Grants talk:Project/Orgio89/Offline Wikipedia outreach in Mongolia/Final

Report accepted

Dear Orgio89 and DB2016,

Thank you for submitting this Final Report. I am accepting it now, with apologies for the delay!

I want to congratulate you on the three outcomes you described for this project:

• "Both educators and students are very interested in using Wikipedia for their studying process"
• "The local Ministry of Education and their policy is postively considers Wikipedia as education friendly source"
• "The general public very positively regard Wikipedia as a knowledge source although only highly educated social groups recognize in such way"

In the context of this project, where computer access and internet access are both limited, it makes sense for creating awareness and building positive regard for Wikipedia among educators, students, government and the public to be the focus. This lays a foundation for fruitful investigation into and discussion about where and how Wikimedia projects can make the most useful contribution into the educational environment in Mongolia. We appreciate the local understanding and careful thought you put into your project design to make this a successful project in introductory training in how to read and use Wikipedia.

I'm happy to hear about how much visibility and regard you achieved for your project in Mongolia:

• It's great to hear that it was well received by the Mongolian Ministry of Education and that they issued a supporting letter stating that it is inline with their policies. I am curious what kind of influence this letter has in your context. Is this likely to persuade other schools to attempt to replicate your approach? Has that happened since the project was completed? Is the Ministry likely to promote this model in any way in the future?
• I am happy to hear that you have been presenting your research in contexts that expose your findings to educational professionals. Congratulations on performing well in the local Teacher Research competition. I imagine this was a great way to create more visibility for your project.

Toward the end of the Methods and activities section, you mentioned that "in total around 20% of population" recognized Wikipedia as a result of this project (I am not positive I am interpreting this correctly). Can you share more about how you calculated this number and what it represents?

It sounds like there were some classrooms that focused on encountering Wikipedia through computers and smartphones, and in other cases, the material was printed out and distributed in hard copy. In the latter case, you said that "further ideal integrative solutions development is required." I am curious to know more about how you are thinking about the use of hard copy versions of Wikipedia. What are the particular questions, risks or opportunities you see in that use case?

You state in your report that "Initially our project has planned to organize students to learn the editing process and add the articles but schools teaching process and their curriculum schedule was not flexible enough hence the project volunteers worked on 460 new articles and added it locally." It sounds like the editing component of the project was not particularly feasible or productive. I think this is very understandable given that you are significantly focused on an offline context. What did you, as the project organizers, learn about the potential for editing to be included in the classroom? Would you say that, in the future, it makes more sense to focus on readership rather than editing in classroom contexts? Where is the learning edge in regard to editing, from your perspective?

What would you say was the major educational contribution that introducing Wikipedia offered instructors and/or students? In other words, what was most helpful to instructors and students? Was the focus primarily on the content of the selected articles themselves, as it would be with any other educational resource? Was there a digital literacy component? Was there an information literacy component, in which students learned how to evaluate the quality of citations, for example, or review talkpage discussions?

I'm interested in the role that Mongolian Wikipedia played in this project and its potential in the Mongolian educational context. Mongolian Wikipedia offers the potential to support more featuring of Mongolia's own history, people, culture and other forms of knowledge. It sounded as though your project was most attractive for the role it played in supporting education in English, including translation from English Wikipedia into Mongolian. Am I understanding this correctly? I would be glad to hear any further thoughts about the role of Mongolian Wikipedia and content creation in Mongolian.

Thank you again for all of your good work on this project. I enjoyed reading your report very much.

Warm regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Dear Marti,

Thank you for your acceptance and questions here are our replies:

1. I am curious what kind of influence this letter has in your context. Is this likely to persuade other schools to attempt to replicate your approach? Has that happened since the project was completed?

Orgio89: This letter is very legitimate proof of our local operational realistic approach and well penetration into the root issues that represent current educational trends. And clearly this letter is big support for us to recruit future project supporters and partners for broadening our operation. According to our experience we needed to repeat our initial project approach to 50 more schools to initiate more firm development trend.

In few occasions some teachers of other schools used our DVD materials and improved their teaching process. Few months after our DVD distribution we learned from a local TV news reel that a math teacher from 11th public school was using our DVD included free math and geometry graphing software to equip or modernize his teaching method.

DB2016: This is a great question. As we all agree with the statement “Change is the only constant”, in Mongolia, educational reforms and innovations have been a constant since the democratic revolution in 1990. Our project aligns with the Mongolian Government effort to improve the educational quality in Mongolia. The support letter from Ministry of Education was instrumental in motivating school principles and teachers to actively participate in our initial project. In the future, we will continue our collaboration with Ministry of Education and we plan to reach more educators and students.

2. Is the Ministry likely to promote this model in any way in the future?

According to our estimate our project impact for the Ministry of Education policies will be:

1. They will more closely consider Wikipedia as more realistic knowledge source and will increase their own searching of linking their educational base with the Wikipedia base.
2. Our triggered approach of offline Wikipedia method certainly triggered their researchers considerations hence we acted as one successful experiment for their studies and considerations.
3. To more firmly launch our trend into the educational community we will need to broaden our project and even to develop Wikipedia process based English textbook to improve this offline and online combined educational development trend.

3. Toward the end of the Methods and activities section, you mentioned that "in total around 20% of population" recognized Wikipedia as a result of this project (I am not positive I am interpreting this correctly). Can you share more about how you calculated this number and what it represents?

This 20% include current college students, college educated adults and actively studying high school students. Since there is considerable percentage of highly educated people have still no or very limited internet access it is very difficult in current Mongolian society to determine near Western level of estimate. Around 35% of population have reliable internet access

4. I am curious to know more about how you are thinking about the use of hard copy versions of Wikipedia. What are the particular questions, risks or opportunities you see in that use case?

