Thank you for the community feedback on this proposal. This has been a beneficial consultation for WMF.
"Education and access to knowledge in Brazil: catalysing Wikimedia through active authorship, autonomy, collaboration and sharing" is a proposal submitted by Ação Educativa to the Wikimedia Foundation to develop a project focused on Wikimedia projects in Brazil. This was built in partnership with the current Brazil Catalyst Program team. It's meant to empower the team work on the ground, by providing proper structure and expertise in the education field, allowing more effectiveness in the workplan, as well as local partnerships. Ação Educativa is also eager to learn more with the Wikimedia community about knowledge sharing, online communities and free knowledge. We believe this proposal may be very promising for the Wikimedia movement in Brazil, as well as to Ação Educativa and other local movements that aim at the right for education, the right for knowledge and the right for information.
Ação Educativa's Project Proposal
October 2013 - July 2014
This is Ação Educativa's Wikimedia project proposal to be run from October 2013 to June 2014 for the Brazil Catalyst Program. The document has been built by the Brazil Catalyst Program staff and Ação Educativa, and has also been based on the planning previously built by the Brazil team with the community, on the planning for data analyses and experiments and on some ideas from the 2012 Brazilian community meeting, keeping in mind the objectives, opportunities and challenges faced during the last year and a half. Feel free to share ideas and feedback.
A more detailed activities plan is intended to be discussed and defined on a multi stakeholder governance model with the community, Ação Educativa, the Brazilian team and partners. To start this process, one of the first activities planned for this project is a national meetup in the very first month of the partnership (likely to be October), with the participation of community members, partners, different areas from Ação Educativa, one or two Wikimedia Foundation board members and the Brazilian Catalyst project team.
New activities may emerge and a more detailed methodology on how parts of the plan is supposed to be developed will be designed, especially in areas which directly concerns the community, such as micro grants and experiments on Wikipedia and its sister projects.
Ação Educativa is a not for profit organization that has worked in the education, culture and youth fields for almost 20 years. Well established in Brazil, the organization develops now more than 30 projects supported by more than 20 donors, and owns a building located in a central area of São Paulo, the major city in Brazil.
Ação Educativa has been awarded with important awards due to in its commitment to the education system improvement in Brazil. In the international context, the most well-known project they have been actively engaged in was the promotion of the World Social Forum in Brazil since 2001, in a multi stakeholder governance model.
To increase and strengthen access to knowledge in Brazil by catalysing Wikimedia projects and increasing the reach of the Wikimedia projects and community in Brazil;
To build and enhance a network of educators, education organizations and students that will learn and multiply how to collaborate in the Wikimedia projects, also building the vision of authorship, empowering them to be content producers.
To bridge the gap between educational institutions at all levels and collaboration educational technology, the Wikimedia projects and communities.
To create and disseminate high quality content with large participation of educators and citizens in general.
To share cultural and educational content in Wikimedia projects.
To increase readership of Wikimedia projects and raise awareness more widely about Wikimedia projects among the Brazilian general public.
To increase participation and collaboration in Wikimedia projects.
What are the objectives of this initiative (include metrics)?
Which Wikimedia strategic goal(s) does this initiative address?
What key activities / milestones are associated with this initiative?
How will your entity accomplish this initiative?
How will your entity measure and track success of this initiative?
To map open educational resources and collaborative building of knowledge in the education field, in collaboration with Open Educational Resources communities, Wikimedia Community, free culture movements and educational institutions partners.
Documentation on Wikiversity, Meta and br.wikimedia.org of at least 20 experiences and practices on knowledge sharing in Brazil available to anyone
Encourage innovation, participation & quality
A conference with Wiki Community in São Paulo and Open Educational Resources activists to collect some experiences and define key words for the research. An academic research and systematization of initiaves
Information gathering, bringing professors engaged to build experiences knowledge base; identification and analysis of best practices, gaps and potential collaboration actions, involving community members experiences and knowledge.
Level of collaboration (# of people and organizations involved in the process), initiatives identified and documented, collaboration actions planned for future activities improving or experimenting new practices, combining different experiences.
