The year of 2021 turned out to be a year of reorganization and change within the chapter, owing to several developments:
The Covid-19 crisis created a great deal of uncertainty. In Israel, the crisis started in March 2020 and continued throughout 2021. It included social-distancing restrictions, which amounted to several periods of lockdown. Accordingly, we continued to operate in the integrated (hybrid) working methods, which had been developed and implemented by the Chapter during 2020. Uncertainty still prevails and its end is still hard to foresee. In fact, uncertainty is the only certain thing in the current situation. Nevertheless, in light of the experience acquired during this time, and the new tools and methods we developed to handle this precarious reality, we were able to work in these circumstances in a more structured manner during 2021, compared with the beginning of the pandemic.
There were several organizational changes that took place this year:
A change in the organizational structure that included the appointment of one of the most experienced team members as deputy to the Executive Director, in order to improve the chapter’s functionality and efficiency, and to allow future growth and development. Beyond the organizational aspect, this step sets a goal and puts an emphasis on the entire sphere of content and educational programs, as well as the development of our instructional capabilities, which constitute one of the chapter’s major strengths, to be further expanded in the future.
Human-resource changes: Replacements for the positions of Coordinator for Arabic Educational Programs and of Finance and Administration Coordinator have been appointed. A new Marketing and Events Coordinator was recently appointed as well (2022).
One member of the Board of Directors was replaced following the election held last June.
Changes in modi operandi - During 2021, we started an initial process of examining options for changing the emphasis we put on certain fields of activity. The goal of this process is to promote a more systematic activity, where possible, and to identify activities that produce force multipliers, in order to expand in practice the range of activity and make it more focused and impactful. The process is also meant to examine improvements in the planning of activities, and to create more structured procedures for cooperations. The early results of this process are expected to manifest in the working plan of the coming year.
We also started a process to diversify our resources and seek higher-yield sources of income in an effort to enhance the chapter’s sustainability and financial strength. We intend to intensify this effort in the coming year.
Selected Programmatic Achievements and developments:
In line with our strategic goal to increase the diversity of people and contents in Wikimedia projects, we have initiated a first-of-its-kind version of our senior-citizens online editing course, targeted at women only, developed toward the end of 2020 and started during 2021 (in addition to our regular long-standing gender-mixed course) This move, which proved to be a great success in various aspects, is aimed toward expanding women’s presence in he-wp, in both the content and recruiting new editors, while creating a safe space for the participants and support women’s engagement in Wikipedia. Two editions took place during 2021 and additional ones will be implemented during 2022.
For the first time, we held this year special teacher trainings in Hebrew and Arabic.
Our teacher-training course, included in the "Students Write Wikipedia in Hebrew" project, was held in cooperation with Yad Vashem and the Ministry of Education and targeted history teachers who participate in the Tamar program, which focuses on research processes as an alternative to the matriculation exam ("Bagrut") and on topics related to Holocaust studies (further details below).
Our teacher-training course included in the "Students Write Wikipedia in Arabic" project was held in cooperation with the Ministry of Education. This became possible following a productive dialogue we have initiated with the MOE professional leadership, and their recognition of the contribution of the "Students Writing Wikipedia in Arabic" project to improving students' skills and abilities, as part of the OECD 2030 Education and Skills Future. During the second half of 2021, we worked together with our colleagues at the MOE to formulate the format for implementing the project , and recruiting the schools that will take part in it (starting in January 2022). This partnership strongly strengthens our activities in the Arabic language (further details below).
2 rounds of the Wikipedia editing course for women
Completed
Senior Citizens (annual target)
110
70
415 new articles/significant expansions,
580 Wiki-gnomings
Integration of course graduates in the he-wp community and in WMIL’s community of volunteers
Following the online senior citizens' editing course: lesson learning and implementation of 4 most desired changes.
TOTAL 2021
110
78
1881 new articles/
218 significant expansions,
316 Wiki-gnomings
Completed:
Course graduates were invited to 14 community and chapter events and 5 content-creation initiatives. About 65 of them took part.
3 course graduates were recruited as new volunteers, 5 were fostered as veteran volunteers.
