Grants:Project/Rapid/WMPL/Video as Knowledge Delivery Mechanism (Art Education)
Applications are not required to be in English. Please complete the application in your preferred language.
Project Goal edit
What will be the outputs of your project and how will those outputs contribute to advancing a specific Movement Strategy Initiative
- What specific Movement Strategy Initiative does your project focus on and why? Please select one of the initiatives described here
- Goal 8 Identify Topics for Impact, Subgoal 37 Bridging Content Gaps – by producing a comprehensive set of easy to understand educational videos covering the subject of art education (in accordance with Polish curriculum standards) we will make knowledge of the subject accessible to a wider audience, in particular primary school students, who have trouble understanding current versions of Wikipedia pages in this topical area
- Goal 9 Innovate in Free Knowledge Subgoal 41 Continuous experimentation, technology, and partnerships for content, formats, and devices – we will create and test a model for content-centered collaboration between Wikipedians and an outside partner, enabling us to co-create multimedia content to enrich written text
Project Background edit
- When do you intend to begin this project and when will it be completed?
- Where will your project activities be happening?
This project will take place entirely on-line, with coordination and collaboration happening via Zoom, community review happening on Wikipedia, and results being published to YouTube, Wikimedia Commons, and the website pi-stacja.tv (an established source of educational video materials in Poland).
For YouTube publication we will use the YouTube channel Pi-Stacja, owned and operated by Katalyst Education Foundation, the co-applicant of this grant (see below).
- Are you collaborating with other communities or affiliates on this project? Please provide details of how partners intend to work together to achieve the project goal.
This project is a collaboration between Wikimedia Poland and Katalyst Educational Foundation, a Polish educational non-profit (described in detail below).
We plan to share both the process (i.e. building a collaborative relationship between Wikipedians and a paid video production team) and the results (videos) with other affiliates and Wikimedia communities around the world.
For this reason, we will endeavor to make our product as language independent as possible, And where that is not possible – we will provide raw files to enable easy translation and modification.
About the partner: Katalyst Education Foundation
The Katalyst Education Foundation - a non-profit social initiative incubator that supports the use of digital resources among K-12 students in Poland. Katalyst Education supports UNDP Sustainable Development Goal number 4: Quality Education. The Goal aims at ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities.
Pi-stacja is an Open Education Resource created by the Katalyst Education Foundation - a constantly growing collection of short educational videos that are 100 % aligned with the Polish core curriculum.
Pi-stacja has already achieved over 30 million views. It has saved families in Poland more than 69 million PLN [16.8 million USD] - the cost equivalent of tutoring services.
- What specific challenge will your project be aiming to solve? And what opportunities do you plan to take advantage of to solve the problem?
This project addresses three interconnected challenges facing the Polish education system and the Wikimedia movement: the huge disparity in access to knowledge between students from affluent and economically disadvantaged families, the low accessibility of our Wikipedia content to our youngest readers (children ages _9_ to 13), due to its presentation in text form, rather than through increasingly more popular video forms, and the struggle of combining highly-editable and rapidly evolving text-based content with more stable and much harder to change video-based content, while maintaining a feeling of collaborative creation and interconnectedness between the text and the video.
(1) Lowering the impact of economic standing on education via high quality video aids
A primary advantage of students from affluent families compared to the economically disadvantaged students is access to tutors. Pi-stacja levels the playing field for less affluent kids. A cost-effective way to overcome education inequality.
High-quality, free video lessons and supplemental educational materials for K-12 school kids and teachers that can be used anytime, anywhere. Created and verified by teachers. Always free, and always open (under Creative Commons licenses). Can be used online or downloaded. No need to register to use.
We will provide kids and teachers with high-quality, free video lessons and supplemental educational materials that can be used anytime, anywhere. Created and verified by teachers and in alignment with the school curriculum. Always free, and always open (under Creative Commons licenses). Pi-stacja is a constantly growing collection of short educational videos that follow the core curriculum of general education. On our website, and on our YouTube channels, we already have over 800 several-minute-long videos in which our tutors explain various topics: from natural numbers to power multiplication, from electrolytes to Newton's laws.