A DVD based Wikipedia is highly useful for youth and adults who have no internet access. In our society 35% of population live in poverty which is 1 million people. If few thousands of them the children and young adults have a chance to see our DVD and read the DVD contents description it will be like accessing 300 volumes of Wikipedia knowledge and other highly interesting knowledge with 0 cost and they would search for their neighbours or friends smartphone or computer to access the DVD contents and immediately start their own personal education process. Our DVD is simply offering 300 volumes of very valuable mind expanding opportunity at low cost hence for 99% of target users it is great opportunity for their self improvement and or to upgrade their education.

The key questions here are:

- Were the Wikipedia DVD contents well selected for the demand?
- How the DVD contents would improve users education and learning situations?
- How to assimilate DVD contents with target users interests and demands?

And our answering approach for these 3 questions is we have good prior experience of current social demands hence the DVD is developed according to those demands and details. And our next project stage will give us chance to learn more deeper impacts of our pilot level operation that targeted to those vulnerable communities and then to re-develop more caliberated approach and methods and DVD like solutions to fix the under educated situation in more down to earth realistic ways.

5. What did you, as the project organizers, learn about the potential for editing to be included in the classroom?

Orgio89: Many of Wikipedia article creation and editing process are identical to regular English learning classroom process. Hence according to our experimental English classes at 10 public schools we concluded that if we develop an English textbook that linked Wikipedia process with the English learning details will be ideal solution to improve Wikipedia usage to classroom environment.

Many good research findings and observations found and needed to broadly studied but we saved all the papers and most of our time spent for Final report development and to cooperate with Ministry of Education and to get some level of their official response about our project which we succeeded getting their letter after 10 months of efforts in mid 2018.

DB2016: There are many ways to include editing in the classroom. For example, in English language learning, students can correct each other’s work grammatically as well as factually. Another example is collaborative writing projects which students create page together.

6. Would you say that, in the future, it makes more sense to focus on readership rather than editing in classroom contexts?

DB2016: In the future, we will work to utilize as many functions as possible to integrate Wikipedia environment in classrooms. One example is multilayered editing. We may look at the opportunity to invite outside content experts to edit students’ peer-edited pages. Educational researchers agree that collaborative classrooms are one of the most effective. We value Wikipedia’s collaborative environment.

Orgio89: In the future both editing and readership have to combine because Wikipedia development is never ending process and any kind of local educational process is never ending evolving process. Which is why editing and readership processes have to combine and reflect any future trend changes.

7.Where is the learning edge in regard to editing, from your perspective?

Orgio89: During the editing especially during article translation one would learn many new words and efficient use of computer handling and database handling and especially learn how to integrate multiple websites outlines efficiently and turn it into single article which turns into very productive brain exercise thing.

DB2016: In my opinion, one of the learning edges of the editing is the empowerment of web authoring. Wikipedia environment truly offers outcome-based learning. Students learns multiple publishing opportunities while collaboratively presents their writing projects in the creative flatform of Wikipedia.

8. What would you say was the major educational contribution that introducing Wikipedia offered instructors and/or students? In other words, what was most helpful to instructors and students?

DB2016: Increasing awareness about Wikipedia-based teaching and learning was most helpful. We distributed Wikipedia handbook with consisted of 8 pages that includes information about how to create, search and edit Wikipages.

Orgio89: This offline Wikipedia outreach was very productive resource equipping and distribution operation for local teachers and students that even well internet accessed teachers praised our DVD contents which targeted to make usefull both of their smartphones and pc's. Especially various levels rich educational applications together with chosen Wikipedia contents were counter encouraging each others to drive students and teachers learning and teaching environment more enriched and letting them have more choices to learn or teach.

9. Was the focus primarily on the content of the selected articles themselves, as it would be with any other educational resource? Was there a digital literacy component?

DB2016: In our pilot project, we worked to increase the awareness to consider Wikipedia as an innovative education environment. We will plan to include digital literacy component in our next project.

Orgio89: As for pilot project we focused on filling the more wider demand hence the chosen contents were for Wikipedia outreach for those of limited internet access plus linking the Wikipedia elements with local educational elements especially English learning.

10. Was there an information literacy component, in which students learned how to evaluate the quality of citations, for example, or review talkpage discussions?

In our handbook, we included evaluating information sources and cautions of using Wikipedia solely due to its’ open editing nature. Thank you for this great recommendation, we will include information literacy components in our coming lesson plans.

11. It sounded as though your project was most attractive for the role it played in supporting education in English, including translation from English Wikipedia into Mongolian. Am I understanding this correctly? 

Thank you for this great insight. As the English language is becoming the most published and international business and communications’ major language, Mongolian employers are asking educators to prepare graduates that possess an excellent English language skills. Since Mongolian libraries have limited books written in English language, internet have became the main source for learners. As an educator, I see Wikipedia’s potential to solve Mongolia’s limited educational resources in English language. We recognize that Wikipedia environment integration in teaching is not only offers English language contents, it also aims at developing digital and information literacy for learners. We will encourage other classrooms to integrate Wikipedia in their lessons. Even in English language classrooms, in addition to translating English contents into Mongolian languages, we will encourage students to develop a Mongolian content that teaches our Mongolian language to international audience so that students develop their comparative language skills. Furthermore, in English language classrooms, Mongolian students can work on projects that authoring Mongolian content and then translating their Mongolian content into English language.

12. According to our Final report findings we are planning to apply for second stage of our project implementation to WMF Grants program to develop our English textbook that based on Wikipedia elements plus to develop and finalize our Wikipedia Educational Process Design that very important for studying and researching of Wikipedia educational impacts and development and can you open the Project renewal option in our Final report page or should we start new grant application?

Orgio89 (talk) 10:18, 18 May 2020 (UTC)