Grants:Conference/Wikimedia Serbia/EduWiki Conference 2020

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Conference & Event Grant

WMRS/EduWiki Conference 2020

Throughout the world, educators use Wikipedia and its sister projects as a teaching and learning tool. The Wikipedia + Education User Group, in partnership with Wikimedia Serbia, proposes to bring together our members for the first time as an official user group. Together, we would like to discuss implementing the Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy, create a plan of action for how to enact our user group's goals, and build a community of user group members who share learnings so educational efforts worldwide can all get stronger.

targetAll Wikimedia projects, all language versions

strategic priorityIncreasing Participation

event dates9 October 2020 - 11 October 2020

amount-local63,000.40 EUR

amountplease add the amount you are requesting (USD)

typeorganization

nonprofitYes

creator• dungodung

contact• User:Dungodung / filipvikimedija.org / Filip Maljković• User:Bojan Cvetanović / bojan.cvetanovicvikimedija.org / Bojan Cvetanović

organization• Wikimedia Serbia + Wikipedia & Education User Group

website• Wikimedia Serbia, Wikipedia & Education User Group

Friendly space expectations

index

Create your report

Event overview

Purpose and vision

Please give a brief description of the event you are planning. What do you hope to accomplish during the event? Why is this event important for your community?

Wikipedia & Education User Group is a relatively new affiliate, but one that is global in nature and has a large sphere of interest. We have ambitious goals, but limited resources, and we see value in holding an annual international conference with education as its central topic. We believe we have the capacity to organize such events in the future, but seeing as we’re still a small community without a formal body, we plan on cooperating with incorporated geographical affiliates, in order to make particular events possible. This year, we are partnering with Wikimedia Serbia, as a chapter with a long and rich history in organizing both education program activities, but also in organizing conferences.

The planned event is going to be held October 9 - 11, 2020, in Belgrade, Serbia. The event venue is going to be Hotel M, the same venue used for successfully organizing CEE Meeting 2019.

With a full three day program encompassing keynotes, presentations, panels, workshops and discussion groups, we plan to provide an immersive experience for all participants. We hope to have a broad representation from around the world, with many experiences to be shared. As education programmatic work in the Wikimedia movement ranges from one individual Wikimedian instructor working with their class to large-scale programs with tens of thousands of students each year, we also want to facilitate connections and mentorship opportunities for collaboration between education program leaders with similar programs across the globe.

From the survey results, we saw a decent connection between expectations, gaps in skills, and expertise in skills. The three day program, in addition to satisfying the expectations, would also focus on connecting people with expertise in a certain area to those having a skill-gap in the same. This will ensure that we have stronger bonds and cross-community connections in the movement. We will also offer technical training in existing software tools (e.g., the Program & Events Dashboard or Petscan, mentioned by many survey respondents), and use this conference as an opportunity to catalyze growth in our user group’s working group on technology.

The survey is evidently pointing towards aligning and thinking about the EduWiki work across the movement to be connected and be aligned with Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy Process, and also in terms of advocacy with other stakeholder systems and groups in mind, such as OERs and MOOCs. We would like to have a program that would be open about talking about these things.

In conjunction with the Wikimedia Foundation’s Education team, we would like this conference to move sessions beyond simply “here’s what I’ve done” and into “here’s what I’ve learned, and here’s how this learning is applicable to others in the movement.” We want our user group to foster a network of people within the Wikimedia and education movement who are better at documenting and disseminating learnings so we aren’t recreating the wheel every time we start a new program.

Important details

Please add key information to the table below. The dates, location and number of participants can be estimates and do not need to be finalized at this time.

Proposed date(s)	9 October 2020 - 11 October 2020
Proposed location	Belgrade, Serbia
Number of participants	120
Event page	EduWiki Conference 2020
Primary contact person	User:Dungodung

Background

Community input

Use the results from the community engagement survey to fill in the table below. Since you cannot cover all topics or meet all needs at one event, prioritisation is important. Please rank the priority of each topic, skill, project or problem as high, medium or low. Finally, please answer the questions below the table.

