Learning and Evaluation/Archive/Share Space/Edit-a-thons and Workshops

This page is for sharing edit-a-thon and workshop program examples! Please post questions and comments on the talk page about each other's activities. Not a part of this group? No problem, just use the templates below to add your program experience to the bottom.

Team Program Leaders

Afripedia Workshops

Afripedia logo

Afripedia is a program dedicated to french-speaking african countries. This program is in two parts. The first is to provide offline access to Wikipedia in african universities, the second is to train people to contribute to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. For this time, I'll just explain the second part of the program : workshop to learn how to contribute and how to learn future editors. We organize training sessions for 10-15 people, who are staff into the "French-speaking Digital Campus" in Africa, and are professionnal trainers. The first workshop was in Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire) in november 2012, the second will start in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) on june 25, 2013.

Resources used

Afripedia bookshelf

note that all resources used are for the two parts of the project, not only for the workshops

• Money spent on program : travel for trainers and trained, venues (€15,000)
• Staff hours invested in program : around 150-200 hours
• Volunteers hours invested in program : no quantified (help on Wikipedia)
• Pedagogical content : Wikipedia bookshelfs and Afripédia bookshelfs

Programming activities

Training session

• The project is managed in partnership with the Institut Français (cultural institutes around the world, depended on the foreign affairs) and the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, a structure depending on the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie dedicated to universities programs. For the second training sessions, we add a third partner, the CEDESURK, cooperation program between Belgium and Congo + Burundi located in Kinshasa.
• First, we select with the partners where the training session can be organized. It depends on the involvment of the local staff of AUF.
• AUF selects the people for the session, with our criteria : we want people able to understand technical issues (for the 1st part of Afripédia project) and able to train people later to contribute to Wikipedia. The best profile is people who is in charge of learning programs in the French-speaking Digital Campus. We also ask universities librarians.
• We organize a 4-5 days session into the French-speaking Digital Campus. We are 2 or 3 trainers, 10-15 attendees. During the week, they learn how to install offline access, how to maintain it, and how to contribute to Wikipedia. We also train them to explain Wikip/media projects for students and teachers, how to run workshops, how to be autonomous.
• Each attendee is taggued on Wikipedia with a specific userbox. We also have a stats website where we can see all the edits of each people
• After the sessions, we have a mailing-list to frequently discuss about the issues, what works, what didn't work.
• Attendees have objectives regarding their own contributions and regarding the work they must doing to train other people. They must install Afripedia offline access and make at least 1 conference and 1 workshop during the 2 months following the session. After that, we make a report each 3 months about the objectives and realizations.

Participants

• The participants are people who are professionnal trainers. They work in universities, in charge of digital education. We also have few people from universities libraries, and in Abidjan (1st session) we had 3 people from IFADEM project, an educationnal project for teachers in primary school. They are not Wikipedia editors before the workshop.

Goals of the program

Conference about Wikipedia in Niamey (Niger)

• The main goal of the workshop is to train people on Wikipedia, able to train later other people : "Train the trainers"
• We want to give the main keys to contribute on Wikipedia for african people not already enough involved on Wikipedia
• We want to install good practices for future editors, when internet access will be better : if we have some regular editors now, when internet access will be well, they will be able to be really efficient with university teachers and students to make them wikipedians
• We want to support new communities in french-speaking african countries

Any program evaluation strategy used?

Attendees have a double objective : about their own contributions, about their action to train new people and explain Wikimedia projects.

• To follow editions on Wikipedia, we have the support of a stats website, owned by a french contributor with financial support of Wikimédia France : http://wikiscan.org/
• We categorize each attendee with a special userbox, and they can be tracked on Wikiscan [1]. With that tool, we can measure 2 things :
  • If the attendees contribute and if they contribute with well content and regularity. Each editor has a dedicated stats page (for example : [2]
  • If the attendees are efficient to recruit new contributors (the first session was for 18 people, now we have > 100 new editors)
• Attendees must report their actions on a dedicated page (workshops organized, conferences etc)

Any program results or highlights you were able to measure?

