CIS-A2K/Events/Konkani Wikipedia workshop 21-24 August2013

A series of Konkani Wikipedia workshops are being organized by CIS-A2K team at the State Central Library, Goa for the students of the Konkani department from Goa University from 21 August to 24 August 2013. The primary focus of this workshop is to educate the students about contributing to Konkani Wikipedia which is currently in incubation.

Event details

10:00 AM, 21–24 August 2013
State Central Library, Goa

Konkani Wikipedia Workshop

Guiding professors

Konkani Wikipedia workshop 21-24 August2013

Priyadarshini Tadkodkar

“

आज कोंकणी विकिपीडीयाची सुरवात जाता ही व्हड खोशयेची गजाल . ताचेखातीर म्हयती एकठांय करपाचें काम एके गतीन चल्लां तें काम मुखार व्ह्ररपाक आमकां तुमचो आदार जाय.

”

Program details

Phase 1

Wikipedia basics demonstration
Brief discussion about Konkani Wikipedia
Editing session. (Articles edited by students are listed here)
Fun activities
WikiQuiz

Articles and participants

Phase 1 (Day 1 and Day 2)

Konkani Wikipedia Workshop

विश्व कोंकणी केंद्र (John Noronha)

Phase 2 (Day 3 and Day 4)

Konkani Wikipedia workshop 21-24 August2013

Correction support

Acknowledgements

This event and future events at Goa University (GU) would not have been possible without the committed support CIS-A2K has got from the Goa University and Wikipedians. CIS-A2K is very thankful to Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice-Chancellor, Goa University) - for seeing the significance of growing open knowledge movement in Goa and Konkani and encouraging Konkani Wikipedia activities at GU. Thanks are due to the GU faculty, specifically Prof. Alito Sequeira; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; and Dr. Gopa Kumar. Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar and Frederick Nooronha. Last but not the least the enthusiastic students of Goa University who are integral to this event.

Photos

Photos and other media files could be found in the Commons Category.

Video conversations

Konkani Wikipedian Rusita Paryekar (In English)
Konkani Wikipedian Rusita Paryekar sharing her experience of editing Wikipedia (In Konkani)
Konkani Wikipedian Frania Pereira speaks about her motivation for contributing to Konkani Wikipedia (In English)

Media coverage

Dias, Joyce. "Wikipedia writes a new script". The Goan. 24 August 2013.
Fernandes Diana. "Konkani Wikipedia makes headway". O Heraldo. Retrieved 26 August 2013
Das, Arti. Konkani Bhasha Its academic, economic and emotional viability. The Navhindtimes

Blogs

Tandon, Nitika. Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles! . CIS blog. Aug 31, 2013
Panigrahi, Subhashish. Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder. CIS blog. Aug 31, 2013
Panigrahi, Subhashish. Konkani Wikipedia climbing up the Indian language ladder. WikipeDNA, The DNA. Sep 6, 2013
Panigrahi, Subhashish. Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop. StartUpGoa. Sep 9, 2013
Panigrahi, Subhashish. Voices from Goa: Rusita Paryekar, a MA student writes articles on Konkani Wikipedia. CIS blog. Aug 27, 2013
Panigrahi, Subhashish. Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia. CIS blog. Aug 27, 2013

Report

Konkani Wikipedia advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles

Wikipedia editor Frania Pereira speaks about her editing experience on Konkani Wikipedia

There are 3 million Konkani speakers spread across the Konkani belt of Goa, Karanataka, Kerala, Maharashtra. But few are aware of the existence of an open source project, Konkani Wikipedia, that can help them preserve their language and culture. The project has been in incubation since its inception in 2006 and had 90 articles till last week - an incomparable number in English Wikipedia, which has 4.3 million articles. However, CIS-A2K teams effort in Goa to strengthen Konkani Wikipedia project and community has finally started to show some tangible results.