We have published videos for the full curriculum for math, as well as chemistry and physics lessons for grades 7-8. This grant will expand the
Teachers can show Pi-stacja videos in class or ask their students to repeat the material at home. From here, it is only one small step to a “flipped classroom,” a teaching method in which students learn some material at home, and lesson time is devoted to clarifying doubts and for exercises. Students can use Pi-stacja if they need someone to explain the topic in a different way than in their classes, or if they prefer to learn from videos rather than from notes or textbooks. Video lessons can also support their routine if they are in a system of individual learning. Parents, on the other hand, can use our films if they want to help with their kids’ homework or if they are teaching their children themselves in a home education program.
- Increasing accessibility by providing various forms of knowledge consumption: We believe that multimedia formats are better suited to conveying knowledge in general, but especially when the recipient is a young person. The dry, often academic style of Wikipedia articles prevents complete understanding of the concepts being described. Our hope is that by introducing a multimedia element (and through the process described in (3) below, we will encourage the community to shape the video and reshape the text content, making the entire segment of knowledge more accessible.
- Creating a process for combining editable and non-editable content in a collaborative way: In order to stay true to the collaborative nature of Wikipedia, we need to provide wikipedians a way to co-shape the videos as they are developed. This will take the shape of an information campaign on-wiki and a script review process.
- Does this project aim to apply one of the examples shared in the call for grants and if so which one?
- No.
Project Activities edit
- What specific activities will be carried out during this project? Please describe the specific activities that will be carried out during this project.
As part of this project, we will:
- create and promote a series of 70 educational videos covering the Art Education curriculum points for grades 4–7 of the Polish primary schools, using a tested format employed successfully by Katalyst Foundation in producing similar educational content in other topics (e.g. physics, mathematics), to be published on YouTube and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license,
- add all or some of these videos to relevant articles on the Polish Wikipedia in collaboration with the community,
animate the community and encourage editors to improve the contents of these pages, in particular by making the contents more accessible and easy to understand by our youngest readers,
- conduct qualitative and quantitative A/B-type research, in order to compare knowledge retention when presented with video and text content, in a real Wikipedia environement – with the intent to prove a meaningful improvement in the delivery of free knowledge in a multimedia format
- How do you intend to keep communities updated on the progress and outcomes of the project? Please add the names or usernames of these individuals responsible for updating the community
We intend to invite members of the Wikipedia community (especially those already contributing in the areas of art education and art history) to serve as collaborators and stakeholders for the duration of the project.
We plan to:
- Invite the community to review and/or co-create scripts for the 70 videos, by posting the scripts on Wikipedia and setting up a feedback process,
- hold periodic review meetings with the community to gather feedback about the project as a whole and energize their editing activity alongside our video production efforts.
- Who will be responsible for delivering on this project and what are their roles and responsibilities?
- Klara Sielicka-Baryłka, Education Specialist, Wikimedia Poland; username: Klara Sielicka-Baryłka (WMPL)
- Anna Stokowska, Team Lead and Project Manager, Katalyst Education
- Andrzej Pieńkowski, Manager of Market Research and Product Development, Katalyst Education
Additional information edit
- If your activities include community discussions, what is your plan for ensuring that the conversations are productive? Provide a link to a Friendly Space Policy or UCoC that will be implemented to support these discussions.
- We will engage the community of the Polish Wikipedia in a participatory process, especially at the stage of writing scripts for the videos to be produced. We envision this process as taking part both on-wiki and in the form of on-line moderated teleconferences with volunteers.
- Friendly space policy for live and on-line meetings (in Polish, based on WMF policy): https://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Zasady_bezpiecznej_przestrzeni
- If your activities include the use of paid online tools, please describe what tools these are and how you intend to use them.
- N/A
- Do your activities include the translation of materials, and if so, in what languages will the translation be done? Please include details of those responsible for making the translations.
- We intend to make the produced materials as translatable as possible, and plan to openly share raw files and materials, which should help with translation and localization.
- Some limitations in localization may be possible due to the idiosyncrasies of the Polish school curriculum.
- We intend to provide, at a minimum, a translation in the form of subtitles in English and Ukrainian.
- Are there any other details you would like to share? Consider providing rationale, research or community discussion outputs, and any other similar information, that will give more context on your proposed project.