Afripedia training session for students in NDjamena (Tchad)

• 50% of attendees are very involved on the project and really became wikipedian contributors. They organize workshops in their universities, try to learn how to contribute etc.
• 50% of attendees are now enough involved in this part of the project : they ave installed the offline access to Wikipedia but have difficulties to organize workshops and report their actions
• 800 contributions, 132 new articles on french Wikipedia (all are related to African content), about 30 files on Wikimedia Commons
• Around 300 students on workshops in 5 countries trained by trainers

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Poster about offline access and training sessions in Bamako, Mali

This kind of project needs a lot of attention by organizers : we try to learn people very far, with a poor internet access, alone in their universities / country as wikipedians. Being Wikipedia trainer is not their only job, they need to have time and resources to be involved. We must be very attentive to encourage them, follow their actions and provide help day by day. We note that in Mali, where a Kiwix developer is located, people involved in Afripedia project are very active and very creative to improve the project.

Sports blog cooperation

Note: I have not participated in this programme, so I can only relate second hand info. (Wikimedia Hungary has not yet experimented with the Editathon format, and the workshops we had were generally low key...)

The backstory is that editors of a sports blog have approached us stating that their writers would be interested in contributing to Wikipedia, and to facilitate that two presentation-heavy workshops were given to the bloggers in the hope that they would become editors.

Resources used

• 4 volunteers
• Venue was provided by the bloggers
• Time for planning, coordination and organization (mostly volunteer time)
• Small cost to reimburse travel of trainers (~20€ perhaps)

Programming activities

The event included two occasions with two presentations each on what Wikipedia is, how to edit, and on such advanced topics as bots and copyright.

Participants

There were perhaps 6 bloggers the first time and 5 the second, all new to Wikipedia, 3-4 chapter volunteers and our new employee (who was also new to the Wikimedia world).

Goals of the program

• Enable the motivated bloggers to edit Wikipedia
• Make sure the bloggers were aware of Wikipedias ways and rules
• Get new editors

Any program evaluation strategy used?

3 participants have signed up on the blog's wikiproject, one of them has made a few (<10) edits since the workshop.

Any program results or highlights you were able to measure?

• Out of 10 participants, 3 registered and signed up for the blog's wikiproject, 1 of which edited a very few times

Is there anything else you would like to share?

The approach of taken of passive teaching without practice has not proven productive (while the current editor needs some explanation). My hope is that with the visual editor we can dispense with tutorials on how to edit, and change the format into an interactive Q&A where the new editors are thought what they need to know when they need to know it and are ready to learn.

Ada Lovelace Day 2012 - Wikipedia workshop and editathon

Resources used

• Staff & volunteer time spent on organising - 7 full days each (2 people)
• 7 hours managing the press communications - Comms Organiser WMUK
• 3 volunteers - time spent during the event to train - 8 hours each min.
• Royal Society venue - donation
• Royal Society catering - refreshments and drinks - donation
• Celebratory cake - WMUK cost
• Training materials costs - £30
• Travel costs for volunteer trainers - £100 range

Programming activities

Details here and here.

We had an afternoon Women in Science editathon bringing in new contributors from academia, and some existing volunteers helping as trainers. Female editors were particularly encouraged to attend. The event was hosted by the Royal Society, who have a very strong history-of-science and biographical library which was made available to us for the day. Online participation was encouraged as well. At the in person event, we have started with 30 minute introduction to Wikipedia, followed by individual tuitions as participants were creating articles.

After the editing session, we had a broader panel discussion for a wider audience looking at general Women in Science issues.

Participants

There were 20 editors present at the Royal Society, most of whom new to Wikipedia, 80% women. We have registered about 25 online participants, from UK and abroad. The event also sparked a ‘parallel’ workshop on 26 October 2012 in October, where about 10 participants met to create further articles.

