User:Ananth subray/Institutional Partnership

Institutional Partnership

Wikipedia Education Program

Wikipedia Education Program is one of the priority programs of CIS-A2K and is essential for the spreading and developing Wikimedia movement, as well as for the usage of Wikimedia projects in education. Since the launching of Wikipedia Education Program in 2013 due to activities of CIS-A2K, more than 1300 users were involved from different educational institutions such as Christ University, Andhra Loyola College, Solapur University, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada Vidyapeeth and Shivaji University. During July 2017 - July 2018 on the average 130 participants were active on Wikipedia and other projects with more than 13% retention rate.

This result is due to the wide range of activities organized in the scope of Wikipedia Education Program, including Wikiwork shops for teachers, workshops in different educational institutions, Edi-a-thons, WikiClubs etc.

Activites

A number of activities have been carried out during this grant period with Education programs which has given support to the movement to a great extent.

University/College name	City	Project	Blog /Other mentions
Christ (Deemed to be University)	Bengaluru	Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikidata and Commons	Report
Solapur University	Solapur	Wikipedia and Commons	Event page
Savitribai Phule Pune University	Pune	MediaWiki	Event page
Andhra Loyola College	Vijayawada	Wikipedia
Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada Vidyapeeth	Aurangabad	Wikipedia	Event page
Shivaji University	Kolhapur	Wikipedia	Event page
Ismailsaheb Mulla Law College	Satara	Wikipedia	Event page
MGM Trust's College of Journalism	Aurangabad	Wikipedia	Event page
Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences	Bhubaneswar	Wikipedia
DKTE Society's Textile & Engineering Institute	Ichalkaranji	Wikipedia	Event page
Dayanand College	Solapur	Wikipedia	Event page
Willingdon College	Sangli	Wikipedia	Event page

WEP orientation program in KISS University.
Nichole and A2K team met Christ college Vice Chancellor with Language department representative.
Training Teacher & Students

Social media campaign

In order to encourage students and highlight the articles created or edited by the students and to share best practices with the Wikimedia movement, an initiative has been taken on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

This initiative has been a great influence in promoting the work done by students to the communities also it helps the communities to understand the work done by the students as a part of the Education Programs activities. While the students have often failed to understand the importance of WEP editing as a contribution towards Open knowledge creation, amalgamating their efforts with Google doodle, tweets and Facebook posts regarding the importance of their articles has helped them to identify the potential and impact of their work.

On 25 June 2017 one of the student created an article on Max Born as a part of their internal assignment but on the 12-11-2017 it was selected as a Google Doodle

Time line

We follow the below timeline at Christ University to make our work easier and it will be helpful for us to increase the participation of the community members to take part in the WEP activities.

Odd Semester

Month	1st Semester	3rd Semester
June	Orientation on Wikidata, allotment of the Q numbers and students doing the activity	Orientation and Writing the text about women achievers in 20 lines ( work done in Sandbox)
July	Language correction and grading from the faculty	Language correction and grading from the faculty
August	-	-
September	Proofreading of text on Wikisource	Wikification of the article written earlier and adding image
October	Language correction and grading from the faculty	Language correction, Wikification, and grading from the faculty
November	Verification of the work done by the students from community members or CIS-A2K	Verification of the work done by the students from community members or CIS-A2K
December	Moving qualitative articles to the main namespace and updating it to community members	Moving qualitative articles to the main namespace and updating it to community members

Even Semester

Month	1st Semester	3rd Semester
November	Orientation and Writing the text on their user page	Orientation and Writing the text about their core subjects in 20 lines ( work done in Sandbox)
December	Language correction and grading from the faculty	Language correction and grading from the faculty
January	Internship activity for the students	Internship activity for the students
February	Wikification of their user page and adding an Image	Wikification of the article written earlier and adding image
March	Language correction, Wikification, and grading from the faculty	Language correction, Wikification, and grading from the faculty
April and May	Internship activity for the students	Internship activity for the students
June	Analysis of the work done by the students in this year and reporting to community members	Analysis of the work done by the students in this year and reporting to community members

Certificate course

A group of 37 students from Christ University have enrolled themselves for a Wikipedia certificate course for the academic year of 2018-19. As an active step towards enabling the awareness on content editing and contributing skills on Wikipedia in vernacular languages, Christ University, in collaboration with the CIS-A2K started the certificate this course for students in 2016. The Wikipedia certificate course is conducted after normal working hours for a total of 45 hours and carries 2 credits for the academic records of the University.