Achieved
Hebrew-speaking Educational System (annual target)
950
380
380
30 classes
26 teachers (8 new)
TOTAL 2021
775
400
391
30 classes
27 teachers (9 new)
Arabic Education Program (annual target)
350
200
200
N/A
15 teachers, 5 returning
TOTAL 2021
362
124
67 (38 new articles, 29 improved)
See comment #1 below the table
10 returning teachers,
19 new teachers
Collaborations for Releasing Contents (annual target)
N/A
N/A
-
No index of choice was originally set, due to early stage development of the tool at the time
N/A
TOTAL 2021
-
-
55,010 media files uploaded
28 GLAM institutions using the Dashboard, of which 3 new Israeli GLAM inst. (total 5) and 23 International GLAM Inst.
Academic Institutes (annual target)
450
225
450 (300 new articles and 150 expansions)
15 courses
Marketing the project in at least 3 academic institutes
TOTAL 2021
557
372
404 (300 new and 104 expansions)
21
3
Wikidata (annual target)
100
80
4500
n/A
n/A
TOTAL 2021
56
56
~114,000
n/A
n/A
Miscellaneous
-
-
-
-
See comment #2 below the table
TOTAL 2021
-
-
54 new WLM articles,
58 articles “From a stub to a Featured Article”
1194 new WLM media files,
70 media files “From a stub to a Featured Article”
28 media files on “Articles with no Photo” project - (lead image)
-
Capacity Building and Skill Development (annual target)
23 unique
-
-
-
TOTAL 2021
26
Total annual target for all programs
2038
1009
New articles
1,297
Expansions 178
Gnomings 580
Wikidata 4,500
Total 2021 for all programs
1941
1028
New articles
2,758
Expansions 351
Gnomings 453
New images
56,302
Wikidata items
~114,000
-
#1 - Owing to difficulties in the functioning of the Arabic-speaking educational system, in light of the Covid-19 challenges, some schools could not fully implement the program and some even abandoned it altogether. In addition, the change of personnel in the position of Coordinator for Arabic Educational Program caused low activity in Arabic-speaking schools during the fall semester (September-December), therefore, new content pages were not added during the year’s second half. The activity during that time focused on recruiting new schools, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, and its implementation started in December 2021. Products are expected to be seen during 2022 (further details in 3.2).
#2 - This section refers to projects whose implementation was not certain at the time of drafting the work plan (due to the uncertainty caused by the Covid-19 restrictions or to initiatives proposed by volunteers’ during the year). Quantitative assessment in advance was therefore impossible
2 new articles/significant expansions, 28 Wiki-gnomings
Running 2-3 rounds of the Wikipedia editing course for women
Organizing 2-3 editing events for creating content about women, in cooperation with different organizations, and with the participation of 20 people.
TOTAL 2021
55
54
20 new articles/
137 significant expansions, 3 Wiki-gnomings
2 rounds of the Wikipedia editing course for women completed
2 editing events completed with the participation of 21 people
Program name:Senior Citizens
(annual target)
110
70
415 new articles/significant expansions,
580 Wiki-gnomings
Integration of course graduates in the he-wp community and in WMIL’s community of volunteers
Following the online senior citizens' editing course: lesson learning and implementation of 4 most desired changes.
TOTAL 2021
110
78
1881 new articles/
218 significant expansions,
316 Wiki-gnomings
Completed:
Course graduates were invited to 14 community and chapter events and 4 content-creation initiatives. About 65 of them took part.
3 course graduates were recruited as new volunteers, 5 were fostered as veteran volunteers
Achieved
Total annual target for all programs
165
124
new articles/
significant expansions
417
Wiki-gnomings 608
-
-
Total annual for all programs
165
132
new articles
1901
significant expansions
355
Wiki-gnomings 319
-
-
The Program’s Rationale
Narrowing gender gaps on he-wp and other Wikimedia projects:
Narrowing the demographic gap, i.e. recruiting more female editors and encouraging the persistence of existing female editors
Narrowing the content gap, i.e. encouraging the addition of quality content related to women, feminism and gender
The Program’s Status: Satisfactory progress.
Further details: During 2021, a significant progress was made toward finalizing an effective mode of operation for this program. Directions of activity that had been proved less effective were abandoned or minimized, and the focus was turned to the new channel of activity, namely courses for women only, which has been proved especially fruitful. There are, nonetheless, some further challenges, as detailed below.
