Learning and Evaluation/News/Learning Days for Wikimedia Conference 2018
New Learning Days at Wikimedia Conference 2018!
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We are happy to inform that we will be hosting Learning Days at Wikimedia Conference 2018! 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, April 18th and Thursday, April 19th. 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 Wikimedia Conference 2018 closes on Monday at midnight CET, January 15, 2018. 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 a week after registration opens, for the best opportunity at selection, please register as soon as possible. Qualification does not guarantee participation. 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 in the first weeks of December. 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]
Lightning Talks schedule[edit]https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Lightning_talks_Berlin_2018
Participants[edit]If you have already registered for Wikimedia Conference, and have interest in participating, sign up below
Instructions for sharing knowledge[edit]Posters[edit]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.
Lightning Talk[edit]Estimated 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 latest edition of Learning Days, we hosted 93 community members and 25 staff for two days of pre-conference training, in which Wikimedians shared experiences and collaborated with other Wikimedians, seeking fresh ideas and perspectives on the movement to bring back to their communities.
Day One began with an activity in which attendees were invited to write down goals for the days’ sessions on a sticky note and post it to the wall. Although many different goals were represented on the Wall of Personal Goals, the most commonly-reflected aim was to connect with other Wikimedians and share knowledge. The second-most expressed goal on the wall was learning how to better engage with communities at home and improve their leadership skills within those communities. Here are a few examples of what some Wikimedians wanted to experience at Learning Days:
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Viewing the most popular sessions by attendance offers another look into what Wikimedians wanted to learn from their experience at Learning Days. These figures are also useful to compare with later data of the most well-received and impactful sessions. Program and Event Practices, Lightning Talks, and Wikimedia Programs and Events received the most attendees on Wednesday, with Financial Planning for your Organization, Wikidata-Commons, and Storytelling leading Thursday. Here's a full list of sessions by attendance:
As with previous Learning Days, collecting and analyzing feedback from sessions is critical to measuring our success. Using a similar feedback form from past Learning Days, we ask attendees what they like best in a session, what needs improvement, and, most importantly, what they will do differently in their communities, based on what they learned. The outcomes of those two days of training shared below stem from that feedback, which shows that over 50% of attendees shared their thoughts with us:
Learning Day | Number of evaluations | Percentage of total attendees |
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Wednesday | 51 | 66.23% |
Thursday | 36 | 59.02% |
Communications Plans sticks out from the data as the most-enjoyed session from Day One, with almost 80% percent of attendees to that session sharing positive feedback. Other well-received sessions from Day One include, Lightning Talks, Planning and Testing New Projects, and Tools Demonstrations. Favorite sessions from Day Two include Planning for Learning with Wikimedia Projects, Education Strategy Track, Evaluation Plans and Making it Count, and Program Partnerships.
Measuring the impact of these sessions is also critical. We can measure this by offering a space in the feedback form in which attendees can jot down something they learned from the session which they intend to apply to their work in the next 30 days. Feedback from previous Learning Days reveals that the most-enjoyed sessions often have the most impact on participants, and this trend has continued this year. For example, most participants who liked the sessions Communications Plans and Planning for Learning with Wikimedia Projects also reported that they intend to use the lessions they learned in their own future work.
Although generally, the most useful sessions usually receive a high percentage of positive feedback, this is not always the case. Survey Design, for example, tied for 2nd most useful session on Thursday, but was 5th in the percentage of positive feedback attendees reported. In the tables below, you can see the sessions that were ranked the highest in terms of usefulness and overall approval:
Wednesday | |||
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Session | Participants | Percentage sharing positive feedback | Percentage "Will do in next 30 days" |
Communications Plans | 23 | 78.26% | 73.91% |
Lightning Talks | 31 | 74.19% | 51.61% |
Planning and Testing New Projects | 23 | 69.57% | 60.87% |
Tools Demonstrations | 26 | 69.23% | 61.54% |
Thursday | |||
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Session | Participants | Percentage sharing positive feedback | Percentage "Will do in next 30 days" |
Planning for Learning with Wikimedia Projects | 10 | 100% | 80% |
Education Strategy Track | 16 | 68.75% | 50% |
Evaluation Plans and Making it Count | 22 | 54.55% | 45.45% |
Program Partnerships: From Ideas to Action | 22 | 54.55% | 45.45% |
Survey Design | 6 | 50% | 50% |
Overall, feedback asking participants what they will do differently in the next 30 days tended to reflect enthusiasm for pursuing diversity in their communities, engaging other Wikimedians, and using new tools learned. Here are a few examples:
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Legend:
Tools |
Learning from others |
Teaching back at local community |
Lightning Talks and posters
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A Learning Days tradition, Lightning talks are short, five-minute presentations in which community members share their experiences in Wikimedia and how their knowledge can be used to help other Wikimedians and their projects. 14 community members presented a short talk, and made Lightning Talks one of the most well-liked sessions of Learning Days. Here's some of the posters and slides shown during Lightning Talks. You can also find videos of these presentations on our YouTube channel, or on Commons
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Wikipedia Education Program - Mohsen Salek
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Wiki Loves Women: Abuja - Chidebe Runcie
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Engaging New Editors - Ariel Cetrone
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Wikisource: What is Underneath the Surface? - Nicolas Vigneron
Presentations
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Logic Models, Program Evaluation, and Strategy
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Introduction to Facilitation
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Learning Days at WMCON 2018 Opening Session