The objective of this certificate course is to enable students to acquire skills working along with Wikimedia projects which involve both technically equipping and holistic through its instruction. The course consists of three major components, the first step is an introduction to the concept of Wikipedia, which incorporates the history of online encyclopedias and the evolution of Wikipedia as one of the largest online encyclopedias available on the Internet. It also involves looking for resources for drafting articles on User sandbox and moving articles to the main space. The second step teaches students on how to edit and publish articles on Wikimedia projects, also adding tables and references, and also includes introduction to common templates, wikification of articles, legal aspects, policies, and guidelines, and how to identify vandalism and tackle it. The third step discusses Wikipedia’s notability and social significance, which lets the students understand Wikipedia in a critical and evaluative manner, where topics such as its ethics, existence as a social community, existence as a democratic project, How Wikipedia is used by students, teachers librarians and journalists.

Learning outcomes of the course

Create and edit wiki articles of good quality, with references, illustrations and templates etc,
Capacity to teach Wikipedia with peer groups, without any fear.
Discuss what is a reasonable source critical approach for using Wikipedia as a reference.
Outline the common criticism of Wikipedia's reliability and discuss how the reliability problems can be tackled.

The Wikipedia Certificate Course syllabus can be accessed here.

Wikipedia Education Program review

Christ University

As rightly said, this investment is seen with the collaboration of Christ (Deemed to be University) and The Centre for Internet Society (CIS), Bengaluru. Ms. Nichole Saad, Program Manager, WEP, Asia Region visited the institution and interacted with faculty and students. Her visit provided us a platform to share our learnings, experiences, and views on WEP initiative. Her meeting with the students was interactive on both the days and the discussion was fruitful. The session began with an introductory presentation wherein the achievements of the Wikipedia in the academic curriculum was mentioned. To keep the sessions active, activities were conducted for students on both the days. We shared our views on issues like acceptance of Wikipedia as a trusted Knowledge source was discussed widely. You can find the detailed report here.

“	It is our job to move into digital pedagogies and Wikipedia is the best tool for that. —Rathi M T, Educator at Christ University, Bangalore, India	”

Andhra Loyola College

On 10 December 2017, A2K team arranged Nichole Saad's visit to Andhra Loyola College (ALC) where there have been WEP activities from past few years and Vasireddy Venkatadri Institute of Technology (VVIT) where Indic Wikimedian Krishna Chaitanya Velaga is trying to start a new Wikipedia Education Program. In Andhra Loyola College, institution management and A2K reviewed past activities and discussed how to scale up the current program. Nichole interacted with ALC students, management and staff who have been part of WEP and would be part of future activities during the visit. In VVIT, Krishna Chaitanya lead meetings with management where Nichole could give her insights and suggestions about successful Wikipedia Education Program.

Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences

In the current workplan period, the A2K program tried to revive its an Wikipedia Education Program. As a first step, the A2K program organised a ground visit and needs assessment with the previously engaged teachers and authorities of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences. The plan was organised in collaboration with the Wikipedia Education Program team of the Wikimedia Foundation and CIS-A2K. The program was organised for two days to identify the gaps and failure of the previous program. On the first day, around 20 students and 10 teachers attended the basic Wikipedia orientation program on Wikipedia and about Wikipedia Education Program. During the second day, two hours long needs assessment conversation happened with the teacher to understand the current situation of the teachers and institution in reviving the WEP. A2K has proposed teachers and other authorities to share their curriculums and academic calendars and also to organise a digital learning workshop for the University faculty.

Nichole with Christ university Faculty members and students took part in Certificate Course
Students discussing with CIS and WMF Education Program Manager
Educators at Christ University discussing the benefits and challenges of using Wikimedia projects in the classroom

Learnings

Wikidata Based Education program

In 2017, We started Wiktidata based education program for the undergraduate students, which is one of the major learnings.

