Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/WITipedia Women in STEM Edit-a-thon (ID: 22694205)
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Applicant Details
edit- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
Ceribrit
- Organization
N/A
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
N/A
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
Main Proposal
edit- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
WITipedia Women in STEM Edit-a-thon
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2024-09-01 - 2025-03-31
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
United States of America
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Not applicable
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
Challenge we are addressing: We aim to help combat gender bias in STEM. There is a significant article number and quality gap for biography articles about women generally on Wikipedia [source: WikiProject Women in Red]. Similarly, there are known gender representation and equity gaps across STEM fields [source, e.g.: the American Physical Society]. Our institution itself, a primarily undergraduate institution with a STEM focus, enrolls approximately 75% men [source: WIT Institutional Effectiveness and Planning].
Change that is sought:
Our approach to this strategy has three parts: (1) improve the quality of biography articles about women in STEM, with a focus on current stub- and start-class articles, (2) engage students as editors of Wikipedia and with addressing gender bias in STEM, and (3) foster a community of equity-minded Wikipedia editors at the Wentworth Institute of Technology
(1) Improve the quality of biography articles about women in STEM, with a focus on current stub- and start-class articles. Activities: 1.1 Create a list of 400 start- and stub- class biography articles about women in STEM for participants in an edit-a-thon to choose from. 1.2 Run an edit-a-thon during which these articles are improved by the addition of sources, improvement of wording and organization, and links to/from them on Wikipedia. (2) Engage students as editors of Wikipedia and with addressing gender bias in STEM Activities: 2.1 Enlist at least 10 faculty members at the Wentworth Institute of Technology to either build an edit-a-thon into one or more Spring 2025 courses, or to incentivize participation in the edit-a-thon, or to advertise the edit-a-thon to their students directly. 2.2 Train students who attend the edit-a-thon to make edits to Wikipedia and provide them with article choices to work on. 3.3 Spotlight the voices and experiences of women students in STEM via lightning talks throughout the edit-a-thon Evidence: Of 57 survey respondents from a 2024 edit-a-thon with a similar theme, 48 agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I now feel more engaged in addressing gender bias in STEM.” The remainder responded “Neutral.” (Students participated in this edit-a-thon: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wentworth_Institute_of_Technology/WITipedia_Spring_2024. Due to technical issues, some edited under guest accounts) (3) Foster a community of equity-minded Wikipedia editors at the Wentworth Institute of Technology Activities: 3.1 Run a competition among students to design the logo for our edit-a-thon which will be printed on stickers handed out at the event. 3.2 Train and engage students in a social edit-a-thon with background music and food. 3.3 Engage the university community with an alumna keynote speaker who is a STEM professional Evidence: Of 57 survey respondents from a 2024 edit-a-thon with a similar theme, 34 agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am now more likely to edit Wikipedia than I was before today,” with 16 responding “neutral” and 7 responding with disagree or strongly disagree. (Students participated in this edit-a-thon: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wentworth_Institute_of_Technology/WITipedia_Spring_2024. Due to technical issues, some edited under guest accounts)
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
September 2024: Advertise the WITipedia logo / sticker design competition to students. This will be done through the School of Architecture and Design, by email, and with flyers posted throughout campus. This will engage students in a part of the University that were not directly advertised to in our 2024 event.
October 2024: Conclude the WITipedia logo / sticker design competition. The event team will judge contributions and select a winner. The winner will be publicized through our institution’s internal newsletter, The W, which will serve as early advertising for the main edit-a-thon event.
November 2024: Spring 2025 course schedules will be posted at this point. I will contact faculty inviting them to participate in the edit-a-thon. This will include explaining the event and suggesting different levels of involvement (bringing students to the event, incentivizing participation, advertising the event). Faculty participation will be particularly effective in bringing in students to participate in the event. In our 2024 event, more than 90% of participants were enrolled in at least one class with faculty incentivizing their attendance or advertising the event to them (129 out of 141).
At this time I will also reserve the event space: the Zorica Pantic Commons of our university’s Center for Engineering, Innovation, and Sciences. There is not a fee for reserving university space for such an event.