Discuss and disseminate results of the map mentioned above
Share and discuss the results of the mapping, proposing and organizing follow ups and future collaboration
Encourage innovation, participation & quality
Finalize the report on mapping, share widely, organize and promote a seminar, create a methodology for debate, invite people, publish results
Organizing a public event about educational practices and the collaborative creation of knowledge content and releasing the mapping
Number of participants, access to the mapping (downloads or views), increase of content through sources mapped in Wikimedia projects, increase of free content created
To motivate public debate through media and other public forums through the dissemination of the results of the mapping above and build a media source knowledge base related to the use of technology in educational processes in Educational Observatory site
Raise awareness on the importance of creating and disseminating free content.
Increase reach.
Publication of the mapping and mapping key spaces (events, media vehicles and others) to publish the results of the mapping.
To send out of press releases, to raise public debate through participation in multiple events, sharing the results of the mapping.
Public debates reach, media coverage reach.
Dissemination of cultural content through Wikimedia projects and other technologies
Content growth in the Wikimedia Projects, by adding content produced by Ação Educativa, the National Library and other partners into Wikimedia projects
Improve quality (and increase content and participation).
Research of free (or with potential to become free) content (historical documents, books, manuals, articles, guides, scientific researches) produced by cultural and educational organizations, workshops and editathons for uploading content; design partnership for QR codes in botanical gardens, zoos and urban spaces.
Start with the Brazilian National Library and Ação Educativa; deploy workshops on how to edit Wikimedia projects in those organizations; implement a partnership or fellowship program (to be designed in details with the community) to organize and upload this content.
# content uploaded or used as sources.
Creation and dissemination of educational content through Wikimedia projects.
Wikimedia projects quality improvement and development of collaboration culture in the academic field.
Improve quality.
Creation, improvement and distribution of tutorial materials, deployment of online tutorial sessions, workshops, follow-up, supervision of development of the courses, support on final review, systematization of learnings.
Engage at least 30 professors in Wikimedia projects class assignments activities, through capacity building activities (see on capacity building section).
# articles created, # articles improved, # professors engaged, # students engaged (creation and improvement of at least 200 articles during the semester; involvement of at least 300 students).
Capacity Building: a course during the first semester of 2014 for educators from different levels in order to empower them to build content in Wikimedia Projects and for the use of technology in collaborative creation of knowledge as an educational process that can make the learning experience more meaningful for the students. It shall be costless for the audience.
The course aims at building capacity so that educators and human right activists in the educational field can independently well apply the use of collaborative technologies to education, lead Wiki activities in the classroom, make a critical and qualified use of technologies and of the content in internet in educational processes and become authors of free content in Wikimedia projects. It also aims at strengthening a network of educators, human right activists in the educational field, Wikimedia Movement and free knowledge activists engaged in use of the technology and collaborative creation for education. Moreover, it will allow us to make an assisted use of educational experiences with Wiki tools collected during mapping of the use of Wiki in the first phase of the project.
Planning and organization of the course, invite speakers, communications about the course, open enrolment phase, development of the course, evaluation of the course.
Based on principles of popular education and collaborative creation of knowledge, the course will combine general lectures about the right to education and free content, as well practical activities on Wikimedia projects and on internet tools about themes debated during the course. The course content will include right to education, collaborative creation of knowledge, free content, critical use of technology in education and editing techniques and policies. The mapping of open educational resources and collaborative building of knowledge in the education field will also help to build the units of the course and invite some speakers.
From 50 to 100 high school teachers, educational coordinators, university professors, students, journalists and human rights activists in the educational field able to deal well with information technologies, practices of sharing of knowledge and developing Wikimedia projects activities. Also, the course is expected to generate content throughout the semester, by creating or significantly improving at least 100 articles.
Capacity building: to develop a methodology for the collaborative organization and documentation of educational experiences with wiki tools, targeting Brazilian professors and teachers.
To stimulate consistent and collaborative documentation of educational practices and experiences making use of wiki tools, in order to encourage and build capacity for new uses of it.