	Description	Priority
Strategic discussions: What are the top issues affecting your community that need to be discussed in person?	Developing a communication strategy to explain about Wikipedia, for educators to stop saying, “Don’t use Wikipedia”, without further context Using the larger concept of MOOCs for EduWiki work Planning programs by keeping in view of Wikimedia 2030 strategy Sustainability of EduWiki programs – being able to run even after the initiator who is longer available Drafting long term plans for a partnership Methods and practices to run EduWiki programs in the areas with low internet connectivity Developing Education programs with focus work area to serve students from marginalised communities	high
Capacity development: Are there important skills that many people in your community need to learn?	External fundraising to support EduWiki programs Evaluation of EduWiki programs Program and Events Dashboard MediaWiki & Semantic MediaWiki Wikipedia & Wikidata tools for Google Sheets Petscan Localisation of templates Querying Wikidata Best practices to teach about copyrights and plagiarism to participants of an EduWiki program Using Moodle for EduWiki project management	high
Working groups: Are there joint projects that need to be planned in person?	Central repository of resources (handbooks, tutorials, videos, learning patterns etc.) required to plan, implement, and scale up an education program Developing communication strategies to minimise the stigma around the use of Wikipedia in academia Building EduWiki programs around GLAM and other cultural institutions Designing EduWiki programs around Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikiversity Designing EduWiki programs for higher education & research candidates (PhD etc.)	low
Community building: Are there other in-person activities are important for community building?	Capacity development of other community members to be able to run EduWiki programs Cross-community collabs; how can small community effectively connect with large communities/affiliates to learn from their experience Role of WMF Education Team in supporting the EduWiki community	medium

Survey analysis:

1. How many people did you send the survey to? How many people responded to the survey?

   The survey had been widely promoted across various channels used by EduWiki community, including the two mailing lists, Facebook groups and through personal contacts. A total of 68 people took part in the survey.

2. Did you see consensus around shared goals that this community wants to focus on in the next 12 months? What were the top 2 goals?
   1. Align Education programs plan to produce content according to local needs
   2. Central repository of resources (handbooks, tutorials, videos, learning patterns etc.) required to plan, implement, and scale up an education program
3. Based on survey responses, what are the most important things your community should do at the conference to achieve those goals?

   Focus on capacity building of the participants in the requested areas, so as to align the community with the strategic direction. For this learning, there would be a push for the program to include more sessions for skill sharing rather than a generic format of presentations. Also, technological needs have been identified -- these will be further followed by another survey, and we will try to secure required resources during the conference (such as discussion on how and when) to help the community with these needs.

Context

It is helpful to get an understanding of why this event is important to your community, and what experiences you have had in the past. Please answer the applicable questions below.

1. What inspired your community to begin planning this event?

We at Wikipedia & Education User Group were inspired by the similar event organized in 2019 by the Basque User Group, but also by previous such occasions in less recent history. We believe that Wikipedia and Education go hand in hand and a growing number of edits to Wikipedia in recent years comes from education program activities from affiliates around the world. We think this is fertile ground for cooperation, exchanging of ideas and learning from other peoples’ experiences, so a conference is a natural choice.

2. How does this event relate to other activities that your community is working on?

Wikipedia & Education User Group has been working on enhancing and scaling local and global educational efforts, advocating for the use of Wikimedia projects in education, and elevating the narrative outside our movement. We see a conference with education as its central theme as a natural continuation of our efforts in building bridges, fostering a community of sharing, learning from experience and co-creating. We have formed working groups for Mentorship, Resource development, Tech infrastructure, Global outreach, and in support of the WMF Greenhouse project, but we haven’t defined plans of action for these. We would like to use this conference as a springboard to discuss these working groups’ connections to the Movement Strategy, create plans of action, and energize our members to continue engaging in these efforts after the conference.

3. Please list the priorities identified in the report from the last conference organized by this community. What progress have you made in those areas?

This will be the first conference organized by the Wikipedia & Education User Group.

4. If your community has hosted a similar conference in the past, what key lessons were learned, and what would you like to improve on?

Wikimedia Serbia has organized an EduWiki conference back in 2014, but this is the first conference for the Wikipedia & Education User Group.

Plan

Venue and Logistics

1. If the venue is more than 1 hour away from a major airport or transportation hub, how will participants travel to the event venue?

The venue is located 21km away from the Belgrade Airport. It is 25 minutes from the airport (the only one) by taxi and approximately 30-45 minutes by public transport.

2. Is the event venue within walking distance from the hotel? If not, how will people travel between the two locations?

The event venue is within the main hotel, so no additional logistics is necessary.

3. Is the event venue and hotel accessible for people with physical disabilities?

Yes, there are two rooms with full accessibility options and most conference rooms are accessible by wheelchairs.

4. Do you anticipate any challenges with using the space for the event you are planning?

We don’t anticipate any major challenges, seeing as Wikimedia Serbia used the same scheme for the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2019.

Friendly space policy

Please link to the friendly space policy that your community will be using for this event.

Wikimedia Serbia's FSP

Participation

It is crucial that most participants have a minimum level of Wikimedia experience so that they can engage actively in workshops and discussions. Please answer all applicable questions below.