As a follow up to the early workshops and orientations a 4 day program was organised for MA students from Konkani Department, Goa University at the Central State Library, Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Here are few details from the 4 day event:

Highlights

Total of 38 MA students from Konkani Department, Goa University attended the workshop.
43 new articles were created on Konkani Wikipedia in the 4 day event.
In the first 2 days, 22 students generated 42 pages of printed material. In the next 2 days, 16 students generated 56 pages of printed material.
Total of 987 edits were made and 41 references were added on Konkani Wikipedia over the course of 4 days.
Students added total of 3,90,040 bytes of data; average of 10KB data added by each student.
Students created articles on varied topics such as Goan folk dances, eminent personalities, festivals, folk music, proverbs, food items, theater etc.
Students are still editing; with a total of 23 students who have continue to edit until after a week from the date of workshop. Indicating that around 60.5% of students have continued editing post the workshop.

Learnings

Pre-course work : Participants were asked to read pre-course material before the actual event. This included creating Wikipedia usernames, selecting articles they wanted to edit, write their articles in Konkani on a piece of paper and get their references too. Students were also given few pages of Wikipedia literature to read beforehand. [4] Students did all their pre-course work with a lot of dedication and efficiency confirming their passion and interest to contribute to Wikipedia. Pre-course also helped students to come prepared and focused to the workshops.
Limiting number of participants : We limited the number of participants to a total of 40 and further divided in two different groups with 20 students approx. in each. The first batch came for 2 consecutive days and the 2nd batch came for the last two consecutive days of the event. By limiting the number of participants we were able to give individual attention to each student and closely monitor their on wiki performance.
Longer duration workshop : 14 hours of training was given to each batch spread over 2 days. We had sufficient time to break down the entire workshop into different sections (theoretical and practical) that could be easily followed by the participants. 14 hours gave us enough time to cover most of the important topics (such as teaching typing, adding reference, adding headers, wiki markup, talk page protocol etc.) at a comfortable pace.
Bite size chunks : Workshop was divided into different sections to give them bite size information only. Each theoretical section was followed by a practical section. For example, first section involved teaching typing in Devanagari and then participants were given enough time to type their articles in Devanagari. In second section we taught them how to add headers and then the participants were given sometime to add only headers to their articles. This was followed by third section were we taught them how to add references and then giving them time to add their references. We made sure that we don't overwhelm the students with a lot of information in one go and break it down into simpler pieces.
Energizers : 7 continuos hours of editing Wikipedia would have really tired the students and might have made them disinterested as well. To keep their energy and motivation level high, after fixed intervals we played some energizer games with them.
Student co-ordinators : 4 students were selected (2 from each batch) to act as student co-ordinators. These co-ordinators are acting as a communication bridge between A2K members and the participants. For example, these co-ordinators will help students take a unanimous decision about what are the next dates for a follow up session, what timings work for everyone etc.
Varied sources of information : We used different sources and means to educate students about Wikipedia and Wikipedia editing. We definitely didn't want it to be a 14 hour long discourse and hence used different tools such as videos (such as Netha's , Poongothai's video, Sriket and Noopur's, Ganesh's videos talking about their personal experiences in the Wikipedia world) along with handouts, presentations, cheat sheet for typing etc. We also invited Harriet for a video conference to speak with students in Konkani and share with them some inspirational stories.

Challenges

Most students didn't know typing in Devanagari and had to be taught during the workshops. It took them a little while to practice and get comfortable with the typing tool.
We wanted to make sure that along with quantity, students are also producing good quality articles. Non-existance of active Konkani Wikipedia editors makes it a little tough to keep control on the quality. Hence, we reached out to Madhevi Sardesai and Priyadarshani Tadkodkar, professors at Konkani Department, Goa University, to assess the quality and ask students to make required changes.
Since Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation students had to do some additional work such as:

Go to incubator.wikimedia.org to find Konkani Wikipedia. Many wanted to know why can't Konkani Wikipedia have an independent link just as en.wikipedia.org.
Add Category:Wp/gom to every new article that was created. Many found this as extra work.
Searching for existing articles on incubation was difficult for participants.

During the workshop all students added huge amount of information but only handful of them continued editing once they left the computer lab. This brings us to our all time biggest challenge: How do we keep their motivation and interest levels high for them to continue writing on Wikipedia beyond these workshops.

What's next?

A2K team is organising a follow up session with same set of students on 6th and 7th Sept 2013. This session will aim to clear any confusions/doubts participants may have about Wikipedia editing and also to give them a brief about Wikimedia Commons. In this session, students will also decide how they would want to continue with this project with an aim to bring Konkani Wikipedia as a live project.