Encourage innovation, increase participation
Map of both online and offline methodologies for sharing practices, analysis of methodologies successes, experiments of practices and creation of a reccommendations guide for collaboration through sharing of educational practices.
Based on principles of popular education and collaborative creation of knowledge, the process will involve piloting with professors leading Wiki activities the building of collaborative practices for documenting and exchanging experience and learnings permanently.
A knowledge base covering the most important experiences with the use of Wiki to share educational experiences, allowing improvement of the practices and common learnings, as well as the engagement of new people in sharing educational practices encouraged by the learnings shared throughout the years.
Online training sessions for professors and students engaged in the education program.
To strengthen the relationship with professors and follow more closely the development of classes, reaching more professors.
Improve quality, increase participation.
Plan the sessions, improve online materials, deploy the sessions, document the learnings.
The Brazil team will organize online sessions every 15 days for professors involved in the Wikimedia activities.
# of professors attending sessions, # of courses who really accomplish the task, have 30 professors engaged in the programme supported by that.
To create online material and localize tools.
To facilitate professors leading activities in the classrooms.
Increase participation
Submit a script draft to be reviewed by the community; wrap up comments and suggestions; shoot 10 to 15 short tutorial videos on how to edit Wikimedia Projects; publish them. Localize the education program extension; online materials aiming at general newcomers, educators willing to develop activities, students and ambassadors all localized; New estrutucture of Wikimedia Education Program pages.
To create a script draft to be reviewed by the community; to produce 10 to 15 short tutorial videos on how to edit Wikimedia Projects; to localize the education program extension; to finalize and improve localization of 4 online guides for participation; to revamp Wikimedia Education Program pages in order to include other types of collaboration, such as the ones from high schools and other education activities.
# of materials available online, # access to/download of materials, have 30 professors engaged in the programme supported by that.
To create and distribute print material.
To encourage new professors enagage in the programme and to help them lead activities in the classrooms.
Increase participation, improve quality
Planning; localizing and producing; desgining; printing; handing out;
Localization of tutorial materials and creation of a guide for participation in all Portuguese Wikimedia projects, making use of those existing materials and adapting them to the Portuguese Wikimedia projects reality. Under the responsibility of the Brazil team, the process is meant to also involve wikimedians interested in improving and creating tutorials.
The distribution of at least 3 types of print tutorials (for general newcomers, educators willing to develop activities and students) to more than 300 professors.
To create tutorial to be embedded in existing educational and digital inclusion platforms, distributed and operated by governmental agencies and other organizations.
Brazilian Government agencies and other organizations make use of distance learning platforms with educational material distributed to thousands of students and taught by their own tutors and professors. Many of these platforms contain modules that introduce the use of internet technology applied to education. However, they don’t contain modules on how to share knowledge or on Wikimedia projects. Data Processing Federal Service (SERPRO), the Ministry of Education (MEC) in the state of Bahia and Abril Educação, a not for profit related to a media corporation, are interested in the inclusion of specific modules on how to use Wikimedia projects in their platforms. The objective is to build capacity among students of e-learning and digital inclusion platforms. Our team will generate the content and they will embed in their platforms and teach how to use them. We will also create guides for tutors so they will be able to introduce the topic.
Increase participation
Get basic material done; set up partnerships for inclusion of that content in the platforms; get how to edit Wikimedia projects modules in the platforms running.
Analysing the modules structures of each platform; writing a basic guide; adapt it to different platforms and distribute them to the partners, who will embed the content; track the use of it and monitor results.
Increase the reach of tutorials regading Wikimedia projects; increase the number of new editors and of new articles. However, we expect the impact to happen in the medium and long term, considering courses last more than one year, and it’s very unlikely we’ll be able to measure how many newcomers engaged because of the distance learning courses. However, we can set up an online survey for users of the platform asking who went through the modules, who edited Wikimedia projects and who enjoyed and continued editing.
To build, maintain, stimulate and energize a network of professors from the Brazilian education program and help them become self-sustainable and managed.
To support the creation of an independent network of professors, in direct engagement with the Brazilian community interested in supporting them, making our work gradually less necessary for the sustainibility of the programme.
Improve quality, increase participation
Meet-ups; hangouts; documentation of the experience.
