Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Exploring Wikiprojects at City Tech Library (ID: 22963660)/Final Report
Application type: Standard application
Part 1: Project and impact
1. Describe the implemented activities and results achieved. Additionally, share which approaches were most effective in supporting you to achieve the results. (required)
Funds from this grant were used to organize three events at CUNY New York City College of Technology: a September 2025 drop-in event for City Tech faculty who are curious about making use of Wikipedia and other Wikiprojects in the classroom; an LGBTQIA editathon in collaboration with the City Tech Pride Club; and an editathon using digitized CUNY archives from our campus and others to edit Wiki projects and to have conversations about the place of primary sources on Wikipedia, what constitutes original research, and how digital archives can support open knowledge projects.
My main goal when organizing these events was to impact faculty and student perceptions at City Tech about information on the internet and to demonstrate via Wikipedia and other Wiki-projects how we can take ownership for what is made available online. I was interested in demonstrating how the internet can be a space for critical conversation rather than just an insurmountable wall of impenetrable information. I found that I was best able to engage our community in conversations about these issues at editathons, and I believe that editathons were most effective because they resulted from partnerships: one of my grant-funded editathons was with our Pride Club and one brought in collaboration with the organizers of CUNY-wide archives digitization initiatives.
My impression of the overall impact of this work was that all of my grant-funded activities were more effective because they were part of larger collaborations that reciprocally increased momentum for Wiki-work. I wasn’t aware when I began applying for this grant that CUNY would have a Wikimedian-in-Residence during the course of my grant activities and I was able to work with our WIR on support for in-class projects that amplified my grant-funded efforts to connect with teaching faculty. That class work to have faculty and students focus on Wikimedia Commons, alongside conversations at my September 2025 faculty drop-in event, prompted an invitation for me to give a presentation to our Open Educational Resource faculty fellows—a collaboration I’ve been invited to expand over the 2026-27 academic year. Additionally, I collaborated with WikimediaNYC on both a Wikicurious editathon and on hosting Wikipedia Day 2026 on our campus during the time period of this grant; these efforts alongside my grant-funded events resulted in more conversations across campus about how Wiki-projects are a space for learning and for taking ownership of information production and brought more members of the broader public to my events.
Ultimately, all of this revealed to me that the key factor in achieving the goals I set out for myself was relationship building. This grant helped me do that by allowing me to host events that fostered existing relationships and acted as a foundation for new relationship-building.
2. Documentation of your impact. Please use space below to share links that help tell your story, impact, and evaluation. (required)
Share links to:
- Project page on Meta-Wiki or any other Wikimedia project
- Dashboards and tools that you used to track contributions
- Some photos or videos from your event. Remember to share access.
You can also share links to:
- Important social media posts
- Surveys and their results
- Infographics and sound files
- Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects
Documentation of my grant-funded events, along with some of the other Wiki-programming I supported during the duration of my grant, is available at https://cityte.ch/wiki. The impact of our LGBTQIA editathon with the City Tech Pride Club in March 2026 is captured through our event dashboard: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/CityTech/Pride_Club_2026_Editathon. The impact of our CUNY archives editathon in April 2026 is captured through our event dashboard: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/CityTech/CUNY_Archives_editathon. A new editor at this April editathon also wrote the following to me after the event:
Hi Jen!
It's been a week since the edit-a-thon and I am still flying high from the experience. You did a great job of introducing the concepts, encouraging us to talk about our work, and answering all of the questions. What a nice community! I haven't had a chance to get back to my project, but I'm feeling motivated and encouraged. Tools, skills and encouragement all go together, at least for me as a Wiki Newbie. I will certainly look for more ways of joining the NYC Wiki community, and I'd love to came back to another edit-a-thon at City Tech.
Additionally, share the materials and resources that you used in the implementation of your project. (required)
For example:
- Training materials and guides
- Presentations and slides
- Work processes and plans
- Any other materials your team has created or adapted and can be shared with others
Training slides: I used various versions of the slides at https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SOKLr6UNzSdi0W33MonRk7CQ5-vJuGXstF1C6M_pToY/edit Project website: http://cityte.ch/wiki March event page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/City_Tech_pride_2026_Spring April event page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Archives%2BCUNY%2BWikipedia Library instagram for promotion: @citytechlibrary Library blog for event promotion: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/library/
3. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with this Rapid Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals. Required. Select one option per question. (required)
| A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | Agree |
| B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Strongly agree |
| C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | Agree |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Agree |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | Neither agree nor disagree |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Neither agree nor disagree |
| G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement | Agree |
| F. Other (optional) |
Part 2: Learning
4. In your application, you outlined some learning questions. What did you learn from these learning questions when you implemented your project? How do you hope to use this learnings in the future? You can recall these learning questions below. (required)
You can recall these learning questions below: I’m interested in learning the following: -- What current perceptions do faculty and students on my campus have about information online? How are the perceptions of these two groups different? -- How can Wikipedia programming on our campus support the work of teaching faculty? -- What strategies are effective for helping students connect online information ecosystems with their own lives and with the space and place they live in? -- How can Wikipedia programming on our campus support the needs and interests of our student community?
1. What current perceptions do faculty and students on my campus have about information online? How are the perceptions of these two groups different?