What’s been done? Achievements & Highlights
Women’s editing course:
We launched a special women-only version of our editing course. Two rounds of this version were completed, in which 34 female participants graduated successfully.
In these women-only rounds of the editing course, the average satisfaction rate among those who answered the feedback survey was 4.75 on a scale of 1-5.
Adjustments to the content and design of the course’s marketing materials were made, and new marketing materials were developed, in order to recruit participants to the women-only rounds.
We used many ways to foster our relations with female graduates, such as sending information and calls for action, invitations to events, holding advanced courses to enrich their knowledge and offering ongoing support.
We added a female volunteer to the course’s team, as we observed that female participants felt more comfortable to direct questions to other women. This volunteer has become a pillar of the course’s team and a main address for the course’s participants and graduates.
Ahead of the International Women’s Day, we launched a campaign that celebrates women’s activities for free content (further details under “Marketing”).
We continued our cooperation with the Artport Tel Aviv art center and held an editing marathon about women in art with it.
In cooperation with Wispace, which promotes the participation of women in the Israeli space industry, we held a two-meeting workshop for writing articles about women in the field of space research.
Our programs for the educational system and the academy included four projects focused on women, feminism and gender. Three of them targeted young women and one was meant for youths in general but focused on writing articles about women.
Challenges
Working with the course graduates is a significant aspect of the vision of the women’s courses. We hoped to foster the graduates as individual editors and as part of a community of female editors, which will provide support and a sense of belonging, and which will offer them the option to join forces for a joint action. In practice, the available working hours of the course’s team is too limited to offer all of the support we wished to offer to the course’s graduates.
In the 2021 work plan, we included a goal of forming a leading volunteers’ forum for the Wiki-Women project. It was meant to provide a wide basis for the project in both the conceptual and planning aspect and the practical leadership aspect. However, we realized that most of the volunteers recruited to this forum did not have enough available time for this kind of activity, and finding other volunteers was too difficult. We therefore turned to other directions, at least for the time being.
Lessons learned
Traditionally, we used to include special edit-a-thon events, open to the general public, in the Wiki-Women project. During this year, we realized that while these events served the purpose of raising awareness of the project and the chapter, they tended to fail when it came to producing a significant amount of products and turning the participants into persistent Wikipedians. We therefore decided to focus on the model of women-only editing courses. We will continue to hold special public events, but in a smaller number and in a format that will focus specifically on raising awareness.
What's next?
Further rounds of the women-only editing course for female senior citizens, and perhaps also for other female audiences with high potential of becoming permanent editors
Continuing to foster the course’s graduates, subject to available resources
to strengthen and diversify he-wp’s core of editors;
to contribute to the creation of a large amount of diversified quality content on he-wp;
to expand WMIL’s team of volunteer instructors.
The program includes two channels: (1) a WP editing course, which includes both group and one-on-one guidance; (2) an advanced track of support, additional information and volunteer activities offered to course graduates (see Impact Report 2019 under “Community Support” for more details).
The Program’s Status
Very good. The first channel of the program, namely the editing course, is thriving. This channel has seen a great deal of growth thanks to content and methodological development carried out mostly during 2020, and thanks to the expansion of its leading circle.
The second channel, namely the support and activities offered to graduates, has not been as active as we expected and did not fully meet the demand owing to the limited working hours which the course’s team could dedicate for it.
What’s been done? Achievements & Highlights
(1) The online editing course:
Following a successful pilot in 2020, the online editing course has been established as a significant channel of activity.
Three successful rounds of this course were completed. The average satisfaction rate among those who answered the feedback survey is 4.7 on a scale of 1-5. (Note: Two additional rounds were dedicated to women only, and are therefore reported under “Wiki-Women” above.)
We conducted another round of improvements in the instructional methodology (see 2021 Progress Report).
We launched an intense process for arranging the body of knowledge related to the management of this field: We wrote working procedures, documented the modus operandi and mapped the relevant folders and documents.
We carried out the process of uploading the course to the CampusIL platform of the National Digital Israel Initiative.
We expanded significantly the circle of people engaged in this course: We recruited and trained a free-lance expert instructor. This move allowed us to maintain this important field of activity even when the team member who led it took a parental leave. Also, other team members became much more involved in various aspects of this course (instruction, administrative issues, marketing etc). Additionally, three volunteers were recruited and trained to join the team of volunteer instructors who lead the course.