We believe this video production work is a crucial – and very late – step towards moving how we actually deliver (not just gather and curate) free knowledge to the minds of our youngest users. Wikipedia’s mission requires us as a movement to adopt more efficient formats for our content. And we are very much late to the game here. Our projects will, aside from creating content, help move us towards resolving burning problems both Local (to Poland) and Global (to the Wikimedia movement), described below.
(Local) Importance for Polish educational system in the context of the war in Ukraine: with over 1.5 million Ukrainian speakers now residing in Poland (in transit or permanently for the foreseeable future) due to running away from the war in Ukraine, it is imperative that the Polish educational system provide at least basic education. We plan to provide volunteer-based Ukrainian subtitles for the produced materials. This will help reduce the burden on educators and facilitate the integration of refugee children with their Polish counterparts.
(Global) Post-publication Research: Towards the end of the project, we will conduct research (qualitative and quantitative) on the effectiveness of conveying information in the form of videos as compared to text. Our belief is that this will conclusively show the power of multimedia presentation in Wikipedia. We wish to present the results broadly in order to encourage other communities and affiliates to invest in non-text information delivery.
(Global) Community Consensus Process Description: Along with the results of our research, we will describe and publish a “how to” guide on our approach to generating community consensus and creating content in technically non-collaborative (or hard-to-collaborate) formats like video using a collaborative process. We believe this will help other affiliates and the WMF better collaborate with communities and co-shape key thematic segments of content to increase the efficiency of Wikimedia as a free knowledge delivery platform. In this work, we will draw on Wikimedia Poland’s experience in building working groups, facilitating communication and generating consensus (e.g. quick adoption of Growth Features beta on plwiki).
Outcomes edit
After your activities are complete, we would like to understand the draft implementation plan for your community. You will be required to prepare a document detailing this plan around a movement strategy initiative. This report can be prepared through Meta-wiki using the Share your results button on this page. The report can be prepared in your language, and is not required to be written in English.
In this report, you will be asked to:
- Provide a link to the draft implementation plan document or Wikimedia page
- Describe what activities supported the development of the plan
- Describe how and where you have communicated your plan to relevant communities.
- Report on how your funding was spent
Your draft implementation plan document should address the following questions clearly:
- What movement strategy initiative or goal are you addressing?
- What activities will you be doing to address that initiative?
- What do you expect will happen as a result of your activities? How do those outcomes address the movement strategy initiative?
- How will you measure or evaluate your activities? What tools or methods will you use to evaluate your activities?
To create a draft implementation plan, we recommend the use of a logic model, which will help you and your team think about goals, activities, outcomes, and other factors in an organized way. Please refer the following resources to develop a logic model:
- Overview of logic models on Meta-wiki
- Example logic models for reference for other movement activities (such as partnerships and edit-a-thons)
- Blank logic model template on Google Drive
Please confirm below that you will be able to prepare a draft implementation plan document by the end of your grant:
- We confirm that we intend to create a draft implementation plan.
Optionally, you are welcome to include other information you'd like to share around participation and representation in your activities. Please include any additional outcomes you would like to report on below:
- We plan to reach out to Ukrainian speakers and translators to channel their need to provide meaningful help to refugees
- We will leverage our existing wide set of connections and collaborations with Polish schools and educators from rural and urban regions, built in 2020 and 2021 by our staff
- We will share progress with members of the larger international Wikimedia Education community, with the hope to inspire similar work in the future
Budget edit
How you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!
- Link to budget: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zXBpgy3UtE5T3piodWuauuAnWQa6D9dA9tI9bjCvfUA/edit#gid=0
TOTAL AMOUNT REQUESTED USD: 58 200 USD
Please note that:
- this constitutes 50% of the costs of the work detailed in this grant request,
- we are open to working within the strategic grants process as needed, including breaking this request up into smaller, partial grants to be processed separately.
Completing your application edit
Once you have completed the application, please do the following:
- Change the application status from
status=drafttostatus=proposedin the {{Probox}} template. - Contact strategy2030
wikimedia.org to confirm your submission, as well as to request any support around your application.
Endorsements edit
An endorsement from community members (especially from outside your community) will be part of the considerations when reviewing your application. Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!