Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wiki Education Annual Plan Grant/Yearly Report (2022)

Yearly Learning Report (Year 1 - 2022)

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 2023-01-15T00:00:00Z

Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund

Report type: Yearly Learning Report (for multi-year fund recipients) , reporting year: 2022

Application Yearly Report (2023)

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General information edit

This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving multi-year Wikimedia Community Funds to report on their yearly results.

  • Name of Organization: Wiki Education Foundation
  • Title of Proposal: Wiki Education Annual Plan Grant

Part 1 Understanding your work edit

1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.

In 2022, we continued our efforts to grow our two main programs, the Wikipedia Student Program and the Wiki Scholars & Scientists Program. In the Wikipedia Student Program, we supported a total of 726 courses, an increase from the 694 of the prior year. The additional 32 courses were a result of our renewed commitment to growth, especially in recruiting courses from diverse institutions (more on this later). In the Wiki Scholars & Scientists Program, we focused our growth on our Wikidata courses, increasing the number we hosted from 8 to 10. We also experimented with a very successful advanced Wikidata course this year, working with past course participants to build out their Wikidata projects. In honor of Wikidata’s 10th birthday, we hosted a popular Wikidata Speaker Series. This series brought 14 speakers from throughout the Wikidata community, many of whom joined through our courses, to speak about how they and their organizations are using Wikidata to help address institutional challenges. The speaker series brought 139 unique attendees, many of whom attended multiple sessions.

We also began work on community-focused development projects for the Programs & Events Dashboard. Working with Outreachy intern Ivana Novaković-Leković, we finished a major project: better Wikidata statistics. Now, the Dashboard shares Wikidata details about merges, aliases, labels, claims, and more. And thanks to Outreachy intern Vaidehi Atpadkar, we launched additional namespace-specific tracking for the Dashboard. Program organizers sometimes run events where it makes sense to count contributions to other namespaces — especially non-Mainspace content spaces, like the Cookbook namespace on Wikibooks. Wrapping up these two technical projects this year, both of which emerged as top requests in our user survey, addresses key global community technical needs.

2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?

In 2022, we focused our recruitment efforts for the Wikipedia Student Program on targeting participants who would help address Wikipedia’s knowledge equity. We added a half-time staff member, our Equity Outreach Coordinator, whose role it is to connect with professors at diverse institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), as well as faculty who teach in subject areas relevant to helping fill English Wikipedia’s knowledge equity gaps. Thanks to this dedicated work, we added more than 300 new contacts at HBCUs, HSIs, and TCUs to our Salesforce database, far exceeding our goal of 50. As it usually takes between 6 and 12 months from first contact with people until they are ready to teach with Wikipedia, we expect to see the results of this outreach work more in 2023.

In order to foster these relationships, our Equity Outreach Coordinator took a multi-faceted approach. First, he approached people already in our network who taught at diverse institutions, and asked for connections within their community. Second, he initiated cold outreach to people he thought might be interested via phone or email. Third, he attended the 2022 National Women’s Studies Association Conference, an opportunity to connect with instructors teaching in subject areas that are often underrepresented on Wikipedia. Together, these approaches enabled us to start growing our participation in the Wikipedia Student Program in ways that help advance knowledge equity on Wikipedia. Our initial findings suggest conference attendance is less effective than the peer connections and cold outreach methodology; we remain committed to exploring these and other outreach mechanisms in 2023 to continue our learnings in this area.

3. Would you say that your project had any innovations? Are there things that you did very differently than you have seen them done by others?

One of the key roles we have on staff to support our Wikipedia Student Program is the Wikipedia Expert role. A Wikipedia Expert is assigned to each course participating in the program, and they're responsible for answering students' questions about Wikipedia, monitoring the work students are doing on wiki using tools and alerts from the Dashboard, and addressing concerns raised by community members related to student editors in a timely fashion. In 2022, we did something we've never done before: hired a non-Wikipedian as a Wikipedia Expert.

It seems counterintuitive to not hire an experienced Wikipedian (given the word expert is in the title), but we sought out candidates for the role that had experience working with students and offering constructive feedback, especially with students from historically marginalized communities as part of our commitment to equity, without regard to their Wikipedia experience. We feel our organization is demonstrably good at training people to be Wikipedia editors, so we could train someone on the ins and outs of Wikipedia, as long as they had the key skill set. We're pleased to say this seems to be working so far: We hired Brianda Felix for the role in October, and she's already gotten a great start at learning Wikipedia while supporting students in the fall term. Brianda actually had some familiarity with Wikipedia; she was a student editor in our program several years ago while at the University of California, Los Angeles. She jumped right in, learning Wikipedia's rules and answering students' questions. We're excited to see her grow into the role even more in 2023.

4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.

Our work is important to both academic and Wikimedia communities.

