Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/eLearning Africa 2016 in Cairo

Title ideas

• eLearning for Everyone with Wikipedia, but "tailored" suits better

Summary

If the infrastructure and tools work properly in different language projects of Wikipedia, we would automatically create more content in many of those—especially in language with large speakers population; we would attract more learners.

• ...

Body

While the e-learning community is thinking of original ways to transfer good practices and technology to Africa, the largest encyclopedia is at everyone's hand. Cool. Having it localized, though, is another story. Collaborative and diverse is the content of Wikipedia, but what about the form (design) and the function (editing tools)?

"Content is king, context is queen." Photo by zack wadghiri under CC BY-SA 4.0.

eLearning in Africa

In 2016, eLearning Africa was held in Cairo. I was lucky to be there, on a Wikimedia scholarship, to get an idea of new trends in education tools and technology in Africa. In the final night a gala was held in the Silicon Wadi, ending with a show on the history of Egypt. That was the first time I knew about a Silicon Wadi (Arabic for "Valley") in Africa.

Many were the presentations and workshops throughout this event. But one of the presentations I attended had me impressed that was especially relevant to Wikipedia. The year before, I read a blog article on a Wikipedia AI tool then under development, now I'm learning about VR live from a tech expert. I remember how he sounded convincing, telling the audience that this is not a future but an "already here" technology.

The presenter said that humans think—and ideas are connected in our minds—not in a linear but in a network-like way. After the presentation, I immediately went to try a VR headset. It was a stimulating experience.

Whether it's AI for Wikipedia or VR for education in Africa, innovative technology makes things easier. However, by whom and how technology is designed can be problematic.

Free as in free-rated mobile access to learning

Many TSPs offer Wikipedia and sister resources free of charge in places like once in South Africa. Media by Vgrigas under CC BY-SA 3.0

After eLA, each guest received a 2015 report on the situation of e-education in Africa. In the document I read that a country like Morocco enjoys relatively good internet infrastructure (about half the population access internet). Still, education takes little advantage of this. The article notes a "lack of eLearning despite excellent conditions for its implementation."

This piece of information, along with things like poor access to education and resources in many parts of the country, was a starting point for a presentation I gave with WMF staff members in the Wikimania conference the following year. The presentation showed that Wikipedia Zero was a project relevant to the Global South countries that could help bridge the North–South knowledge gap through selectively offering zero-rated mobile access to Wikimedia's educational projects (not just Wikipedia, despite the conventional name).

Wikipedia helps eLearners, but...

Developing software for diverse users is a challenge and an inspiration, says Birgit. Photo by wpedzich under CC BY-SA 4.0

The year after, Birgit Müller who works on Technical Wishes project and I wanted to talk about diversity. Wikipedia Zero can spur on more contributions to Wikimedia educational platforms from the Global South; Wikipedia's top contributor is a bot (it has made Cebuano the second language in terms of Wikipedia articles—as of 14/7/2017—which means more articles speakers of that language can read) and user-friendliness can encourage "everyone to edit too": these were the three main points I wanted to share in the presentation.

Although this can be attributed to other factors too like real-world events, better internet access, more collaboration between users, Arabic Wikipedia grew as more bots were deployed and gadgets made accessible by its local users. Daily article creation rose from two to three figures since 2013, statistics show.

However, problems came along. The zero-rated mobile access service has been misused. Arabic Wikipedia users still discuss font rendering occasionally, with proposals to user a different default font. Projects in RTL languages need attention from developers, as even sometimes old features like the reference tags need a retouch, some access keys don't support non-latin keyboard layouts, and translation of new mediawiki text is not included in the development process.

Adopting advanced tech like VR or AI or basic one like zero rating can be tricky given the variety in contexts, but any technical artifact can be released seamlessly when the audience participates in the developing it.

Although channels like phabricator, or a hub in meta, can improve communication between users and developers, Birgit and I thought that collaborating from the beginning would be better. The RevisionSlider was fully translated and adapted for Arabic Wikipedia thanks to this collab.

Put collaboration back in wiki development

Engaging local users from diverse backgrounds in not just editing but also developing Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects would be more effective than expecting the community of editors to localise deployed features after they're out there. Users would find it more attractive to contribute if the editing environment is relavant to them, where they can see their language and their culture.

Zack, the WM-MA User group