturers at selected institutions: 1-2
Communication with local editing volunteers: 1-3
Establish project expectations, best practices, minimums and processes: 1-4
Q&A Session with lecturers regarding curriculum integration: 2-3
Finalisation of training materials and course planning for lecturers: 2-3
Training of lecturers (in collaboration with OpenHeritage): 2-3
Gather and advertise new Wiki courses in our free online training centre: 3-11
Establish lecturer Wiki training dates (for students) that will be open to the public: 3-4
Support Q&A session for lecturers after they began training students: 4-6
Feedback to Wikimedia community (at Wikimania, GLAM Camps, Wiki Indaba, etc.): 4-12
Set-up of WLW portal, Wikimedia pages, categories for tracking: 3-4
Sharing on GLAM, Wikimedia (Signpost) and other newsletters: 3-11
Continuous uploads on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects: 4-11
Reports to management (by lecturers): 4-12
WikiAfrica programme management, admin & programme support: 1-12
Project assessment, evaluation and report: 12

4. Can you describe what will be involved in what you will do in the "increase the regular and ongoing creation of new and edited articles on Wikipedia about Africa and to establish a formal system to train new Wikipedians that is linked to the current higher education structure in the country. Given the success of this project, we will like to take the learnings to expand it to more institutions in the country and on the continent." These are large goals, though it is unclear what will be done by when to accomplish them.

The session above presents a detailed timeline with project activities. In summary, what this project will do to increase regular and ongoing creation of articles on Wikipedia about Africa is to:

- Integrate the creation of Wiki articles into the assignments lecturers request of their students so that Wikipedia editing becomes a practice amongst University students in Africa;
- Formally engage with university management structures to outline what the project is about and how this will benefit their institutions;
- Show statistics and feedback from the content authored through the project;
- Create a competition board across universities showcasing stats and potential prizes/press coverage about content students have authored;
- Gather new courses for our learning centre and advertise them to all students in partnered universities and through public media.
- Whereas this project will comprise up to three South African universities, its learnings and success will support us with the knowledge and credibility to expand it to other institutions in the country and across the continent.
http://wikiafrica.net/learn/ - this is existing Wikipedia learning material we have already developed.

5. Can you explain how the proposed budget items were calculated? They are listed, but no explanations are provided for how they were determined. Project manager (12 months x $833): $10,000

Training and refresher training sessions (30 sessions x @ $250 and training strategy planning & implementation fee @ $3500): $11,000

Online support to the creation of articles (9 months x $945): $8,500

Advertisement of our online learning centre to University students (10 months x $500): $5,000

Updating online learning centre with new content (research & webdesign (10 months x $600): $6,000

Travel costs (occasional training staff and management transportation to partner universities - 8 months x $333): $4,000

Data and wifi hotspots (during training and for management/reporting): $3,800

Administrative Overheads (office rent, utilities, telephone bills and accounting services - 12 x $916) : $11,000

6. First, I'm curious to learn about the number of teachers you've selected for this pilot (10), is it because you already have a relationship formed with 10 professors in these universities? Or is this what you've considered to be the most realistic expectation based on previous experiences?

We have relationships with a number of professors at the University of Cape Town, Sustainability Institute (Stellenbosch University), and the University of Western Cape, and consider 10 to be a realistic expectation of how many of them will adhere to this particular project and bring others along. Also, as indicated, we only expect a 60% integration rate of the 10 we train. This is based on our previous experiences of training volunteers and Wikipedians to create articles and participate in general in Wikipedia activities post training.

Thank you for the replies to the questions asked above Knocknacree. I am unsure of your relationship to this project as Eloah_Ramalho is listed as the grantee. Please also remember to sign your replies here so we can reply back to you directly. --- FULBERT (talk) 20:05, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Integrating Wikipedia Content Creation and Editing into University Curriculums