For academic communities, we regularly post to our blog, including guest posts from program participants. We also participate in some academic conferences, including (this year) Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Open Education, the Cultural Studies Association, and the International Society for Technology in Education. Our Senior Wikipedia Expert published a book chapter, “Decolonizing Wikipedia,” in Using Open Educational Resources to Promote Social Justice, and our Chief Programs Officer co-authored a book chapter with three other education program leaders worldwide, “The Wikipedia Education Program as OEP: Global stories,” in the forthcoming book Open Educational Resources in Higher Education: A Global Perspective.

We engage on-wiki with the English Wikipedia and Wikidata communities, responding to questions and comments about our program regularly. We also engage in conferences; this year, Wiki Education staff presented at Wikimania and WikiConference North America and participated in the Wikimedia Summit.

We distribute a periodic Wikidata newsletter, in which we share recent news and academic articles about Wikidata, highlight tools, and tell stories about how our course alumni are discovering Wikidata’s potential in their professional lives. More than 6,000 people subscribe, including Wikidatans, Wikipedians, and alumni from our Wiki Scholars & Scientists Program.

Engaging with the global education community is also important, which crosses both academic and Wikimedia communities. This year, our Chief Programs Officer delivered virtual keynote talks at education events in both Australia and the Philippines, participated on the board of the Wikipedia & Education User Group, and, through the user group’s mentorship program, mentored a newer education program leader in Nigeria. Sharing our experiences is an important part of our work.

5. Documentation of your impact. Please use the two spaces below to share files and links that help tell your story and impact. This can be documentation that shows your results through testimonies, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, etc.) social media posts, dashboards, etc.

  • Upload Documents and Files
  • Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/campaigns/spring_2022/programs

https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/campaigns/summer_2022/programs https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/campaigns/fall_2022/programs https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/campaigns/wikipedia_scholars__scientists_2022/programs https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/campaigns/wikidata_scholars__scientists_2022/programs https://wikiedu.org/blog/

6. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups Strongly agree
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community Agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives Strongly agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors
F. Encourage the retention of organizers Neither agree nor disagree
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement. Strongly agree

7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?

You can peruse our blog tag “equity” https://wikiedu.org/blog/category/equity/ for more stories — 18 posts in 2022 — from our work related to participants and content that contribute to knowledge equity.

In our Wiki Scholars & Scientists Program, we have more oversight about which participants we accept into the program, as most Wikipedia training courses receive more applicants than seats in the course. We prioritize the opportunity to include participants who will diversify English Wikipedia’s editor base, recognizing the unique role we play in providing a safe space for academics to join the community. In 2022, of the 131 participants who reported their ethnicity, 11.5% were Asian/Pacific Islander, compared to 8.8% Asian or Asian American among US editors, as reported in the 2021 Community Insights Report; 11.5% were Black or African American, compared to .5% among US editors; 6.1% were Hispanic/Latinx, compared to 5.2% among US editors; 62.6% were white, compared to 89% US editors; and 8.4% identified either as “Other” or by designating multiple ethnicities.

Part 2: Your main learning edit

8. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What did you learn about these areas during this period?

In our proposal, we outlined two questions:
  • What is the most effective recruitment mechanism to bring in additional instructors from diverse institutions?
  • Are the technical solutions we create for the Programs & Events Dashboard successful at meeting the needs of movement organizers?

We committed to laying the groundwork to answer these questions in 2022. We have some initial indicators for both questions. First, we’ve been able to begin outreach to diverse institutions. Already, we’re finding conferences are not particularly effective at recruiting new participants. Webinars, however, do seem to be particularly impactful. As we continue engaging with this work in 2023, we will seek more learnings.

Initial feedback from movement organizers has been overwhelmingly positive about our new features for the Programs & Events Dashboard. From our Dashboard user survey, we’ve identified a set of additional features and usability improvements that we will continue working on. From the combination of the survey and series of office hours, we’ve also prioritized development of video-based tutorial content for teaching organizers how to use the Dashboard effectively for common use cases.

9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?

Prior to the pandemic, we’d tried webinars and Zoom-based office hours as a way to connect with prospective and current instructors in our Wikipedia Student Program. But neither had been particularly successful; most instructors at that time found Zoom or video-based conferencing daunting. However, we were pleasantly surprised to find that has changed since the pandemic.

In 2022, we launched a series of webinars on teaching with Wikipedia; these proved so popular (with an average of 100 new instructors joining our list from each event) and such an excellent recruitment mechanism that we are doing them nearly monthly now, and we’re hosting weekly office hours. We think that because instructors all learned to teach over Zoom during the pandemic, they’re much more comfortable with the technology now, and in many cases even prefer it to in-person engagement. In fact, in a handful of in-person workshops we did with virtual components, more people joined virtually than in person. This means we are shifting our focus of recruitment from expensive in-person campus visits requiring travel to virtual events.

