User:MCruz (WMF)/Sandbox/Newsletter/2017/4/11
The Programs and Events Dashboard is a tool that helps to more efficiently track and evaluate Wikimedia programs. It allows program leaders to conveniently share information and gives participants easy access to edit and review articles.
Originally, the term dashboard referred to a simple barrier placed at the front of a horse-drawn carriage to protect the driver from mud or other debris "dashed up" by the horses. However, over time, the dashboard has evolved to become an incredibly useful and important device in our modern vehicles. It basically allows drivers to see the most crucial car and engine conditions in just one, simple glance.
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Example test course on the dashboard.
Similar to that technological implementation, the Program and Events Dashboard allows for quick and easy access to important cumulative program data, and also connects to other program leaders. It focuses on the primary data then measures and reports it in a simple fashion. Basically, it puts all of the most relevant data in one location. With just a single glance users can see the number of programs, editors involved, words added, article views, articles created, and media uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
With this tool, organizers can add resources to help participants quickly learn easy wiki markup. By assigning articles, it helps to avoid editing conflicts, and increase collaboration. It also reports every single contribution made to a program, allowing for easier tracking and collaboration. For those creating a new program, this is a great resource that will allow them to learn from and replicate other successful strategies in an organized and efficient manner. This new tool makes for an overall better evaluation experience. It makes it easy for program leaders and participants to collect metrics and to access the cumulative data.
Another great aspect about the Programs and Events Dashboard is that it is so simple to use. Once a program is created, the dashboard generates a link for participants to join so they can begin working on or reviewing articles. It then creates reports of the impact the program has on engagement. The latest edition to the dashboard is its new enabled feature designed specifically for campaigns. We hope this tool can be useful to you in your future program endeavors!
More info:
The first Inspire Campaign, a proactive funding model, set a goal to improve gender diversity within our movement. The final report offers a deeper understanding of what it means to work in the crossroads of technology and gender in the Wikimedia movement.
Ultimately, the campaign found success by reaching out to participants and volunteers who shared invaluable ideas and inspiration. A variety of these ideas eventually became grant-funded projects. These included an edit-a-thon series in Ghana, the development of a tool to track how the gender gap is changing on Wikipedia projects, and a pilot on mentorship-driven editing.
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Participants of Wiki Needs Girls (Accra, Ghana). -
Art+Feminism Edit-a-thon at the University of Connecticut Homer Babbidge Library, a new page created on Ellen Emmet Rand. -
Black Lives Matter Edit-a-thon.
The main goal of this campaign was to achieve gender diversity by focusing on increasing the participation of and content about women. This became the focal point of the campaign as a result of recent research, which indicated significant under-representation of women in Wikimedia projects. With this main objective in mind, the campaign also established and achieved three sub-goals: (1) to experiment with proactive grant-making, (2) to improve and expand individual and collective understanding of the gender gap, and (3) to proactively source and support new projects aimed at increasing gender diversity.
Together, these projects contributed to the creation or improvement of over 12,000 articles, including 126 new biographies on women. They also encouraged more women to engage as project leaders, volunteers, and editors. Another result of the effort was the correction of gender-related biases found within Wikipedia articles. Overall, the campaign engaged over 600 people in the effort to close the gender gap.
The 11 Gender Gap Inspire grants complete to date have broadened our shared understanding of what it means to work on the gender gap.They have truly expanded the way in which we think about gender diversity and brought much needed attention and progress to the gender diversity movement. Three core themes have been identified as key for any work to address the gender gap: participation, content and leadership development. The report constitutes a learning resource for anyone considering starting a new project, or continue working on an existing one, with a focus on gender diversity. Leave your thoughts on the report talk page and let us know how useful it is!
More information:
blogs, events & more!
Every month, we share knowledge with a focus on programs, process or tools on Wikimedia Foundation's blog. Find all our entries on the Wikimedia blog
Featured blog posts:
In order to further expand the endeavors of the Wikimedia community, Wikimedians need easy access to essential resources and support. The Wikimedia Resource Center is a single point of entry where one can access resources, grouped according to the goal they serve. Each tab has an introduction page that describes the area, what each resource means and who can give you direct support. This hub will allow Wkimedians to develop new initiatives, and expand existing ones more effectively and efficiently.
Read More
The new survey, called Community Engagement Insights, was developed to help us design solutions while keeping community members in the heart of every project. The opinions gathered from this survey will directly affect how the Foundation supports Wikimedia communities. In the past, surveys have allowed us to better understand the issues in our communities. They also instigate important conversations about the issues which then lead to the implementation of actions which help to effectively address them.
Read More
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February 1 - 28: Inspire campaign to develop outside knowledge networks.
February 1 - 28: Intercultur writing challenge, organized by Wikimedia España, focuses on 8 languages spoken in Spain.
February 13 - March 14: Open call for Project Grants.
February 26: Deadline to submit a Conference and Event grant proposal.
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March 4 - April 9: The Women You Have Never Met, a writing contest organized by Iberocoop.
March 14: Deadline to apply to a Project Grant.
March 21: Wikimedia CEE Spring 2017, a writing contest organized by Wikimedia CEE, starts on March 21 and goes on until 31st May.
March 29 - 30: Learning Days at Wikimedia Conference 2017.
March 31 - April 2: Wikimedia Conference 2017, organized by Wikimedia Deutschland, is held in Berlin.
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March 4 - April 9: The Women You Have Never Met, a writing contest organized by Iberocoop.
