Grants:PEG/Keilana/Loyola Women in Science and Math Workshop/Report

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Report accepted
This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY 2013-14 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
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Compliance and completion[edit]

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?
Answer YES or NO.
Yes.
Is your project completed?
Answer YES or NO.
Yes.
Did you use any of the grant funds?
Answer YES or NO.
Yes.

Activities and lessons learned[edit]

This section describes what the grantee did, and what the grantee learned from implementing the project. This section should be useful to others implementing similar projects and is an opportunity for the grantee to reflect on the project's performance.

Activities[edit]

Provide a detailed list of activities performed to complete this project, descriptions of these activities, and the amount of time spent on each activity. This section should also include a list of participants, or a link to pictures, blog posts, or videos from the project or event.
Tested different methods for advertising workshops to college-aged women, including social media, email, posters, flyers, and word-of-mouth.
Held workshops at Loyola University Chicago and taught women to edit.
Collected surveys from participants on their experiences to improve each subsequent workshop.
Began to develop a guide for participants specifically on writing a biography.
Worked with LUC library staff to get extra resources that would have otherwise been unavailable.
Created and greatly expanded a list of women scientists with sources to lower the barrier to contribution.
Procured and used incentives from WMF including t-shirts, stickers, water bottles, and pencils.
Tested different catering options to draw in more participants.

Lessons learned[edit]

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects? Consider the following questions and respond with 1 - 2 paragraphs.
What went well?
We had two successful workshops and created good content, learning a lot about what motivates college students to participate. We also began to develop a learning pattern to make things more smooth. We had a rough start and didn't have access to resources and tried to teach students how to find resources on their own. We discovered that by working with the library and by finding articles and sources ahead of time, women would be a lot more likely to participate in a meaningful way. To that end, we have created and are continually expanding a massive list of women scientists with sources listed that will be accessible either via internet or physically at the workshops. For the spring semester, we are continuing the successful advertising methods we found last semester (mass emails, social media, and flyers) while testing some new methods (online signup, tabling, organization fair participation, liaisons with other campus groups).
What did not go well?
We had one really unsuccessful workshop (only 3 participants) because of less-successful advertising methods coupled with bad timing with the academic calendar. For the second workshop, we tried toning down the social media advertising we were doing (thinking that perhaps people found it annoying) and instead of putting up flyers, handed them out personally. We wanted to see if giving a one-on-one invitation would be more successful in getting people to attend. We also realized that certain weeks are better than others for workshops and have endeavored to plan subsequent workshops around these "hell weeks" - for example, St. Patrick's Day weekend would be a terrible choice for a workshop.
What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?
Since this project is continuing now with an IEG, we are taking many of our learnings and implementing them this semester. As I mentioned above, we will be changing up our advertising a little bit as we develop a best practice kit for other institutions to use. We are going to continue with what worked and test out new methods. We are also going to continue taking surveys to determine what else needs to be tweaked. We also need to figure out how to make the source and list scalable to other areas of systemic bias, which may require a technical solution. More on our plans for running the same project this semester are available at Grants talk:IEG/Women Scientists Workshop Development.

Project goal and measures of success[edit]

This section should reference the project goals and measures of success described in the approved grant submission. See Grants:PEG/Keilana/Loyola Women in Science and Math Workshop to review the goals and metrics listed in the approved submission.

Project goal[edit]

Provide the project goal here.
The goal of this project is to pilot a program designed to improve content on the English Wikipedia about women in STEM fields and to encourage college-aged women to edit those articles through a partnership with the Loyola Women in Science and Math (WISAM) group. It will also train a group of young women to edit and enable them to edit on their own. The ultimate goal is to create a model for similar programs at other institutions.
Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 paragraphs.
We did achieve our goal; we got a group of new and repeat participants in workshops and learned a lot about how to get college students to edit. We developed more effective advertising strategies and figured out several ways to lower the barrier to participation, including doing some research ahead of time and creating the list of women scientists for participants to pick from. We found that it was useful to give a brief description of a scientist's field; when a participant didn't know who would make a good article subject, they often picked a woman who had worked in their field of interest.