10. How do you hope to use this learning? For instance, do you have any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future?

Based on our learnings about recruitment, we are significantly cutting back our in-person outreach efforts. In particular, we are not planning to attend academic conferences unless we have an opportunity to also engage in a workshop, speaking opportunity, or other high-profile event on the conference schedule. We will focus our efforts instead on Zoom and other video-based virtual workshops.

With the enthusiasm for and vigorous usage of the Programs & Events Dashboard's improved Wikidata capabilities, we plan to focus more development effort on further Wikidata-related features. In response to the significantly increased database usage that came with this Wikidata surge, we've also prioritized medium-term plans to update the Dashboard's statistics architecture to eliminate the need to permanently store revision data.

11. If you were sitting with a friend to tell them one thing about your work during this fund, what would it be (think of inspiring or fascinating moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes, or anything that feels important to you)?

External validation is key for bringing on board individuals and institutions from outside the Wikimedia movement. In 2022, several journal articles highlighted outcomes that spoke to why our programs are so meaningful:

12. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).

  • Upload Documents and Files
  • Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
Our training materials are all available on the Dashboard:

https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/training

And a list of our resources are available here: https://wikiedu.org/for-instructors/

Part 3: Metrics for Year 1 edit

13a. Open and additional metrics data

Open Metrics
Open Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Words Added Words added to the article namespace of Wikipedia in 2022. 9500000 N/A We exceeded our goal of 9.5 million words added to Wikipedia in 2022. Wiki Education Dashboard
Statements improved Statements improved on Wikidata in 2022. 15000 15019 We met our goal of 15,000 statements improved on Wikidata in 2022. Wiki Education Dashboard
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 N/A N/A N/A
Additional Metrics
Additional Metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities Number of courses taught by returning instructors in the Wikipedia Student Program in 2022. 500 497 We made it 99.4% of the way to our goal of 500 courses taught by returning instructors in the Wikipedia Student Program in 2022; we feel like we met the spirit of this goal even if we didn't quite nudge three additional instructors to teach again. Wiki Education's Salesforce instance
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability Number of existing strategic partners actively engaged in supporting our work in 2022. 10 10 We met our goal of 10 strategic partners actively engaged in supporting our work in 2022. Director of Partnerships' list of active partners, based on Wiki Education Dashboard and Salesforce records
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees Number of instructors from diverse institutions (HBCUs, HSIs) added to our CRM (Salesforce) in 2022, to be cultivated to teach with Wikipedia in the future. 50 368 We significantly exceeded our goal of 50 instructors from diverse institutions (HBCUs, HSIs) added to our CRM (Salesforce) in 2022, to be cultivated to teach with Wikipedia in the future, as our Equity Outreach Coordinator focused on this work in the second half of the year. Wiki Education's Salesforce instance
Number of people reached through social media publications N/A N/A N/A
Number of activities developed N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Number of volunteer hours N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

13b. Additional core metrics data.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Number of participants Number of editors in Wikipedia Student Program and Scholars & Scientists Program, plus instructors in the Student Program, in 2022. 12750 13829 We exceeded our goal of 12,750 editors in Wikipedia Student Program and Scholars & Scientists Program, plus instructors in the Student Program, in 2022. Wiki Education Dashboard, Wiki Education's Salesforce instance
Number of editors Number of editors in Wikipedia Student Program and Scholars & Scientists Program, in 2022. 12500 13252 We exceeded our goal of 12,500 editors in Wikipedia Student Program and Scholars & Scientists Program in 2022. Wiki Education Dashboard
Number of organizers n/a; our programs are run by staff. N/A
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target Results Comments Methodology
Wikipedia Number of articles improved in 2022. 12000 12632 We exceeded our goal of 12,000 Wikipedia articles improved in 2022. Wiki Education Dashboard
Wikidata Number of items improved in 2022. 5000 5991 We exceeded our goal of 5,000 Wikidata items improved in 2022. Wiki Education Dashboard
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 N/A N/A N/A

14. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?

No

15. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future.

N/A

16. Use this space to link or upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., dashboards, surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, etc).

  • Upload Documents and Files
  • Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
See prior Dashboard links.

Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships edit

17. Organizational Capacity

Organizational capacity dimension
A. Financial capacity and management This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
B. Conflict management or transformation This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values) This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
D. Partnership building This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
E. Strategic planning This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
F. Program design, implementation, and management This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
H. Recruiting new contributors (volunteer) This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
I. Support and growth path for different types of contributors (volunteers) This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
J. Governance This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
K. Communications, marketing, and social media This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
M. On-wiki technical skills This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
N. Accessing and using data This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
O. Evaluating and learning from our work This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high
P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders
Supporting others in the movement
Having measurable impact on the Wikimedia movement’s mission to provide readers with access to knowledge

17a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Other

17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Lack of financial resources

18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?