My conversations with faculty, especially with our Open Educational Resource faculty fellows, revealed that faculty are very curious about using Wiki-projects in the classroom but feel a little overwhelmed by the technical aspects and the learning curve for feeling confident in instruction. In general they saw value when we had time to look at various possibilities for teaching with Wikipedia or Wikidata but they were nervous to take the leap. Working directly with students in the context of editathons or in the context of a classroom Wikimedia Commons project facilitated by our Wikimedian in Residence, student reactions conveyed real interest and excitement about editing and uploading media. I was excited at how students from our Pride Club were brand new as editors but were 100% on board with the value of editing Wikipedia, and I had a lot of inspiring conversations with photography students about how they felt to see their own contributions on Wikimedia Commons and integrated into Wikipedia articles. Overall, I learned that there is less skepticism from both faculty and students than I anticipated about using Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, but there is more confidence on the part of students than faculty when it comes to taking the leap and editing. In the future, I’d like to capitalize on this by finding students who can champion wikipedia editing on campus.
2. How can Wikipedia programming on our campus support the work of teaching faculty?
My biggest takeaway from this project was that our Open Educational Resource faculty fellows can really benefit from Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia, both as learning tools and as openly available image content. Making this connection as a result of faculty conversations has resulted in new collaborations that are set to continue over the coming academic year, and I plan to continue developing resources that will support OER faculty fellows in using Commons content.
3. What strategies are effective for helping students connect online information ecosystems with their own lives and with the space and place they live in?
Finding topics that students are already passionate about—for example, the Pride Club’s interest in LGBTQIA issues—was the most effective way to communicate with students about how they can play a role in the online ecosystems that generate information about the issues they care about.
4. How can Wikipedia programming on our campus support the needs and interests of our student community?
Wiki training for Open Educational Resource faculty fellows can help them produce open teaching materials; the use of no-fee OER textbooks has a major impact on our students and is a real focus for our library and our campus. Going forward, continued collaboration on editathons with groups like our Pride Club will support students in learning more about their interests and in thinking critically about how their participation in online projects can have an impact on representation.
5. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities? This can include both positive and negative situations. What did you learn from those experiences? (required)
Connecting with faculty directly was a huge challenge; I sent dozens of personalized email invitations and worked with department Chairs to schedule events at times that would work for faculty in their departments, but this yielded few results. However, cultivating a single relationship at my faculty drop-in event – with the coordinator of our Open Educational Resource faculty fellow program – gave me the opportunity to then connect with all the individuals who are part of that program by giving a presentation at one of their mandatory monthly meetings.
My editathon with our student Pride Club, the second time I’ve worked with this group (I previously organized an editathon with them in 2024), was the most positive experience I’ve had with student editors to date and one of the more successful editathons I’ve organized in terms of signing up new editors and having positive conversations about the value of editing Wikipedia. This was a really pleasant surprise. For me, this reinforced the value of partnering with existing groups on campus and continuing to invest in those relationships over time.
6. What is your plan to share your project learnings and results with other community members? If you have already done it, describe how. (required)
Sharing at CUNY wiki-wednesdays: this is a monthly gathering of CUNY faculty and students who work on wiki projects, coordinated by our Wikimedian in Residence. I’ve shared about all my grant-funded initiatives at these gatherings. Blogs: Over the summer, I’ll be writing about the impact of all our Wiki work at City Tech over the 2025-26 academic year, including these grant-funded events, for a year-end summary on the library’s blog.
Part 3: Metrics
7. Wikimedia Metrics results. (required)
In your application, you set some Wikimedia targets in numbers (Wikimedia metrics). In this section, you will describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used.
| Target | Results | Comments and tools used | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 100 | 40 | Sign-in sheet used for faculty drop-in events; Dashboards used for editathons. |
| Number of editors | 50 | 23 | |
| Number of organizers | 4 | 4 | The organizing was done principally by myself, with support for one event from a department administrator who works with our student Pride Club, support from our CUNY archivist for another event, and some collaboration with our Wikimedian in Residence. |
| Wikimedia project | Target | Result - Number of created pages | Result - Number of improved pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 30 | 0 | 34 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 2 | 0 | |
| Wikidata | 50 | 3 | 0 |
| Wiktionary | |||
| Wikisource | |||
| Wikimedia Incubator | |||
| Translatewiki | |||
| MediaWiki | |||
| Wikiquote | |||
| Wikivoyage | |||
| Wikibooks | |||
| Wikiversity | |||
| Wikinews | |||
| Wikispecies | |||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
8. Other Metrics results.
In your proposal, you could also set Other Metrics targets. Please describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used if you set Other Metrics in your application.
| Other Metrics name | Metrics Description | Target | Result | Tools and comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Return attendees across entire program series: | 10 | 1 | Return attendees across entire program series: my hope was to have at least 10 return attendees; I had 1. | |
9. Did you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results? (required)
Yes
9.1. Please state what difficulties you had. How do you hope to overcome these challenges in the future? Do you have any recommendations for the Foundation to support you in addressing these challenges? (required)
No difficulty collecting data. I realize now, though, that my initial proposal included four events but I was asked to remove the fourth—a Wikicurious event in partnership with Wikimedia NYC—because they also receive General Support Funding. While I removed that event description and the corresponding costs from my budget, I didn’t alter my metrics targets. That event was intended to focus heavily on Wikidata and so I’d set a significant Wikidata target for myself that I should’ve removed while also reducing my other metrics targets appropriately.
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]10. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency. (required)
1692.46
11. Please state the total amount spent in US dollars. (required)
1692.46
12. Report the funds spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
Upload the financial report
12.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
13. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
Yes
13.1. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
$7.54; there was less tax on my final catering purchase than I estimated.
13.2. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
A. Propose to use the underspent funds within this Fund period with PO approval
13.3. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
I'll spend the remaining funds on additional snacks for an upcoming library event.
14.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?
Yes
14.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
Yes
14.3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
Yes
15. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. (optional)