Measures of success[edit]

List the measures of success exactly as provided in the approved grant submission, and evaluate your project according to each measure listed there.
At least 15 people show up to each workshop
At least 5 people come more than once
At least 3 articles are brought to the DYK section from work done at the workshops
At least 2 women are trained to teach others basic editing skills
Provide an overall assessment of how your project went according to these measures.
The first measure was not successful. The first workshop had 11 participants, the second workshop had 3 participants, and the third workshop had 11 participants. To try to improve on this measure next semester we are advertising differently (including having sign-ups conducted from the beginning of the semester) and planning more carefully around the academic calendar. We are also trying Saturdays and Sundays to see if one day is better than the other or if having both is the optimal solution. The second measure was successful, we had 7 repeat attendees (2+ times). The third measure was obsolete as after the difficulties we had with the first workshop we decided it was unnecessary and was a barrier to participation. The fourth measure was successful, two women were explicitly trained to teach basic editing skills and several others spontaneously taught each other skills they learned at the workshop.
If you were to plan a similar project, would you measure it differently? If yes, please explain how.
Yes. Though the first, second, and fourth measures are good metrics, we decided after some discussion not to emphasize DYK because of the high skill level required in dealing with English Wikipedia's administrative side. We would choose to look at the amount of content added and the different articles impacted.

Impact[edit]

This section ties this project to Wikimedia's broader goals, and shows what the project accomplished.

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic goals? Please answer in 1 -2 paragraphs and include specific measures of impact such as the number of readers or editors reached by a particular project, or the number of articles edited or improved.
Stabilize infrastructure
Increase participation
Improve quality
Increase reach
Encourage innovation
I feel that this project successfully impacted the participation and quality strategic goals. With regards to participation, we created 18 new users and had 7 attendees return to a workshop more than once. Many participants expressed an interest in continuing to edit at workshops held in the Spring 2014 semester. In the arena of quality, 31 articles on women scientists were either created or expanded by participants. A majority of participants expressed that they enjoyed learning about the women and informally indicated that they liked picking the articles they would work on.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures[edit]

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation[edit]

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".
Yes, sent on January 19.

Expenses[edit]

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.
These expenses should be listed in the same format as the budget table in your approved submission so that anyone reading this report may be able to easily compare budgeted vs. actual expenses.
Note that variances in the project budget over 10% per expense category must be approved in advance by WMF Grants Program staff. For all other variances, please provide an explanation in the table below.
Number Category Item description Unit Number of units Actual cost per unit Actual total Budgeted total Currency Notes
1 Refreshments Food for the first workshop Giordano's 1 order $168.41 $168.41 $140 USD Had some issues communicating with the caterer, these were resolved the second time around.
2 Refreshments Food for the second workshop Giordano's 1 order $100.54 $100.54 $140 USD
3 Refreshments Food for the third workshop Panera 1 $123.87 $123.87 $140 USD
4 Misc. Printing Flyers 225 $0.07 $15.75 n/a USD Paying for printing was up in the air when the grant was requested, money for this was taken out of the food budget.
5 Refreshments Soda 2-Liter bottles of soda 6 $2.00-$2.25 Approximately $15 n/a USD We didn't budget separately for soda because we thought we would purchase drinks from the caterer. However we bought it separately and therefore listed it separately. The money came from the food and drinks budget.


Total project budget (from your approved grant submission)
USD$420.00
Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if the WMF grant is your only funding source)
USD$420.00
Total amount spent on this project (this total should be the total calculated from the table above)
USD$422.82
Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project (this total will be the same as the total amount spent if the WMF grant is your only funding source)
USD$420.00
Are there additional sources of revenue that funded any part of this project? List them here.
The $2.82 overrun was taken out of my personal funds.

Remaining funds[edit]

Are there any grant funds remaining?
Answer YES or NO.
No.
Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)
$0
If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.
Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.
N/A