Learning and Evaluation/News/Learning Days for Wikimania Montreal
New Learning Days at Wikimania 2017!
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We are happy to inform that we will be hosting Learning Days at Wikimania! In addition to the core-conference, the Learning and Evaluation team at the Wikimedia Foundation organizes pre-conference Learning Days. During these days, there will be workshops on program design, evaluation, and communities learning. The event will be held on Wednesday, August 9th and Thursday, August 10th. This year, participants will be selected along two tracks according to practice and knowledge:
If you would like to focus on developing programs for the first time in your community and have never attended a Learning Day before, we will have options prepared for you. Alternatively, if you have attended Learning Days before in past conferences and have already accrued experience in implementing Wikimedia Programs, we need your help! Aside from having advanced workshops for experienced program leaders focused on leadership development, we also want your help in co-hosting trainings and presenting what you know to others. Registration & Selection[edit]Registration for Wikimania 2017 opens on Friday, May 5th. In the registration form, you will only be asked for your general interest in the pre-conference Learning Days. By stating your interest, you are not automatically registered, as only a limited number of slots are available. Selection will begin on June 5th, for the best opportunity at selection, please register by June 11. Qualification does not guarantee participation. Participants who apply prior to June 5 will be selected based on the extent to which they demonstrate the selection criteria. Following June 5th additional qualified applicants may be approved until there are no open slots remaining. Should demand be less than expected, restrictions may be loosened. Follow-up communications and notifications will be sent beginning June 5. If you have any questions, please reach out to Maria Cruz (eval@wikimedia.org). Selection Criteria:[edit]The selection criteria for Learning Days include that all participants must be endorsed to participate by their affiliate group and demonstrate evidence of at least 3 of the following to qualify for participation:
Agenda[edit]Click to expandThis is a draft agenda for the conference and may be updated at a later date.
Participants[edit]Click to expandIf you have already registered for Wikimania, and have interest in participating, sign up below
Instructions for sharing knowledge[edit]Click to expand=== Posters ===
Estimated preparation time: 3 - 5 hours.
The maximum dimensions for your poster size A1. Following are the technical specifications for the poster:
In terms of content, the kind of poster we are looking for is academic poster [1], a presentation of information that is educational to others, and serves a learning purpose, rather than a promotional or marketing end. Once you chose the topic you want for your poster, lay out the story in a way that lets other people know what happened, what were the key results, and what is your key advice to them, if you have any. You can also use the ABCDs of Storytelling as a guide to creating your poster. Find more detailed guidance on this Learning Pattern, and also looking at posters submitted by others in previous Learning Days:
There are many programs you can use to create a poster. We have found that Microsoft PowerPoint, LibreOffice Presentation, and LibreOffice Draw are the most easy to use, and make good looking posters. Other programs like Adobe InDesign & Illustrator have more features, but they are also more difficult to learn, and they are expensive. Another option is to use Google Draw. Whichever program you choose, make sure to set the size of your poster file before you start adding words and pictures. This will help you make sure that the fonts you are using are the right size, and that the pictures you include have a high enough resolution to print properly. Here are some links that may help you create a poster of the correct size:
Once your poster is complete, please print it to PDF format and open it in a PDF reader to make sure that everything is displaying correctly. Are your pictures blurry? Is your text aligned? Once you are happy with the way your PDF looks, please send the PDF to eval@wikimedia.org.
Please email eval@wikimedia.org. Remember that the deadline for submitting your poster for printing is Sunday, February 26. If you have questions or requests for us to help you, please email no later than Monday, February 20.
Lightning TalkEstimated Preparation Time is 1-3 hours.
There will be time for questions at the end of your talk. |
Learning Days Outcomes
[edit]Participant engagament and feedback
[edit]In the 10th issue of Learning Days, we hosted 96 community members, and 14 Wikimedia Foundation staff members. This was the second iteration of the Leadership track, and we were happy to see more community members stepping up to present something they learned. Of the total community members that participated, 29 (30%) nominated themselves to teach or share what they know, in the following way: 6 people co-present or co-facilitate a session; 20 community members presented a lightning talk, and another 4 presented a poster. Aside from these, there were 3 community members who fully led their sessions: Jan Apel and Elisabeth Mandl, from Wikimedia Deutschland, led the session Campaigning for new editors; Rosie Stephenshon-Goodknight led the session Group Consensus Building. In terms of content type, we 35% of the sessions we offered were training workshops, and 65% of sessions were interactive or participatory sessions.
This time, leadership sessions were distributed across both days. In this issue of Learning Days we used our comprehensive feedback form, that allows participants to share something they liked best about the session, something they would suggest to do different next time, and something they plan on doing in the next 30 days, based on what they learned. The analysis presented below stems from the feedback forms received for each day, as follows:
Learning Day | Number of evaluations | Percentage |
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Wednesday | 47 | 70.15% |
Thursday | 18 | 43.90% |
On Wednesday, the sessions Evaluation plans and making it count, How to plan a pilot, and Logic models and theory of change were among the most liked sessions, as well as those that inspired the most actions in the next 30 days. Tools rotation and Designing programs and events came in second place.
The idea behind asking participants for feedback on what they would do differently in the next 30 days is to assess how the information shared is useful or applicable to the participants context. To a large extent, the feedback in this area focused on applying new tools to the existing work.
A few examples are:
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Legend:
Tools |
Learning from others |
Teaching back at local community |
On Thursday, the sessions Program lightning talks, Building a learning network, and Group consensus building were among the most liked sessions, as well as the ones that inspired the most actions or changes in the next 30 days. The comments in this section were predominantly about sharing experiences and learning valuable skills that they could share back with the local community.