Goals of the program

• Promote Ada Lovelace Day and the increased participation agenda in Wikipedia
• Link up to the vibrant Finding Ada movement in the UK
• Partner with a high profile organisation (several were considered) that might render future collaboration
• Teach at least 10 people how to edit and have an understanding of issues of Women in Science on Wikipedia - inspire them to carry on editing or at least carry the message to wider audience (definitely achieved)

Any program evaluation strategy used?

• We were working on a survey to be sent to participants after the event, but, not having the email addresses shared with us, this proved difficult.
• Trainers present at the event were monitoring the articles created on the day and supported the editors. Some remote participants have written a post event report for us.
• Monitoring Twitter (via a dedicated hashtag) and other media to track media engagement with the topic.

Any program results or highlights you were able to measure?

• During the editathon at the Royal Society, we have created or significantly expanded 20 articles. This added to 14 articles that were created even before the event started, thanks to the promotion of the editathon. Many of these are now the first results in the search engines.
• The extensive media coverage (listed here), all stressed both the importance of women engagement and coverage of female related topics on Wikipedia. The articles included pieces in ”Scientific American”, the ”Independent”, the ”Telegraph”, the ”Guardian”, the ”Huffington Post”, BBC (online and on radio with editathon participant Dr Nathalie Pettorelli) and the “Signpost“.
• Continued collaboration leading to very exciting plans for 2013 Ada Lovelace Day - Royal Society, Medical Research Council, and others.

Are there any program results that you would like to measure?

• Participants continuing to edit (if simple to do)
• Articles being deleted (and why)
• Participants who joined as WMUK members

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Good information for people wanting to join online can allow to scale the event quite well - we have been posting ‘Welcome to Wikipedia’ booklets for people that requested, and spent significant amount of time communicating with people that registered for remote participation. Having templates ready helps, as does lined up etherpads, IRCs, or any online communication channel for people.

We have awarded the Royal Society our ‘GLAM institution of the year’ at the 2013 WikiConference.

Gillian (Australia)

WikIpedian in Residence

The project page is here: w:Wikipedia:GLAM/SLNSW This Library holds some of the most important Australian resources and this program has improved our acces to them as well as Australian content on Wikipedia.

Resources used

No Chapter resources used except volunteer time, especially for the training sessions which were led by three volunteer trainers. The organisation invested in it via staff and management time.

Programming activities

We worked to align Chapter and organisational goals in terms of the focus of our work. The Library had a specific set if its own objectives and had established the scope for its own involvement. One part of that scope was extended when the number of newspapers under consideration was discovered to be 2000 rather than 700. This necessitated more effort on the part of the Library staff doing this part of the work but in doing so, the process for sharing with other libraries was improved and also the article's value as a research tool was enhanced.

Participants

Participants were all professional librarians or managers at the Library and included the Innovation Manager and staff members from a working group. Participants are linked from the main project page.

Goals of the program

The program had to fit within the goals of a set of pilot innovation projects (each with its own objectives) at the Library as well as achieve what I considered to be the most important goal: namely, to develop a positive, sustainable and ongoing relationship between Wikimedia Australia, Wikipedia and the Library itself.

Any program evaluation strategy used?

Goals, objectives and outcomes on the evaluation page here: w:Wikipedia:GLAM/State Library of New South Wales/Evaluation

Any program results or highlights you were able to measure?

Highlights included some significant but hard to measure qualitative outcomes such as:
- senior management commitment and support
- the self-initiated involvement and ongoing enthusiasm of some staff members who had not had the original training.

More easily measurable highlights were: (see also "Evaluation" above)
- production and work on new important articles beyond the original scope
- the creation and publication of procedures for library networks in other Australian states to follow
- creation of a new user box for use by Indigenous Australians and a declared involvement by some - four editathons planned with the support and involvement if the Library and its staff and the contribution of resources from its collections.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Critical success factors included the advance planning, including the scope of work, gaining management approval for staff involvement, and establishing them as a team.

Librarian's quote: "Editing Wikipedia can be tedious but is deeply satisfying".