As the wish to edit Wikipedia and its sister projects among undergraduate students were enormous, we decided to involve these students in editing Wikidata. Editing Wikidata doesn’t have the same requirements as writing an encyclopedic article; the editors just fill the necessary fields. Students were editing on main namespace some fo the dits made by them were wrong so ti was difficult to track the mistakes/errors done by them for this we were criticised from the community and later with lots of difficulties we corrected those.

Out of wiki events increase to contribution

Editing all day can be boring for students. That's why we try to organize/engage in diverse activities which are not directly connected to editing but supports education and personal development. These activities include photography, visits to different cultural and scientific institutions etc. Out of wiki activities encourage students to increase the contribution.

Quality

The emphasis on quality improvement (though difficult to implement) has motivated students to carefully compile references and enabled the faculty in taking the complete responsibility in the evaluative process.

Involvemnt of community memebrs

To Involve the community members in the better fashion to give more value to work.

Evaluation Process

Till 2017 CIS-A2K was involved in the Evaluation process of the work done by the students. Even after many trials, we were not able to hand it over this process to faculty, but in the year of 2017, we were able to motivate the faculty with the help of community members to do the complete evaluation of the work done by the students and also one of the faculty members is motivated so much and she became an active Wikipedian.

Reaching out to community members through Newsletters

Newsletters are an extremely valuable marketing tool used by all the institution to spread the awareness of the activity done or lead by them. It helps to maintain contact with community members and also it attracts new participants and retaining existing participants. After knowing all of these we started to send the updates of the work done related to Wikipedia Education to a Newsletter to which is maintained by Education team at WMF.

Impact

CIS-A2K has worked to increase the reach of Wikimedia movement and educational projects in India.
More than 4000 pages were proofread with the help of the students.
Were are associated with more than 17 Universites/colleegs around India.
51 teachers participating in 25 wiki trainings and seminars.
1450 plus participants editing 9 months after the registration (i.e. made 5 edits).

Government collaboration

Telangana state IT department

Activity

A2K supported the community's efforts to voice in World Telugu Conference 2017. Along with other Digital Telugu activists, Telugu Wikipedians participated in Digital Telugu conference conducted by Digital Media Wing of Telangana state IT department. Telugu Wikipedians represented and explained about free knowledge movement in Telugu to various other stakeholders of larger Digital Telugu movement.

Impact

IT and Cultural Departments of Telangana Government started releasing photo content into CC-BY-SA license which provided a basis for further content donation. Department of Culture is providing free venue in Ravindra Bharathi (Hyderabad) with working lunch which helps sustainability of the community activities in Hyderabad. Another partner organization Annamayya Library located in Guntur is also providing venue for Wikipedia events which help increasing activity around the region.

Follow-up

A2K is collaborating with Government departments to conduct events to improve awareness about CC licenses and get more government content (especially books which has resource value) into free licenses. Trying to get more free and friendly spaces for Wikipedia meetups and events in other cities.

15th Governor of Odisha, from Facebook page of Information and Public Relation, Odisha
Olly mascot of Men's hockey world cup.

Odisha State Government collaboration

“

"Knowledge now made more accessible" All pictures videos and animations on this website can be used by anyone under our campaign for "Transparency in Governance".

Bhubaneswar Development Authority in a visual walkthrough video of Bhubaneswar.me website

”

Introducation

CIS-A2K initiated the collaboration with Odisha Government departments during the Asian Athletics Championship Edit-a-thon, where CIS-A2K and community members approached the sports department to organise the Asian Athletics Championships Edit-a-thon and relicensing the website into a Creative Commons license.

Activities

CIS-A2K followed the collaboration and along with the help of community members and Asaf Bartov CIS-A2K approached the Chief Minister's Office to continue relicensing project, which was followed by two websites Chief Minister's Office and Commerce Transport and seven social media accounts were relicensed into Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. In the last workplan CIS-A2K was able to relicense eight government websites collaborating with more than five government departments.