March 31 - April 2: Wikimedia Conference 2017.
Wiki-Med: Medical students at Tel Aviv university and UCSF contribute to Wikipedia in an innovative course
Having a positive impact on medical students and the community at large: sharing student's academic work on Wikipedia and its sister projects.
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Wiki-Med Course at TAU, class of 2016-2017. -
UCSF poster. -
Dr. Amin Azzam and his students in the "Expanding WikiProject Medicine" classroom.
On October 2013, an innovative, for-credit, elective course dedicated to Wikipedia opened at Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University (TAU).[1] The semester-long course (13-14 weeks) for undergraduate medical students, designed and led by medical educator and Wikimedian Shani Evenstein, was called "Wiki-Med" and had a simple objective: give students an opportunity to sharpen their academic, digital and collaborative skills, while contributing high quality medical content to Wikipedia. Meanwhile, over 5.000 km away, another elective course opened at the School of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). This 4 weeks-long elective, led by Dr. Amin Azzam, has been offered to graduate students in their 4th year of studies. Though at first, unaware of each other's efforts, Dr. Azzam's elective also encouraged medical students to edit Wikipedia as part of their coursework.[2]
As of January 2017, the 4th iteration of the Wiki-Med course at TAU was completed. Thus far, 106 medical students participated in the course, almost 50% of them women. The majority of participants were Hebrew native speakers, but many were Arabic native speakers, and some Russian and French native speakers. On average, each student wrote 2 articles during the semester, contributing collectively over 200 new articles (about 8% of the medical content on Hebrew Wikipedia), which by now got over 4 millions page views. Some of these efforts were aligned with ongoing initiatives hosted by other communities. For example, a number of articles were translated from English as part of the WikiProject Medicine Foundation's extensive translation efforts. Another example is the collaboration with the Hebrew WikiProject Women in Red: in the last iteration of the course, half of the articles focused on Women's health. Meanwhile, across the ocean at UCSF Medical School, 72 students participated, making 2725 edits in 58 different articles on En-Wiki, attracting over 1.7 million page views.[3]
Both courses had to deal with some labor pains, a complex course nature (especially compared with other electives), and a few copyrights concerns, i.e. students copy and pasting. However, both continue to expand with each iteration (for example, in the past two years a Wikidata session was added to the Wiki-Med course), and are considered a success. Students at TAU consistently report a positive and meaningful learning experience, which includes –
- Working collaboratively, including peer-reviewing, having to give and receive feedback
- Practicing simplicity, taking complex medical ideas and conveying them in a simple way, something students will have to do with future patients
- Learning about the free-knowledge movement, the power of the community and the importance of contributing high quality medical information to Wikipedia, which has become the number one source of medical information online around the world.
- Self-belief, teaching students to take ownership of their learning process from an early stage, as well as on their capacity to do something positive and impactful with what they already know.
Due to its success, the Wiki-Med course model has been adapted to grow the program at TAU: a second Wikipedia course [4], called "Wikipedia: Skills for producing and consuming knowledge", has opened on campus in 2015 and is available to all undergraduate students from every discipline taught at TAU. Thus far, 75 students participated in the course, writing 135 new articles in He-Wiki. Similar success followed the course at the School of Pharmacy at UCSF, which began integrating Wikipedia editing into its curriculum in 2014, an effort led by Dr. Tina Brock. To date, 360 students participated in the course, adding 4277 edits to 177 pharmacology related articles.
- References
Read more:
- Dr. Amin Azzam of UCSF on Wiki Ed Medical Outreach (video)
- Sigalov, S. E., & Nachmias, R. Wikipedia as a platform for impactful learning: A new course model in higher education. Education and Information Technologies, 1-21.
- Azzam, A; Bresler, D; Leon, A; Maggio, L; Whitaker, E; Heilman, J; Orlowitz, J; Swisher, V; Rasberry, L; Otoide, K; Trotter, F; Ross, W; McCue, JD (February 2017). "Why Medical Schools Should Embrace Wikipedia: Final-Year Medical Student Contributions to Wikipedia Articles for Academic Credit at One School.". Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 92 (2): 194–200. PMID 27627633.
IdeaLab is a space where wikimedians all over the world share their inspiration with others.
IdeaLab is an incubator for people to share ideas to improve Wikimedia projects and to collaboratively develop them into plans and grant proposals. These are two selected ideas this quarter:
There is a lot to keep up with and learn in the technical realm of Wikipedia. Because of this, an idea was generated to hold a Wikipedia Tech camp designed to help Wikipedians improve their technical skills and become ambassadors of new technical development. Read More
This project aims to better understand the circumstances under which reviewers challenge contributions of female contributors to Wikipedia. It seeks to develop a process that can examine these exchanges, and to then produce data to give insight to the exchange. Read More
Join the IdeaLab community. You can help develop ideas in many ways: with technical skills, translating, networking and more. Share your own!
The Program Evaluation & Design portal has tools to learn about your activities and measure their success.
The Learning Pattern Library is a hub to share learning around certain challenges that are common across Wikimedia programs and projects. Featured Learning Patterns in this issue:
In order to find a great team for your upcoming software project, this learning pattern suggests you set a test task for applicants. A test task is very useful because it gives insights as to the technical skills, interests, and communication behavior of each candidate. Learn More
Share a fact is a feature on Wikimedia apps that allows sharing text extract from Wikipedia articles. It is available on both Android and iOS, where users can highlight text from within articles, and share it with a background of the lead image. Learn More