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	7.2
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	5.0
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	4.8
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	4.4
Additional comments from the Committee: The impact of this project is great, as well as the possibility for other areas to replicate this project. This project has the potential for positive impact, though it is unclear what exactly they will do it or how they will do it. It fits with the strategic direction of Wikimedia by focusing on underrepresented content, i.e. African content in this case. It does have a potential online impact, but the proposed budget is not reasonable for the online impact targets. The project can be sustained and scaled in future. This project is measurable with the use of certain tools and documentation of the activities. I am concerned that this is not innovative. Integrating Wikipedia in the classroom is something that has been done now for years. How do you plan to make sure this is sustainable after the project period expires? That's a big budget. You need to disclose more risks that may make this plan a failure and how you solve it. For example: how could you sure that teacher would like to be a part of the plan? If this program works, it will be an innovative solution, though it is unclear if there is enough detail to demonstrate the support for innovation at the scale they are proposing. The project takes a new approach to recruit volunteers, by effectively engaging students and their educators. However, the potential risk is more than the outcomes. I say this because the various steps in the project and their respective targets are vague. It involves a lot of risks because; retention of the students who get trained during this project is not thought about. Retention is the only factor that makes this project sustainable and has a long-term impact. Though editor retention may not be a priority for traditional Wikimedia in education programs, this project is much different. Since the primary goal itself it to improve content on African Wikipedias, but not using Wikimedia as a pedagogic tool, retention is very much important. Though training 300 students over a period is doable, but how many of these students will continue contributing has not been given attention. Moreover, when students pass out of the college or university, they’ll no longer have access to the resources. The activities and project goals are feasible given the timeline. I would like to see, given the budget, what the plans are for establishing sustainable engagement (wiki user groups at the universities, connecting faculty with established community members, encouraging university students to take what they learn to younger school children and their local communities). I think it's very difficult to complete those goals in 12 months or less. Also, I think they may have to explain how they determined their budgets for us. I am not sure that the grantees are ready to get the funding 'cause he only has made 13 edits before. It means he might not be an experienced editor. I do not have confidence this can be executed. If the proposed grantees do not even link to those who they claim are experienced editors, and thus that information cannot be verified, I am not confident this large project scope will be possible. The proposer doesn’t have any editing experience on Wikimedia project (expect to this proposal). So I doubt, the user as a project manager will be able to appropriately plan the requirements and get the necessary resources required for Wikipedia training. Though the project plans to involve a Wikipedian “Nicholas,” we are not clear about how his expertise will be used in this project. This user will be training educators, who in turn will be training students. I am not confident whether the educators who will be trained will be able to teach students at this scale with just 2-3 months of editing experience (considering off-Wiki commitments are educators). The proposers have an established record of Wikipedia training. I would like to see some efforts incorporated to make the expense more sustainable. Such a project requires strong community support, but I didn't see it. The proposal has limited endorsements, and as a result it is unclear to what extent the community has been engaged in this proposal and will ultimately support it. Though the project does seem to focus on the footprint of Wikimedia ZA, they are not involved in the project’s activities. There is only one endorsement from the community. The activities for the project could have been more close to the Wikimedians from South Africa. I would like to see some efforts incorporated to make the expense more sustainable. This plan must be evaluated more completely. The idea is good, but there is not enough detail or supporting evidence that it is doable. Additionally, the Budget seems to have costs for administrative overheads to be high compared to the training and other hands-on work that is otherwise proposed for the project itself. I would recommend partial funding for this project. Since this only being done a pilot for a larger, I don’t suggest this budget for funding a pilot. As it also takes a unique approach to improve content on Wikimedia projects, it would work well it is if first tested on a small scale. I would recommend funding 40% of the proposed amount. I believe scaling down shouldn’t be impossible. Instead of doing the program with three universities and 300 students for a pilot, I would suggest one university, with 3-5 educators and 100 students for this project. This would help us to invest more time on sustainability measures and also closely observe to scale it up in the future.

Opportunity to respond to committee comments in the next week

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal. Based on their initial review, a majority of committee reviewers have not recommended your proposal for funding. You can read more about their reasons for this decision in their comments above. Before the committee finalizes this decision, they would like to provide you with an opportunity to respond to their comments.

Next steps:

1. Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal. We recommend that you review all the feedback carefully and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page by 5pm UTC on Tuesday, May 11, 2021. If you make any revisions to your proposal based on committee feedback, we recommend that you also summarize the changes on your talkpage.
2. The committee will review any additional feedback you post on your talkpage before making a final funding decision. A decision will be announced Thursday, May 27, 2021.

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

@Eloah Ramalho and Knocknacree: Please see note above about the opportunity to respond to committee comments before they finalize a decision on your proposal. Please let me know if you have any questions. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 04:01, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Round 2 2018 decision

This project has not been selected for a Project Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding. This was a very competitive round with many good ideas, not all of which could be funded in spite of many merits. We appreciate your participation, and we hope you'll continue to stay engaged in the Wikimedia context.

Next steps: Applicants whose proposals are declined are welcome to consider resubmitting your application again in the future. You are welcome to request a consultation with staff to review any concerns with your proposal that contributed to a decline decision, and help you determine whether resubmission makes sense for your proposal.

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.

Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:13, 1 March 2019 (UTC)