(2) The graduates’ track:
We continued to offer support for graduates of the previous editing-course rounds, upon their requests.
We sent messages to graduates with suggestions to join various editing projects, and invitations to the chapter’s community events and special educational activities.
With the help of the course’s volunteers, we developed and launched a series of follow-up meetings, to introduce advanced and more complicated editing tools.
Challenges
The limited amount of available working hours of the course’s team members is a bottleneck which reduces our ability to expand and develop the senior-citizen program. This is especially relevant to the graduates’ track. We have plenty of ideas on how to expand our work with the course’s graduates, but the limited amount of available working hours does not allow us to implement most of them. Therefore, the potential of our relationship with the graduates is still not exhausted.
During the second half of 2021, the Israeli media published some critical opinions about the community of the Hebrew Wikipedia editors. Some course graduates deeply identified with these opinions and expressed their frustration about the manners of conduct in the he-wp community. Apparently, this sense of frustration makes them reduce their editing activity and sometimes even cease their activity completely.
Lessons learned: Methodological and content improvements in the editing course - see 2021 progress report.
What's next:
Further implementation of the program and expansion of our cooperations with the leading third-age organizations in Israel, in order to better market it and raise awareness of this activity among the relevant audiences
Creation of a document with suggestions on how to develop the senior-citizen activity field, ahead of fundraising for this purpose
In cooperation with the Beit Ekstein organization, which provides services for people with disabilities: an editing course adjusted to a new audience, namely high functioning people on the autistic spectrum
Several classes could not complete the project due to Covid-19 restrictions.
No. of Newly registered
380
300
400
No. of Articles / Content pages
380
300
391 new articles (88 Wiktionary, 303 Wikipedia)
We reached our goal thanks to our activity with the Science-Oriented Youth program, which took place during 2021 in two rounds, rather than one, since the 2020 activity had been postponed to 2021.
Index of choice (1)
30 classes
25
30 classes
Index of choice (2)
26 teachers (8 new)
25
27 teachers (9 new)
The program’s rationale:
Initiating editing projects on he-wp and he-wiktionary in the Hebrew-speaking educational system, for the sake of enriching available free content, in many fields, while also improving the students’ academic writing skills.
The program’s status:
Despite many challenges resulting from the Covid-19 crisis, the program reached 105% of its annual goal. In addition, the program included a special teachers’ training for the first time.
What’s been done?
30 classes completed the project and wrote a total of 391 articles (303 he-wp articles and 88 he-wiktionary entries).
Long-term strategic partnerships: We continued our efforts to create long-term cooperations with institutes and schools. We developed a cooperation with programs for civic studies that serve as an alternative to the civic matriculation exam: 4 classes are part of this pilot project in close cooperation with the MOE’s civic studies mentor. We enhanced our cooperation with the Unit for Science-Oriented Youth at Tel Aviv University.
Our cooperation with Yad Vashem reached a higher level - During the school year of 2020-21, this cooperation led to 17 new articles on he-wp about various aspects of the Holocaust. During this school year (2021-22), a list of potential articles and sources of information has already been prepared for students of 4 classes in two schools. We expect dozens of new articles about the Holocaust by the end of this school year. In the framework of this cooperation, we also planned and carried out an innovative first-of-its-kind teachers’ training course, which is described in detail under “Capacity Building and Skill Development”.
During the first semester of 2021, three different schools wrote 26 articles about Israeli laws. This work has a special importance for both the students and WP users. Writing an article about a statute requires acquaintance with the legal language, which is different from the common language, and developing awareness of civil issues. As for the users of WP, such an article offers them a better understanding of its content, the problems it serves to solve and the dilemmas it may reflect.
Achievements and Highlights
A pilot project with the Tamar Program for civic education - This pilot was launched following a careful planning process. The Tamar Program is based on the concept of a research study as an alternative to the Bagrut (matriculation) exam in civics. Students who participate in this pilot project are requested to conduct a study about a subject of their choice related to civic education, and expand at least one Wikipedia article about this subject in addition to their submitted work. Most of the subjects chosen are already covered by the Hebrew Wikipedia, but their articles lack important aspects of the topic. We therefore ask the students to add paragraphs to the relevant article rather than write a new article from scratch. In the framework of this pilot project, we defined the various stages of this work: Choosing an appropriate topic, checking how to integrate it in a WP article, writing a review of the literature on the topic, adjusting the information found to the encyclopedic style of writing (conciseness, neutrality, using only reliable data etc), and finally, adding the information to WP.