To create permanent communication channels and regular activities to help the education community lead and develop projects within the Wikimedia movement. Organize hangouts to promote conversation among professors and wikipedians and organize in person events to gather a group of active professors to exchange experience, share learnings, discuss possible partnerships and systematize methodologies and cases of success, creation of a mailing list for professors and ambassadors exchange of experience.
# of professors engaged in the network; # of professors working in collaboration with each other; # of professors leading activities with low level of extra support needed.
To support the organization of regional and local community meetings throughout Brazil.
To help the community participate in the meet-ups in a country of continental dimensions and increase reach also through online participation.
Increase participation
Meet-ups broadcasted; minutes documented; systematization of results of all meet-ups.
To help build a calendar; to support the creation of infrastructure to broadcast meet-ups; to help systematization of all meet-ups, to get a sense of convergence among them.
Organization of at least one meet-up per one of the 5 Brazilian geographic regions; # of people participating in the meet-ups; # of projects led by the community come out of those meetings. Impact in the national community building.
To help the community build a network or developers, researchers and data analysts.
To build sustainability for data analyses development support for localization of new tools that may help improve the editting experience in Wikimedia projects.
Increase participation.
Desing partnerships; organize hackathons; create online guides and regular support to developers and analysts by our team and a small group of volunteers who already develop tools for Wikimedia Projects.
The Brazil team is already in contact with groups as the organizer of the International Free Software Forum and Garoa Hacker, a not for profit association of developers, to organize hackathons in partnership. Providing online support will be also part of our job, as well as encourage and guide researchers to use data available.
Increase the number of really engaged developers and researchers from about 6 to about at least 10 (with perspectives of increasing this number in the following year again). Get better tools to prevent low quality edits.
To support the community in organizing a photo contest.
The Brazilian community has already discussed the possibility of taking part in the global Commons Wikimedia photo contest, Wikimedia Loves Monuments. However, various reasons stopped them from organizing a Brazilian version of the contest. We intend to create a national contest, for a variety of categories which are very often pictured in Brazil, such as nature, urban problems, animals, and others, inviting the community to take the lead of it, creating experience for future contest organizations by these joint efforts.
Increase participation.
To structure the contest, inviting the community to decide how it should go, to help adapting the rules, moniroting the results of the contest.
Learn from the international Wiki Loves Monuments model, adapt where necessary, launch the contest and document learnings.
1500 pictures uploaded on Commons, participation of at least 800 people, retention of 10% of users, participation in future global contests.
To create a micro grants program to support the community develop activities and become stronger in Brazil.
To support volunteers activities proposals.
Increase participation.
Develop a pilot in partnership with the community; get this running; document learnings and results.
Discussion with community to decide how the program should work; launch of the programme; activities supported; documentation of learnings and results.
Development by the community at least 5 projects aimed at the growth and strengthen of Wikimedia Projects, .
To monitor the development of the actions led by the Brazil Catalyst program to allow overall community review of the reach of the catalyst program objectives.
To allow anyone to track the results of this project, analyse them and propose improvements based on the results. Having a public continuous evaluation of the programs objectives reach rate we will be able to let the global community transparently follow what is going on on the ground and also allow ourselves to make corrections on the program to seek for the planned goals.
Improve quality (of our project itself).
Create a page with metrics, targets and correspondent data to each of the activities developed; regular track results; publish the results.
We will measure program activities (such as WEP class assignment students production, the progress of pages that are being translated) as they are happening and have this data publicly published. We'll also track each one of the activities above and publish the results of our activities (are we reaching our expected results and metrics?). We will create a general program monitoring page with the quantitative goals presented in this plan and the daily progress of the data that can be automatized.
Having the program actions properly measured and having a page with the expected outcome targets and the data about them published as activities are developed.
To support the community in building a strategy to retain active and new editors through an experiment properly monitored.
To help the community make conclusions over the best way to promote retention of new users and better quality edits.
Increase participation, improve quality.
Decision over experiments to be run; running them; publishing results and analysis.
