Talk:Hubs/Ongoing/Toward a theory of change for Wikimedia & Education (mid-2023)

My comments from this wonderful report

Wikimedia & Education User Group research report This is an incisive report of an illuminating research. I read it with rapt attention. 👍 to the team. For now, I want to comment on three points in findings. 1. Definition of education. I’m thrilled about the effort in getting a useful definition of education. Considering the well-thought definition presented in the report, I’d like to ask: Are we expecting education to involve only activities that will give participants skills for contributing to Wikimedia projects, or should it involve activities from which participants acquire any sort of knowledge and skills that help them in life? Also, I think the definition excludes an important group of instructors/facilitators (not usually taken to be educators, but they are) and learners, without whom the objectives of the strategy movement in terms of education and the production, sharing and use of free knowledge cannot be fully achieved. That group is people in informal education, including settings like reading clubs, listening or viewing clubs/centres and community knowledge and learning centres. In may places, a public library, as an informal educational facility, organizes children’s and youth programs that teach many skills. In this group of informal learners are found persons who actively learn what enables them to plan and execute daily life’s activities productively, live healthy and sustainably, and participate fully in society. The sustainable development-focused themes and topics they learn are often either not in their countries’ education curricula or not taught in schools when in curricula, for one reason or another. In many countries, most of these persons are children and youths, and visually challenged, who can’t re-enter formal schools because of certain disadvantages and deprivations. I, for example, work with such persons (although I’m also a university educator) and we utilize Wikimedia resources heavily.

Don’t we think these persons, even the illiterate ones, can also be contributors to Wikimedia, even if it means creating a new project that will accommodate them, such as will be publishing and allowing editing of articles in audio format? Can’t they contribute to pronunciations in Wiktionaries and to the images, audios and videos in Wikimedia Commons?

2. On opportunities for collaborations beyond support. I think the reason for focusing on Wikimedia related challenges and needs is that most of us perceive what we do in Wikimedia as just working for Wikimedia and affiliates; so it’s their responsibility to address all challenges and meet all needs. If each of us, especially the volunteers, take Wikimedia projects as a big opportunity for accomplishing our own mission and attaining the vision we (as persons) have for education, the situation will be different. I think also that this is suggesting that more work needs to be done on letting the community know the overarching goal of what it’s doing and helping members and affiliates own their projects as within their personal strategies for accomplishing their own missions.

What I mean is this: WF and its affiliates’ support shouldn’t be allowed by community members to overshadow their individual passion to contribute to free and accessible knowledge (open education) and to help their learners to access the free knowledge and also contribute to it. It’s when we’re on this pedestal that we will be searching for, discovering and partnering with the many other persons and organizations in the same business of making open educational resources (OER) available and accessible.

3. On "autonomous" program organizers running educational initiatives with minimal or no connection or awareness of the affiliate in their respective countries (in English-speaking Wikipedia community) and noting that affiliates desired to support these organizers, but identifying them within the community could be challenging. My two views here are: a) Affiliates need to start or step up publicity of their existence and what they do and can offer, as this will enhance membership or partnership; b) Sometimes, the requirement of membership or participation in activities of an affiliate group for a particular period makes support inaccessible to “autonomous” program organizers. This is more in a situation where the affiliate concentrates its activities in only one town/city far away from interested persons living within its supposed geographical area of coverage. You see that it’s only persons living in that town/city who can meet the requirement, and this worsens the challenge of identifying program organizers and limits that affiliate’s spread and achievements further. For example, Igbo language speaking southeast Nigeria (where I live in) comprises 5 states with their respective state capitals, but leaders of Igbo Wikimedia User Group (which I joined) schedule its onsite activities mainly in Awka, the capital of Anambra State. People, like me, who live in other locations that cost USD5 or more to travel to and from Awka can’t attend the events, even when they’re members and active on the group’s online forums. My complaints in this wise sometime ago in the online forum bore no positive result. Involvement in the online forum isn’t counted as participation in activities. This my observation b also needs to be looked into by affiliates who have such a problem. 3

This is an illuminating research and an incisive report. 👋 to the team. I have comments on three points. CPU (talk) 15:31, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Dear Chris Prince Udochukwu Njoku: Thanks for your thoughts, I stumbled upon similar things, although coming from another angle or discussion perspective. I think you pointed out very crucial discussion points. I hope there will be a good place to address them thoroughly. I added my comments underneath. --Ansowaag (talk) 09:39, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Thought about WM, Education and Open Education in general

Thanks for this insightful report. I am very much looking forward to future research findings of your team and more internal discussions and developments to come!

What most catched my attention, were the following two parts of the report:

1. First, the definition of Education the Community came up during the EduWiki 2023 Conference (I haven't been there): "Independently, but in parallel to this research, a definition has been elaborated at the EduWiki 2023 conference in Belgrade. However, it is not yet finalized and needs to be approved and legitimized; The Wikimedia & Education community shares this common definition of our work: An audience of learners engages with the Wikimedia projects through a pedagogical experience, designed to ensure the audience meets a series of learning objectives (such as media literacy or data literacy). Our efforts are aligned to the educational curriculum but adaptable to context and flexible enough to be interdisciplinary. Our programs, which are designed to grow content and contributors to Wikimedia projects, are scalable and replicable.".