During 2021, we continued to work with diverse audiences of students: Groups of gifted students, students from the center, as well as from geographical or social peripheries. This includes an Arabic-speaking Bedouin school, whose students wrote in Hebrew about topics related to the Bedouin community and culture.
We collected feedback from all of the students who participated in this project. The students were asked about the contribution of the project to their education and their level of satisfaction with the guidance they had received. The results show that over 80% said the project had a “significant” or “very significant” contribution.
We continued our policy, which we initiated in the previous school year, of requesting a token payment from school to secure their commitment. Most of the schools were willing to pay.
During the school year of 2021-22, we slightly reduced the number of classes participating in the program, compared with previous years, to allow the introduction of new activities, particularly teachers’ training, which serve as force multipliers for the continuation of the program and its expansion. See more details at “Capacity Building and Skill Development”.
Challenges: Working during the Covid-19 crisis
The Covid-19 crisis had an impact on all projects in the educational system. During the first half of 2021, 15 classes left the project as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, particularly, due to poor acquaintance of the teachers with their students (some of them did not meet the students face to face until April 2021), limitations of the remote teaching method and the frequent changes that occurred in the teaching schedule. Nevertheless, several classes joined the he-wiktionary project (which is shorter in time). Also, during 2021, two rounds of the Science-Oriented Youth program joined the he-wp program, which enabled us to reach the annual goal of products.
What's Next?
We intend to hold another teacher-training course during 2022, which will be open to all teachers who seek in-depth knowledge about the “Students Write Wikipedia” program and wish to experience the process.
We plan to continue the civic-studies pilot project and analyze its results, in order to spread this model of work to more classes during the next school year.
We intend to broaden our fields of activity and include at least two classes that will expand and improve articles about the Hebrew Bible.
The number of participants includes both students and teachers in the 20 schools recruited at the end of 2021.
No. of Newly registered
200
111
124
Including 13 students who participated in the new program in cooperation with the MOE, which was already implemented during 2021.
No. of Articles / Content pages
200
67 articles (38 new article, 29 improved)
67 articles (38 new article, 29 improved)
The amount of products was limited due to challenges resulting from the Covid-19 crisis and its ramifications on the functioning of Arabic-speaking schools (further details below).
Activities in Arabic-speaking schools during the fall semester (September-December 2021) did not take place due to the handover of the coordinator position to a new employee. Therefore, new content pages were not added during the second half of the year. The activity during that time focused on recruiting new schools in cooperation with the MOE according to a new method of work that has been implemented since December 2021. The products of this activity will be seen during 2022.
Index of choice (1)
N/A
8 groups
8 groups
The number includes:
Groups of students from different classes who joined the project in the framework of their social engagement program.
A group of students from a Bedouin NGO
A group of teachers who participated in a specially designated teachers’ training course (20)
Index of choice (2)
15 teachers, 5 returning
6 returning teachers,
10 new connections were created
10 returning teachers,
19 new teachers
In addition:
3 pedagogical instructors (senior teachers) support the project on behalf of the MOE.
About the program
The “Students Write Wikipedia in Arabic” program underwent several substantial changes in the past year, most notably, its handover to a new coordinator and a new implementation method, which constitutes a major strategic progress. We initiated and developed a cooperation with the Ministry of Education’s chief nationwide inspector of the Arabic-language studies for Arabic-speaking schools. This cooperation allowed us to hold a first teachers’ training course for 20 high-school teachers of Arabic-speaking schools across the country. As a result, by the end of the year, we started to implement the program in the framework of the “alternative evaluation” program, thus making it for the first time part of the Bagrut (matriculation) grade, as an alternative to certain exams, at a level of 30%. Unlike the conventional matriculation exam, “Students Write Wikipedia” evaluates the students’ ability to implement their acquired knowledge and skills in real-world conditions, outside their school. This move is part of a growing trend, which marks the recognition of Wikipedia as a platform for substantial learning. We will see its first fruits during 2022.