Website	'Relicensing Month	Wikimedia Projects Involved
Asian Athletics Championships	June 2017	Commons. Wikipedia, Wikidata
Chief Minister Office	September 2017	Commons. Wikipedia, Wikidata
Commerce and Transport	September 2017	Commons. Wikipedia
Information and Public Relations	January 2018	Commons, Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikidata
STSC Development	January 2018	Commons, Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikidata
Bhubaneswar.me	April 2018	Commons, Wikipedia
Smart City Bhubaneswar	April 2018	Commons, Wikipedia

Impact

The collaboration has resulted in getting more than 460+ files into Wikimedia Commons and of which 69% files are used in different Wikimedia projects. Many athletes, political leader, and projects got their first image in their Wikipedia article. Earlier before the collaboration, three out of thirteen Chief Ministers of Odisha had their image on Wikipedia article, now all the Chief Ministers have their image, along with that two former governors and the current governor also got their image as a part of this collaboration. Along with the images, many infographics and journals are currently part of Wikimedia Commons. All together the files have received more than 17 Million page in the last one year.

Learnings

Showing metrics of the work to the Government departments helped in continuing the collaboration.
Many important articles got their first image.
Images downloaded from Facebook decreased the resolution of images.

Follow-up

A2K is developing a partnership with the Government to adopt Creative Commons license as a part of a policy, which would help to improve many Wikimedia projects.

Light and Sound show at Dhauli, a Buddhist Monument in Bhubaneswar from Bhubaneswar.me website
Ghumura dance performed in State Tribal Sports meet, from Naveen Odisha Twitter account.

Partnerships with Scientific organisations

I realised the need for creating science content in marathi language. Our team of scientific writers connected with Sandarbh magazine is ready to take initiative regarding this. We are also interested in creating media related content for students.

-User:यशश्री पुणेकर

Another initiative in content generation is taken by Mahrashtra Rajya Marathi Vishwakosh Nirmiti Mandal by coming up with 20 volumes and now it has pioneered a decentralized form of Knowledge generation by establishing 60 Dnyanamandals for different knowledge streams. As of now, this marathi encyclopedia contains 18,000+ articles on various subjects. Foundation of this Knowledge base can be achieved through structured as well as amorphous or non-structured way. Vishwakosh presents the earlier approach while Marathi Wikipedia presents the later. Both of these ways lead to the same goal of Knowledge creation in Marathi. Thus both Vishwakosh and Wikipedia are joining forces for conducting programs for authors.Taking into consideration this noble cause, Prof. Madhav Gadgil, Marathi Vishwakosh Nirmiti Mandal, IUCAA,CIS-A2K, Rawat’s Nature Academy and Saptahik Vivek Shilpakar Charitrakosh Prakalp took initiative to organize ‘Wikipedia-Vishwakosh Workshop for Science Writers’ in Pune. Major organizations working for scientific knowledge propagation and diffusion like, Marathi Vigyan Parishad, Vijnana Bharati, Srushti Dnyan and Sakal Trust are also coming forward for technical facilitation and coordination. The workshop participants included science writers, organisations working for science promotion and active citizen science community. Total 330 people across the state participated.


Institution	Present activity	Potential area of collaborative work
Marathi Vishwakosh	Offline & Online encyclopedia in marathi	Integrating content in Wikimedia projects, workshops of Dnyanmandals
Shilpakar Charitrakosh	Offline encyclopedias on people, history	Integrating content in Wikimedia projects, workshops of writers
Marathi Vigyan Parishad	Offline & online content generation on science	Integrating content in Wikimedia projects, workshops of Citizen science groups

Learning

The vast categories in science sector need separate group coordinators for planning of content generation. It is very important to build the human resource network before and after the event. The positive outlook towards building the language content and open knowledge resources was developed due to collaborative efforts of various organisations in the sector. Such big gathering of diverse groups generate enthusiasm towards achieving common goals.

Impact

The workshop inspired science related institutions to take initiative for content generation. Series of workshops of science writers, maths writers, astronomy enthusiasts were conducted.

Also content donation to Wikisource and Commons has started. Science magazines have also announced to re-licence their previous issues. Noted scientists Jayant & Mangala Narlikar, Madhav Gadgil have donated their books for Wikisource. Management Guru M.G. Ranganekar also donated his 2 popular books. Jai Nimbkar, daughter of noted anthropologist Prof. Irawati Karve also donated Irawati Karve’s 6 books to Commons & Wikisource.