December 2024: I will assemble a list of articles about women in STEM which are stub or start class (totaling 400 so as to double the target number of participants and provide options for students to pursue their interests).
January 2025: Course participation in the event will be finalized and the approximate number of participants joining through different courses at different times will be known, allowing for finalization of the edit-a-thon schedule and staffing needs.
Stickers for the event with the winning logo from the competition in the Fall will be ordered.
I will contact potential keynote and student speakers for the event. The keynote speaker will be chosen from university alumnae who are STEM professionals. I will work with our alumni affairs team to identify prospective keynote speakers. Student speakers will be nominated by participating faculty and will be female-identifying or gender-minority-identifying students studying STEM disciplines. Nominations of first-generation and BIPOC students will be encouraged.
I will contact our institution’s facilities management team to go over the event set-up, using our 2024 event as a blueprint. I will also contact our event support team to go over our technical needs for the event, which will include microphones and licensed streaming instrumental music during editing.
February 2025: I will reach out to students with editing experience about volunteering day-of for the event to staff the event’s sign-in desk and to provide editing assistance to participants. Faculty that have built the edit-a-thon into their syllabus will communicate with our team and the institution’s library to schedule a research training.
Catering orders for the event will be placed.
Also during this time, the edit-a-thon will be advertised by flyers throughout the campus and in our university’s newsletter, The W.
March 2025: I will finalize the event presentation slides and script. This will include: 1) The event start slides. These orient participants to Wikipedia, including its Five Pillar, and also motivate our focus on articles about women in STEM 2) Introductory slide for our keynote speaker 3) A crash course in editing achieved through a live demonstration of pre-planned edits to a biography article about a woman in STEM. Several edits will be planned for use throughout the day highlighting: how to make an edit, how to cite a source, how to create links, and how to create or edit an infobox. 4) Introductory slides for student lightning talk speakers 5) Event wrap-up slides, including presentation of the event dashboard with partial accounting of the event’s contributions 6) Slides for projection during the bulk of the event which will rotate through resources that are available, tips for editing, and an event welcome
Participating faculty and student volunteers who are new or relatively new to editing will have the opportunity to join one of two training events in the week leading up to the edit-a-thon. I will ensure that they have Wikipedia accounts, provide written resources for troubleshooting common account and editing issues (e.g. how to help participants switch to the visual editor), and walk them through common edit types.
Pre-surveys for student participants will be administered by participating faculty.
The main event of this proposal is an edit-a-thon during women’s history month, March. Proposed event date: March 12, 2025 Draft schedule:* 8am: Setup begins 10am: Event start Keynote speaker Coffee and Tea Service 10:30am: Crash Course in Editing presentation 11:30am: Two student lightning talks 12:00pm: Pizza 1:00pm: Crash Course in Editing presentation 1:30pm: Coffee and Tea Service 2:00pm: Two student lightning talks 3:00pm: Crash Course in Editing presentation 4:45pm: Event wrap-up, summary of the day’s contributions 5:00pm: Event teardown (removal of tables, chairs, etc.)
- The event will run so as to incorporate many students throughout the day. The draft plan is from 10am to 5pm, with editing “crash course” presentations timed with the start of typical class periods.
Day-of support will be provided by participating faculty, student volunteers, university library staff, staff from the university’s Teaching and Learning Collaborative, and staff from the School of Sciences and Humanities Dean’s office.
Post-surveys will be administered by participating faculty
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.
Professor Andrew Seredinski (Wikimedia username: Ceribrit), Assistant Professor, School of Sciences and Humanities (volunteer on project). Role: I will lead the project, co-organizing the event, running the event’s logo contest, recruiting speakers, running the event the day-of and providing editing and technical support.
Professor Allison Lange, Associate Professor, School of Sciences and Humanities (volunteer on project). Role: Professor Lange is a historian who specializes in what images tell us about the intersection of gender and power in US history. She will be bringing students to the event and providing expertise on finding images for articles about women in STEM.
Professor Faith Litchock-Morellato, Assistant Professor, School of Sciences and Humanities (volunteer on project). Role: Professor Litchock-Morellato teaches English composition and in Spring of 2024 ran a WikiEdu course that dovetailed with our Edit-a-thon. She will be incentivizing students to participant in the event and supporting participants’ research, writing, and editing.