1. Please describe the target audience for this conference or event.

The target audience will certainly be all people who are involved in Education and Wikipedia on any level. We expect many Wikipedians and Wikimedians, but we’ll also focus on bringing in educators who have been using Wikipedia and its sister projects as teaching tools. Partners from local and global organizations like UNESCO, governments, NGOs, and others who are already involved in the Wikimedia and education movement are also encouraged to attend. We see this first conference as an opportunity to coalesce our strategy as a user group, and we hope to be able to use it as an opportunity to bring new people into our movement in future conferences.

2. If your conference has an outreach component, how will you ensure engagement with these participants after the conference, and what impact do you see them having on the projects?

As the Wikipedia & Education User Group is a relatively new affiliate, we are just getting started with our projects. We have a large membership base of people who are enthusiastic about our work, but we haven’t yet translated that membership into participation in our activities. We hope to use this conference as a springboard for more participation in our Working Groups: Mentorship, Resource development, Tech infrastructure, Global outreach, and Greenhouse. We will use the conference as an opportunity to encourage attendees to sign up for one of our Working Groups, and then follow-up with them to get going on our work after the conference.

3. Are you thinking about inviting WMF staff to attend or participate in the event? If yes, please list individuals or teams who you may want to invite, or describe how you would like WMF staff to be involved in the event.

Yes, the whole of Education team from WMF: Nichole Saad, Melissa Guadalupe, Vasanthi Hargyono and Sailesh Patnaik; also, we think the conference could benefit from participation of Ben Vershbow and Toby Negrin.

Scholarships

1. How many scholarships would you like to offer?

It’s quite hard to predict the number of scholarships for a global event like this, but we’d like to offer around 70 worldwide scholarships.

2. What expenses will the scholarship cover?

The scholarships will cover 4 nights (with breakfast) in a double room at the hotel (a limited number of single rooms will be available for people requesting them), travel costs to Belgrade Airport from the origin (not including local ground transport) and lunch and dinner for the three days of conference.

3. How will scholarship recipients be selected?

We will form a Scholarship Committee (SC), comprised of various people from our community with experiences in such processes, that would be tasked with selecting the people. The process would roughly go like this: the SC would create a Scholarship form, and they would announce the call for scholarships; once all applications are collected, each SC member will rank the candidates’ applications by a number of predetermined criteria and based on an average rank, a final list of people will be provided to the organizing team.

Resources and risks

Describe the resource potential for successfully executing this project and the key risks/threats.

Resources

Organizing team

Team	User Names
WMF Liaison	Dungodung (W&E UG, WMRS)
Logistics	Bojan Cvetanović (WMRS)
Conference Program	Joalpe (W&E UG)
Scholarships	Dungodung (W&E UG, WMRS)
Communications	LiAnna (W&E UG)
Volunteer Coordinators	IvanaMadzarevic (WMRS)
Other team members	Esh77 (W&E UG), WikiTatik (W&E UG), KCVelaga (W&E UG), Neboysha87 (WMRS), Gorana Gomirac (WMRS), Mickey Mystique (WMRS)

Risks

Examples of risks, along with how you would minimize or overcome them, are:

• Skill gaps in project leadership team (e.g. no financial management experience)
• Components of the measurement process that are hard to quantify

Examples of how to minimize these risks include:

• Recruiting volunteers with desired skills to project leadership team.
• Working with the WMF Learning & Evaluation Team to develop an appropriate measurement and evaluation plan.

• New collaborators working together for the first time: Our User Group’s board is all involved in the planning of this conference. Many of us have experience organizing events based on our other affiliations in the Wikimedia movement, and we’ve all been working together on the board. But the group of us has never collaborated together on a conference before. Organizing an event like this will be a test of the relationships we’ve built, and we are confident that the open communication and trust we already have with each other will serve us well. We have regularly scheduled meetings and will increase their frequency the closer we get to the event to ensure clear communication among team members continues.
• Lack of interest in the event: We understand there are a lot of other Wikimedia events being proposed during the second half of 2020, and many of the people involved in education are also involved in other areas in our movement. People have limited time to attend conferences, so it is possible some of our members won’t prioritize the education conference. We anticipate that those who do prioritize an education conference over other options are the people who are most likely to join our working groups, so we believe even if we end up with a smaller group of participants, it will be a group more likely to continue the initiatives we hope to start at this event.
• Badly prepared speakers: The Wikimedia Foundation Education Team has flagged to us that preparing external speakers for this event is something we should spend time on. They have offered their expertise in helping us on this task, and we look forward to working with them to help prepare speakers.
• Lack of volunteers in the organization team: We have good volunteer base that will help us coordinate activities before and during the conference. Wikimedia Serbia will open call for volunteers in order to form bigger team and will create specific tasks for each of them. Since Wikipedians and Wikimedians like to help, we are counting on them to help at the event as well, if needed.
• Problems with internet connection: The hotel will provide a special high-speed internet connection for participants of the conference that will be sufficient.
• Insufficient number of rooms for self-funded participants: Organizers will provide information about nearby hotels in walking distance.
• Taxi scams: Taxi scams are an occasional occurrence in Belgrade, so we’ll try to avoid this by giving participants information about prices and alternative safer app they can use (CarGo).
• Air pollution: Belgrade is suffering from increased pollution as of late, so we’ll inform participants about this in case they want to use masks. However, pollution is not too much of a problem in early October.