In the workshop, many librarians also shown interest in taking free knowledge movement forward by taking up Wikipedia Library project. Two sessions were conducted in collaboration with Librarian’s Association. The plan to implement Wikipedia Library Project has been evolved.
Mass awareness was generated through the press and electronic media. All the leading newspapers covered the event extensively. Two editors wrote special features in Sunday issues.
Student community expressed interest in working for technical issues by taking up internship projects. One workshop was conducted in Pune University for M Tech students.

Follow-up events conducted after the workshop


Date	Event details
18 Nov	Marathi Wikipedia Workshop for writers of Sandarbh Science magazine
27 & 28 Nov	Wikimedia Technical Workshop:Stage (I) at Dept. of Mathematics, Savitribai Phule Pune University
2 Dec	Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at Bhaskaracharya Pratishthan, Pune
17 Dec	Meeting with Librarians' Association on WIkipedia Library Project
January 18	Two books re-licensed by Narlikar uploaded on Commons
April 18	Six books re-licensed by Nimbkar uploaded on Commons

Pune University Workshop Participants in action
Sandarbh science Workshop in progress

Partnership for building resources on Tribal culture, Forests & Livelihoods

CIS-A2K has been building partnerships with major state government departments in Maharashtra to promote free & open knowledge resources. One such effort resulted into official Govt.Resolution of Tribal Research & Training Institute under State Tribal Development department on Expert's Study Group Formation for developing Open Knowledge Platforms. Eminent scientist Prof. Madhav Gadgil is leading the group. Community Advocate for Marathi Language is representing CIS-A2K in this group. The mandate of the group is given in GR. We will be facilitating primarily No.1 & 2, which says - Developing new and utilising existing Open & free platforms like Wikimedia Projects to build knowledge resources on Community Forest Management, Development of training modules in Unicode & make it accessible by common man, Digitisation of reference books, training booklets, govt docs, archives, images etc and making it accessible.

Activity


Date	Events
16-17 April	Institutional Partnership with Tribal Research & Training Institute
18 May	Action Plan Meeting at Tribal Research & Training Institute
22-23 May	Pilot workshop of NGOs at Gadchiroli on building Van Bodh - Open knowledge resource on Biodiversity

Learning

Potential in working with Government departments was realised. Long term partnerships with such research organisations is mutually beneficial.

Impact

As the part of the mandate for expert group, we have started long term project on building repository on forest and biodiversity called ‘Van Bodh’ with these partners.

Followup

It is proposed to evolve Wikimedian in residence scheme to document tribal culture, vital statistics, success stories and research outcomes from all the tribal museums in the state. The tribal cluster in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra will be taken as pilot project to develop content on villages, biodiversity and cultural aspects.

Partnerships regarding Rural Culture & Women's issues

Activity

Sterlite Tech Foundation and Jnana Prabodhini are the organisations working for Women's Empowerment in Velhe Block of Pune District Maharashtra. Jeewan Jyoti - Sterlite’s flagship initiative aims to address these issues by empowering the under privileged sections of society, especially rural women with equal learning opportunities and with professional training courses in their formative years; thereby providing them with sustainable income opportunities. On 10th March 2017, the organisers collaborated with The Centre for Internet & Society-Access to Knowledge Program to conduct first workshop for rural women. The women worked on village articles and development issues. For the year 2018, the thematic approach is taken to enrich content on Rural Culture on Wikimedia projects. Two iterations of content development sessions conducted in December and March 2018.

Learning

Lack of transportation facilities and other social restrictions prevent girls from continuous activity. Also they do not have personal computers, therefore they have to come to institute for editing. This problem could be solved by providing some small gadgets like tabs for consistency in work.

Impact

Master trainers cum active editors are developed in this rural centre, which in turn developing new female youths in the area consistently
The documentation project on ‘Gunjawani River valley’ has been started. In this project, about 120 village articles and 50 culture related articles have been newly created.
The awareness about the Wikipedia platform for knowledge is being spread among the communities of 150 villages in contact with this center. Exposure to smartphone based searching in Marathi and reading Wikipedia is also now a regular feature here.

Followup

It is proposed to consolidate the process and replicate at some rural training centers. The trainers from these organisations will exchange their learning and provide training to others.

Rural youth Creating new articles
Action Plan meeting in TRTI
Tanveer Hasan speaking about the importance of digitisation of Dravida Nighantu