We will discuss with the community witch experiments should be run (campaigns for the creation of accounts by PIs, for the use of test pages, for the mentorship program, getting started extension) and we will measure its impact comparing focus groups and control groups
Having two experiments run and documented to help understand in which extent those activities might impact in the growth or retention of editting community or improvement of quality of content.
To support the community in the localization of tools to manage and prevent low quality edits and vandalism.
Help community manage low quality edits and vandalism.
Improve quality.
Decision on priorities; development of filters and tools.
There is already a task force to improve vandalism fight going on on ptwiki. We will help this effort focused on evaluating the effectiveness of filters and its improvement and also localizing tools that helps revisions evaluation, such as Snuggle and STiki.
Having more filters on Abuse Filter preventing editions and having at least one more tool on ptwiki to help the work of categorizing and evaluating revisions.
To support the community analysis of their projects through regular data analyses on the development of the communities and websites content.
To guarantee the sustainability of the program our team has to support the development of data analyses skills inside the community, helping volunteers to create their own analyses and also using collaborative spaces to develop our own analysis.
Improve quality, increase participation.
Regular support activities, enhancement of data portal, adding our analyses to [tools.wmflabs.org/ptwikis the community analytical tools hub]
Our team will use the collaborative “ptwiki” space on tool labs to publish its regular previewed data analyses, such as geolocated access, edits stats, qualtrics data, the timeline, helping interested community members to understand how this process work, giving access to raw (anonymized) data and structuring our analyses for i18n, so the global community will also be able to join efforts.
Having the data from the program's researches and analyses automatically updated on toll labs and having more volunteers analyzing data.
It's important to bear in mind that some of the outcomes of our actions are predictable and are under our “control”, being direct attributions of our efforts. Others depend on various external aspects and can be related to our efforts or contributions, but one can not establish direct cause-effect relations.
Indicators of success (to be measured by July 2014) for the project include, but are not limited to:
Ação Educativa continues to work with Wikimedia movement and on Wikimedia projects after this project finishes.
At least one more organization, movements (from FLOSS and OER resources communities) engage in the Wikimedia movement (through hackathons and OER mapping) and in at least one project (Wikimedia Brasil or Meta or Wikibooks or Wikiversity).
The number of volunteers engaged in meet-ups increase 10% in each state where there are volunteers organizing meet-ups. North and Center-west regions to organize a meet-up.
The Wikimedia community takes the lead of as many actions as possible (at least two volunteers co-leading with us at least two projects: might be the photographic contest, the cultural partnership/QR code, hackathons, OER mapping or any other project).
The Wikimedia projects become more widely known, read and used in Brazil (baseline in being created based on access. Readership survey, if possible, will also be made. Alexa may also be a reference, despite its technical limitations. Increase in likes and views on social media - Twitter and Facebook - too).
At least 30 professors continue to develop class assignments and make use of Wiki and other tools.
The education program produce or improve at least 200 articles during the semester.
The education program involve at least 300 students.
At least two professors take the lead of the Wikimedia Education program, coordinating actions, partnerships, organizing meet-ups and keeping the network and program active.
Retention rates of newcomers through our projects increase 5% yearly.
There is a consistent increase (year over year change) of 10% in the number of active editors in Wikipedia.
There is a consistent increase (year over year change) of 20% in the number of new articles in Wikipedia.
150 public domain or free license content works from public libraries and partners are shared on Wikisource.
The community takes part in future international Wikimedia movement led photographic contests (such as Wikimedia Loves monuments or any other "Wikimedia loves something").
The Brazilian photographic contest results in the upload of 1500 new pictures re Brazilian scene into Commons.
Have the group of volunteers involved in data analysis and in the development of tools in Wikimedia projects increased in 50% (from about 5/6 to 8/9).
A big thanks to everyone involved in the Brazil catalyst program development. This proposal has only been made possible by the work of a lot of people: the grantmaking team in WMF, who continue to believe in Brazil's potential; the Brazilian and Portuguese communities, especially those who actively engaged and collaborated in our planning process and our activities; the Brazil team and Ação Educativa.
Obs: This template was created by the India Access to Knowledge Program, who we thank so much for the support.