Budget

Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to the instructions here. See Budget Guidelines.

Event budget table

The budget value is in euros. We used the exchange rate on 24/01/2020: 1 EUR = 1.1033 USD.

Travel

Nr.	Item description	Unit	Quantity	Cost per unit	Total cost	USD	Comments
1.	Travel costs				38,300.00	42,256.39
1.1.	International travel	participant	60	633.33	38,000.00	41,925.40	Based on the average ticket price from Europe and other continents with 1 checked bag per person.
1.2.	Domestic travel	participant	10	30.00	300.00	330.99	Participants from other cities of Serbia.

Accommodation

Nr.	Item description	Unit	Quantity	Cost per unit	Total cost	USD	Comments
2.	Accommodation costs				17,830.40	19,672.28
2.1.	Lodging	night	280	33.68	9,430.40	10,404.56	31 twin rooms, 8 single rooms, four nights (breakfast is included).
2.2.	Catering	participant	120	70.00	8,400.00	9,267.72	Lunch and dinner on the conference venue during 3 days (except Saturday dinner).

Venue

Nr.	Item description	Unit	Quantity	Cost per unit	Total cost	USD	Comments
3.	Venue costs				6,330.00	6,983.89
3.1.	Rent	day	3	1,150.00	3,450.00	3,806.39	Donation of the Hotel M.
3.2.	Coffee breaks	break	720	4.00	2,880.00	3,177.50	Coffee, water, juice and snacks for all participants.
3.3.	Technical support	day	3	0.00	0.00	0.00	It is included in the venue costs.

Other income / expenses

Nr.	Item description	Unit	Quantity	Cost per unit	Total cost	USD	Comments
4.	Other expenses				5,240.00	5,781.29
4.1.	Video recording service	day	3	260.00	780.00	860.57
4.2.	Promo packet for participants	participant	120	1.33	160.00	176.53	Badges, stickers, magnets.
4.3.	Working material				600.00	661.98	Name tags, roll up, posters, signs, markers, stickers.
4.4.	Saturday dinner	participant	120	20.00	2,400.00	2,647.92	Dinner in the city centre - meal + drinks.
4.5.	Downtown city tour	tour	1	800.00	800.00	882.64	Donation of Wikimedia Serbia.
4.6.	Unforeseen expenses				500.00	551.65

Nr.	Item description	Unit	Quantity	Cost per unit	Total cost	USD	Comments
5.	Income (inc. in-kind)				4,700.00	5,185.51
5.1.	Rent of venue	day	3	1,150.00	3,450.00	3,806.39	Donation of the Hotel M.
5.2.	Conference fee	participant	15	30.00	450.00	496.49	Expected from non-funded participants.
5.3.	Downtown city tour	tour	1	800.00	800.00	882.64	Donation of Wikimedia Serbia.

Total cost of event

67,700.40 EUR = 74,693.85 USD

Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program

63,000.40 EUR = 69,508.34 USD

Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this event, and amounts funded

Hotel M in-kind donation for the rent of venue: 3,450.00 EUR = 3,806.39 USD

Conference fee from the non-funded participants: 450.00 EUR = 496.49 USD

WMRS in-kind donation for the downtown city tour: 800.00 EUR = 882.64 USD

Please confirm that you are aware that changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.

YES

Discussion

Endorsements

Do you think this project should be selected for a Conference Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.

• Endorse -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:37, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
• Endorse -- Xibitgh (talk) 14:00, 17 February 2020 (GMT)
• Endorse -- I believe this will bring together all Educators, Researchers and Trainers from all Global setting to grasp sufficient knowledge to support Wikimedia Education programs. Joy Agyepong (talk) 11:00, 19 February 2020 (GMT)
• Endorse -- Yes please!! Bridges2Information (talk) 19:26, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
•  Support KCVelaga (talk) 05:38, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
• Endorse --Jetam2 (talk) 12:11, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
•  Support This conference is going to be a turning point of people like me who are working on Wikimedia Education Programs. Jagseer S Sidhu (talk) 04:28, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
•  Support This is a superb development. There are so much to learn and gaps to be bridged by organizing this even. Olaniyan Olushola (talk) 18:41, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
•  Support such specific conferences is highly recommended to increase Wikipedia education program leadership competencies.--Avicenno (talk) 18:08, 15 March 2020 (UTC)