In prior grant cycles, we invested money in growing our organizational capacity, especially by hiring staff with expertise in these areas. We’re currently at a point where our organizational capacity cannot grow further without additional funding.

19. Partnerships over the funding period.

Over the fund period...
A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame) Strongly agree
B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups Strongly agree
C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups Strongly agree

19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Permanent staff outreach, Staff hired through the fund, Partners proactive interest

19b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.

Lack of institutional support from the Wikimedia Foundation, Other

20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?

Our partnerships work has been ongoing for many years; one of our largest challenges has been overlap and confusion around WMF’s own work. We hope the ongoing roles and responsibilities discussion from Movement Strategy will help resolve these issues. When we do find connections with other organizations, we find these are our two major strategies:
  • Leading with potential shared values is the best way to have people interested.
  • Talk about how the partnership will help meet that organization’s strategic goals, not how it will help meet Wikipedia's goals. This approach is necessary for building and maintaining a reciprocal partnership, which is why Wiki Education has partnered with some institutions for nearly 10 years.

Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration edit

21. What would it mean for your organization to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement?

We already feel like we have a strong sense of belonging in this movement. As the organization that brings in 19% of all the new active editors on the English Wikipedia, we feel like we play a large and important role, both in the region and in the global community.

Participation in conferences, including the Wikimedia Summit, WikiConference North America, and Wikimania are also helpful in feeling a sense of belonging. Our Wikidata Speaker Series, mentioned above, also enabled us to feel connected to the Wikidata community. We look forward to participating in more conferences in 2023.

22. How has your (for individual grantees) or your group/organization’s (for organizational grantees) sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

Stayed the same

23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

We feel a strong connection to the movement already; our work is grounded in Wikimedia projects, many of our staff contribute to the projects in a volunteer capacity in addition to our work roles, and many of us have deep connections to people throughout the global community. We regularly interact with English Wikipedia community members on talk pages, and feel strongly connected to and part of the English Wikipedia community, the Wikidata community, the Wikipedia & Education community, and the global community of people supporting free knowledge.

24. How has your group/organization’s sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?

Increased significantly

25. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.

While many of our staff members have deep connections to the Wikimedia movement that predate their involvement with Wiki Education, others are new to the movement. Over the past three months Brianda Felix has frequently spoken of her experience of “becoming a Wikipedian” and developing strong feelings about article quality. In the last three years Will Kent has gone from being a Wikidata novice to a leader in the linked data movement, and he has grown significantly in this role during the funding period.

We have encouraged staff and Board members to participate in our Wikidata training courses, and this experience has led several of them to become active contributors to Wikidata.

26. Are there other movements besides the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement that play a central role in your motivation to contribute to Wikimedia projects? (for example, Black Lives Matter, Feminist movement, Climate Justice, or other activism spaces) If so, please describe it below.

We strongly believe education is a human right, per the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We are inspired by movements like social justice, economic justice, climate justice, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, decolonization, and feminism in the subject matter areas we target for improvement on English Wikipedia.

Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration edit

We are interested in better supporting peer learning and collaboration in the movement.

27. Have you shared these results with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?

Yes

27a. Please describe how you have already shared them. Would you like to do more sharing, and if so how?

Our Chief Programs Officer is also the chair of the Wikipedia & Education User Group, so she shares our learnings with the broader Wikipedia & Education community, as well as serving as a mentor. We regularly meet with others in the broader education movement. We shared at Wikimania and WikiConference North America, and we look forward to sharing at the EduWiki Conference 2023. We also publish blog posts and routinely propose book chapters and journal articles about our experiences. We look forward to continuing this on a regular basis in 2023.

28. How often do you currently share what you have learned with other Wikimedia Foundation grantees, and learn from them?

We do this regularly (at least once a month)

29. How does your organization currently share mutual learning with other grantees?

We regularly publish blog posts, participate in the Wikipedia & Education community, meet 1:1 with other organizations, participate in regional and global conferences, have supported other grantees in training them or their members how to edit Wikidata, and more.

In 2022, we supported 14 members of the Wikimedia Ghana User Group as we trained them how to contribute to Wikidata. We waived our typical contract fee in order to support a User Group looking for more experience on Wikidata so that they could deliver on a Wikidata project related to the Ghana Supreme Court. Additionally, we supported a member from the WikiDonne User Group in a Wikipedia training course with a waived tuition fee.

Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance edit

30. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

1670185

31. Local currency type

USD

32. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

  • Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
  • Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rZ0UwyfWBih7HkUF4hg6ts8iXfiOiTliWsR4I-AqxtM/edit?usp=sharing

33. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.

Timing for some projects shifted slightly, leading to decreases in both spending and revenue.

34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

N/A

34b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

N/A

34c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

N/A

35. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?

As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

36. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?

Yes

37. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.

Yes

38. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.