Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Research on effectiveness of Wikipedia in Education as a platform of improving the cognitive ability among students/Midpoint Report
Midterm Learning Report
Report Status: Accepted
Due date: 2022-08-15T00:00:00Z
Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund
Report type: Midterm
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General information[edit]
This form is for organizations receiving Wikimedia Community Funds (General Support) or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their mid-term learning and results. See the Wikimedia Community Fund application if you want to review the initial proposal.
- Name of Organization: N/A
- Title of Proposal: Research on effectiveness of Wikipedia in Education as a platform of improving the cognitive ability among students
- Amount awarded: 28879 USD, 2165083 INR
- Amount spent: 752968 INR
Part 1 Understanding your work[edit]
1. Briefly describe how your strategies and activities proposed were implemented and if any changes to what was proposed are worth highlighting?
- 24 female students from Dr G Shankar Government Women’s First Grade College & PG Study Centre Ajjarkadu Udupi, Karnataka, India, are taking part in this program now. No major deviations from the original proposal was done in terms of program design and structure. Cognitive skills tests were conducted at the beginning and at mid-term. Originally it was proposed to conduct one workshop every month. But this schedule could not be followed due to situations like heavy rain, college examinations to students, other activities like college day. Hence more than one workshops were conducted in some months.
2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you feel are being effective in achieving your goals?
- Motivation is the most important factor. Students have to be motivated for actively participating and giving good contribution to Wikipedia and sister projects. Students are normally consumers of knowledge. By writing to Wikipedia, they become creators of knowledge. This fact when explained to the students, they gets thrilled and get motivated. They feel accomplished when they see their articles lie in Wikipedia. Any project or program to be successful, the complete involvement of the participant is a must. Motivation is the factor that drives this. Other minor driving factors might be the swags.
3. What challenges or obstacles have you encountered so far?
- Infrastructure is the main hindrance. There is only one lab which is used by the whole college. Students don't get enough computer time.They are all from poor background having no PC/laptop at home. The PC lab at college does not have UPS facility. Whenever there is power failure, there will be disruptions. This is another hindrance. We are able to produce good result in-spite of these. If we can get some donors to donate laptops or PCs (used also will do) to these students that will be highly beneficial.
4. Please describe how different communities are participating and being informed about your work.
- Members of Kannada Wikipedia community and Karavali Wikimedians User Group participate sometimes during the workshops. They help the students in editing by guiding them and solving any problem they have.
- 1. Kannada Wikipedia community - https://kn.wikipedia.org/s/2vh2
- 2. Karavali Wikimedians User Group - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_project_on_effectiveness_of_Wikipedia_in_education_as_a_platform_of_improving_the_cognitive_ability_among_students
- 3. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wiki_ELearning_Udupi
5. Please share reflections on how your efforts are helping to engage participants and/or build content, particularly for underrepresented groups.
- The participants are girl students of undergraduate courses. This college is situated at a tier-II city of Karnataka state. Being a government college, lacks many facilities. Most students hail from economically poor family backgrounds. They can be considered as hailing from underrepresented groups. They have actively participated so far in the program and added substantial content to Wikipedia. The details of which are available in the Outreach Dashboard - https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Dr_G_Shankar_Govt_Women's_College_Udupi/Wiki_ELearning/home
6. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What have you learned so far about these areas during this period?
- More detailed explanations of the project, the methodologies, the expected outcomes, are given in this Google doc - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cc0cbhmQgO_0YtCgyy-uaBh1jQ-vixqz/edit. The aim is to do research the impact of Wikipedia as a platform of learning in an academic environment. The aim is to understand how cognitive skills and the thought process are shaped by using Wikipedia as a platform of learning. Cognitive skills tests were conducted at the beginning of the program and again at mid-term. The results are quite encouraging. The same is given in a table form and chart form in this Google file - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17w4CwZbtrxi938kDpYb1GvjLGmStNB66/edit#gid=1503548969
7. What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your work?
- The detailed activities of the project are given here - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_project_on_effectiveness_of_Wikipedia_in_education_as_a_platform_of_improving_the_cognitive_ability_among_students#Activities. Steps 1 to 4 have been completed so far. Briefs were given for next 2 steps but detailed works have not been done. Steps 5 to 10 will be done in the second half of the program.
Part 2: Metrics[edit]
8a. Open and additional metrics data.
| Open Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 24 | Number of participants. Initially it was 27. Now 24 are participating. This kind of dropout was expected. Since we wanted 25, we started with 27 expecting 2 persons to dropout. But 3 have discontinued after participating in almost 60% of the first half. | Physically count the number of people present and document it. |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 24 | Number of editors. Same explanations as above | Outreach Dashboard used https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Dr_G_Shankar_Govt_Women's_College_Udupi/Wiki_ELearning/home |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 3 | Number of organizers. | Physically count and document. |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 207 | Number of articles crated by the participants. Details available at https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Dr_G_Shankar_Govt_Women's_College_Udupi/Wiki_ELearning/home | Outreach dashboard https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Dr_G_Shankar_Govt_Women's_College_Udupi/Wiki_ELearning/home |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | 416 | Total number of articles edited. Details at https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Dr_G_Shankar_Govt_Women's_College_Udupi/Wiki_ELearning/home | Outrach dashboard used https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Dr_G_Shankar_Govt_Women's_College_Udupi/Wiki_ELearning/home |
| Additional Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Diversity of participants brought in by grantees | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of people reached through social media publications | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of activities developed | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of volunteer hours | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
8b. Additional core metrics data.
| Core metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | The number of participants, all female, in all activities. All these 25 will be new participants | 25 | 24 | Number of participants. Initially it was 27. Now 24 are participating. This kind of dropout was expected. Since we wanted 25, we started with 27 expecting 2 persons to dropout. But 3 have discontinued after participating in almost 60% of the first half. | Physically count the number of people present and document it. |
| Number of editors | The number of editors, all female, in all activities. All these 25 will be new editors | 25 | 24 | Number of editors. Same explanations as above. | Outreach Dashboard used https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Dr_G_Shankar_Govt_Women's_College_Udupi/Wiki_ELearning/home |
| Number of organizers | The number of organisers in all activities: 3
Out of these there may be one new organiser. |
3 | 3 | Different community members participated on different days. | Physically count and document. |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | Number of articles added: 125 | 125 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
9. Are you having any difficulties collecting data to measure your results?
- No.
10. Are you collaborating and sharing learning with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?
- Yes
10a. Please describe how you have already shared them and if you would like to do more sharing, and if so how?
- Presented during the Kannada Wikipedians online meetup - https://kn.wikipedia.org/s/2wxp
11. Documentation of your work process, story, and impact.
- Below there is a section to upload files, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g. communications materials, blog posts, compelling quotes, social media posts, etc.). This can be anything that would be useful to understand and show your learning and results to date (e.g., training material, dashboards, presentations, communications material, training material, etc).
- Below is an additional field to type in link URLs.
Part 3: Financial reporting and compliance[edit]
12. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.
- 752968
13. Local currency type
- INR
14. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Provide links to your financial reporting documents.
15. Based on your implementation and learning to date, do you have any plans to make changes to the budget spending?
- No
15a. Please provide an explanation on how you hope to adjust this.
- N/A
16. We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being a grantee has been so far.
- It was quite good and satisfactory. All the students are from economically poor background. They don't have laptop or PC at home. The only time they get to edit Wikipedia is at college during the workshops on weekends. If some company can provide (donate) laptops/PCs under their CSR schemes or otherwise, it would be great. Then we can expect far better results. I have been trying for this and got no success so far. If WMF can help here, it would be great.