Kelsey Diemand Irvine, Associate Director for Research & Collections, Douglas D. Schumann Library and Learning Commons (volunteer on project). Role: Kelsey is a librarian who will organize and provide research support and training for participants.
Rachel Cristoforo, Operations Manager, School of Sciences and Humanities (volunteer on project). Role: Rachel will support the event by organizing its advertising and day-of staffing.
Josh Luckens, Instructional Designer, Teaching & Learning Collaborative (volunteer on project). Role: Josh will co-create the pre/post assessment provided to participants to assess the project. Josh will also provide day-of editing support at the event.
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
The target participants in this project are students, and to a lesser extent faculty, staff, and other community members, at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The event will be run through an outreach dashboard.
In March, 2024 with a one-time internal grant I organized the SOSH Women in STEM Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon (https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wentworth_Institute_of_Technology/SoSH_Women_in_STEM_Wikipedia_Edit-a-thon) at our institution and engaged 140-150 members of the community, and I plan to expand on this engagement strategy. I partnered with faculty from across the university, who in turn incorporated the edit-a-thon into their curricula, offered other incentives for participation, or advertised the event to their classes. Of 141 student attendees, 129 were enrolled in at least one of 11 participating class sections, spread across 8 faculty members in fields from English to Physics and at levels from introductory to capstone courses. One of the courses we intersected with became part of a semester-long WikiEdu course. Due to a few technical issues, not all edits/editors were captured in the 2024 dashboard.
The partnership with faculty will allow us to engage participants ahead of time with orientation to editing with the help of our library staff (there will also be day-of editing orientation and help), as well as provide a pre- and post-survey to measure the event’s impact. Faculty will communicate with their students in class and through our learning management system, D2L Brightspace. Of particular interest in our survey will be student Likert-scale rankings of: 1) How likely they are to edit Wikipedia (before and after participation) 2) How engaged they feel in addressing gender bias in STEM (before and after participation) 3) Whether they feel they learned something about a woman in STEM 4) Whether they feel they learned something about a STEM topic, and 5) How prepared they felt to make edits.
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
I discussed the project with the Dean of the School of Sciences and Humanities at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, who was involved in the 2024 iteration of this event that we are building on. The dean’s office has agreed to support the event with staffing.
I formally notified my institution of this proposal with a Project Notification Form, providing our Provost’s Office with the project motivation, background, draft schedule, budget, and budget justification. I received support from the Provost’s Office and an agreement from my institution to serve as a fiscal sponsor for the grant.
I continue to work with the seven other faculty members who supported the 2024 incarnation of the event and will request their repeated participation and advertise the event to other faculty on campus, especially in our School of Engineering. Two of these faculty are included in the team under question 8.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Content Gender gap
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Gender and diversity
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Gender Identity
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Provide for Safety and Inclusion
Learning and metrics
edit- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
Learning questions: 1. To what extent will participation in editing Wikipedia biographies lead students to identify as engaging in addressing gender bias in STEM? 2. What subject-matter learning gains will students report after editing the biographies of STEM professionals on Wikipedia? 3. How can a Wikipedia edit-a-thon act as a cross-curricular meeting point for courses across a university?
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 200 | These participants will be throughout a proposed 7-hour event and will not be all concurrent. |
| Number of editors | 200 | Newly registered users: 150 |
| Number of organizers | 25 | This includes:
10 faculty partners 3 non-faculty members of the team described above 5 staff volunteers from WIT's academic affairs divisions to assist with research and editing support the day of the edit-a-thon 7 student volunteers to assist with editing support the day of the edit-a-thon |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 150 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 10 |
| Wikidata | |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
Students working with team member Professor Allison Lange will work on uploading images to Wikimedia commons relevant to the life and work of women in STEM
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
No
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
We will use a Programs & Events Dashboard for each target metric other than number of organizers, which we will tally manually. Separately, we will conduct a pre- and post-survey of student participants.
Financial proposal
edit- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
- 22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)
1935 USD
- 22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.
1935 USD
- We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
Endorsements and Feedback
editPlease add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.
Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:
- Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
- Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
- Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
- Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
- Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).