2. And second this passage about the connections of the WM movement and other Open Education movements at the end of the report: "Surprisingly, there were very few proactive voices envisioning future structures as platforms to connect with external organizations and movements focused on education, such as OER (Open Educational Resources). Overall, it can be inferred that the Education community is primarily focused on addressing Wikimedia-related challenges and needs, potentially overshadowing potential collaborations with external organizations.”

Why did those parts catch my attention in a special way? As in the Educational Team within Wikimedia Germany we just closed our three-year strategic planning, we discussed a lot about our Educational work and how we approach Education within Wikimedia (Germany). We came to the conclusion - also after digging a little into our own Wikimedia Germany and Education history, that we had a focus shift in the last 5-10 years. Whilst in the beginning there had been quite some projects bringing Wikipedia into schools or Higher Education, we more and more focused on advocacy work within the more broader Open Education movement. One example is the initiation of a network on Free Education (Bündnis Freie Bildung) in 2014, together with Crreative Commons Germany and the Open Knowledge Foundation which now has over 27 organizations as partners. In the upcoming three years we want to build networks and structures (mainly in Germany) to foster Open Education in educational institutions. Therefor, we will have to get into contact with educational policy makers, educational administrators, and so on. The goal is to build structures for Open Education in general (e.g., by having more institutions with Open Education Policies and clear support structures), were Wikimedia Educational projects as well as other Open Education programs would hopefully benefit from.

Having written that and coming back to the two passages of the report: In my view, a deepened connection to and cooperation with other Open Education Movements would be a huge gain. Consequently, I would argue for a broader definition of Education, not only considering the engagement "with the Wikimedia projects through a pedagogical experience", but with Open Educational Practices per se. Wikimedia projects can then be a wonderful way to convey the key messages of Open Education. For me, key task is though to bring an open mindset and culture into our educational systems, and if this is not only via Wikimedia projects, that should not stop us.

What do you think? --Ansowaag (talk) 09:39, 27 July 2023 (UTC) (I mistakenly used my private here before instead of my Wikimedia Account, that's why I corrected that now. Sorry for the confusion!)

Two more ideas that could be helpful recommendations (cognizant of Ansowaag comment)

I’m sorry I missed the report presentation webinar, but I had watched the recording, just as I earlier read the written report. Also, I'm excited that Ansowaag echoed my thoughts with their vivid example of Wikimedia Germany's collaboration with notable non-Wikimedia organizations (orgs), and their call for rephrasing proposed definition of education to be inclusive enough. Two more illustrations of possibilities of collaborating with outside orgs may be helpful as a brief introduction to the two ideas I want to suggest again.

1. My non-Wikimedia-affiliated group's work (introduced in Education Newsletter) toward helping illiterate out-of-school children and young people in southeast Nigeria acquire functional education in their native Igbo language through the many very useful Wikimedia resources was fully supported by Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and Nigeria Information & Documentation Network. Meanwhile, the learning resources we adapted and remixed from the Wikimedia resources we based the work on are being uploaded in Nigeria Open Schooling Project (NOSP)'s OER repository owned by Nigeria’s Federal Government’s Universal Basic Education Commission, but hosted by COL.

2. I’m currently admitted into two working groups of UNESCO’s Greening Education Partnerships (GEP) because of the Wikimedia-based environmental education content of my group’s work. In the working groups, we’re discussing and planning activities for helping countries and their education institutions incorporate relevant climate-related content and activities into teaching and learning and into what communities learn and engage in.

Incidentally, even for my personally organized small education activities, I haven’t once sought or received Wikimedia support, although that DOESN’T MEAN I don’t need it (for I truly need it, even for my groups 😊 but some obstacles, such as revealed by the research and as I expressed in my first comment, had been standing on the way).

There’s most likely to be Wikimedia community members, other than Wikimedia Germany and myself, doing education work with external collaborations.

Unless the presentation is insisting, as I heard in the recording, that the proposed narrow definition was to enable programs that help people get skills for editing and contributing to Wikimedia projects, only which Wikimedia can fund; I think some members may need to learn how to constructively align their activities to open education and to find and relate with other stakeholders in ooen education, or to find and apply for relevant external grants or calls for partnership. If this need is in place, let's try to see that reaching people who at present only learn with Wikimedia resources will certainly bring most ofthose people to be editors and contributors as a 2nd level outcome. My idea no. 1 therefore is for the community to have a series of training in strategic planning and resource mobilization, where knowledgeable and skilled members can be incentivized to share or external experts can be arranged for. I think this may be an added crucial need (or is it a response?) to the knowledge sharing and capacity building needs identified in the research.

My idea no. 2, which may relate to hub structure, is a program team that will be charged with external relations (Someone may rephrase or rename this to better express my following expatiation). This team may well be responsible for coordinating or facilitating in events for idea no. 1 and other needful external relationship skills and activities. They can produce and be updating and sharing a guide to relevant persons (including open source software engineers) and organizations that members can relate with. They can, among other things, help provide or secure advice or references for members seeking external collaborations.

Am I communicating at all? Or am I going beyond the research report? CPU (talk) 02:06, 26 July 2023 (UTC)