The Program’s Rationale
Promoting educational usage of ar-wp’s contents in the Arabic-speaking educational system, and encouraging the students to become producers of free content based on digital literacy, rather than mere consumers of content. The program promotes the creation of rich and diversified content on ar-wp, based on topics chosen together by the teachers and the coordinator. The teachers learn how to implement ar-wp editing pedagogically and instruct their students on how to locate quality reliable sources of information, how to read the sources critically, and how to implement their skills in writing an encyclopedic article. The chapter offers them help and support throughout the editing process up until the uploading of the articles to Wikipedia.
The program’s status:
The Covid-19 restrictions and the limitations they imposed on the educational system’s activities during most of 2021, as well as the time we needed to find a new coordinator and hand over the position, did not allow us to meet the quantitative goals of content creation originally set for this program (further information below about the consequences of the Covid-19 crisis). Nevertheless, the program underwent a significant upgrade, as detailed above. As a result, schools are now recruited for this program directly by the Ministry of Education, which also supports every stage continuously through its pedagogical instructor and local instructors, who help the chapter’s coordinator.
What’s been done?
During the first half of the year, the program was implemented in 10 schools, most of them in the framework of their social engagement activities. In light of the Covid-19 conditions, the program’s activity was not consistent, but despite that, 67 ar-wp articles were written or improved.
In June, the first teachers’ training course related to this program was conducted, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education.
At the end of June 2021, the previous coordinator left this position. Recruitment of a replacement took longer than expected due to the Covid-19 restrictions. The new coordinator took the position at the beginning of September 2021. Her first two months were dedicated to learning the various aspects of the job. At the same time, we started promoting the second stage of our cooperation with the MOE (recruiting schools), following the teachers’ training course in June.
By the end of the year, the MOE recruited 15 new schools to the program. Further 5 were recruited by the new coordinator. Some of these schools are returning participants.
Overall, the program was implemented during 2021 in 30 Arabic-speaking schools, which is the largest number ever. The products of the second half of 2021 will be seen in 2022.
This year, for the first time, the program was implemented in cooperation with the Siraj organization, which operates in the southern part of the country and supports students from the Bedouin community.
The development of contents and instructional materials is detailed in 4.1.2 Development of the Instructional Materials.
What's Next?
Further implementation of the program in 20 schools that joined the program through the MOE or through us
Examining the feasibility of recruiting more schools for the second half of 2022
Developing a first-of-its-kind online editing course for ar-wp
Challenges: The COVID-19 pandemic and Education Projects
The effect of the Covid-19 crisis on the Arabic-speaking educational system was particularly harsh, hence the opportunities to implement the program according to the preplanned parameters were limited. Numerous challenges were encountered, among them:
Several schools abandoned the program during the first half of 2021 due to poor functioning of the school. It was hard to convince them to continue the program in a distance-learning format.
The communication between teachers and students was particularly harmed. Teachers could not get acquainted with their students through face-to-face meetings and had a hard time communicating with the students and following their advancement. Schedules and curricula were not adequately followed.
Many high-school students dropped out. Many teachers and students fell ill and had to stay away from school during the year, sometimes more than once.
Social-distancing regulations forced us to hold the meetings between the coordinator and the teachers online, which hindered the implementation of the program.
Near the end of the school year (June 2021) communication improved as teachers grew more willing to hold the activities online (owing to the experience they already acquired and in light of the necessity). This development enabled us to complete the projects we had started, but on a lower scale than planned.
The ar-wp community does not have many members among the Arabic-speaking society of Israel. This means that WMIL’s Arabic-speaking coordinator has to carry most of the workload on her own.
Academic Institutes
Metric
Annual goal
Progress (H1)
Annual Performance
Comments
No. of Participants
450
394
557
No. of Newly registered
225
227
372
No. of Articles / Content pages
450 (300 new articles and 150 expansions)
248 (185 new, 63 expansions)
404 (300 new and 104 expansions)
Index of choice (1)
15 courses
20
21
Index of choice (2)
Marketing the project in at least 3 academic institutes
n/A
3
Our higher education program is focused on supporting lecturers who incorporate a Wikipedia assignment in their course, using a standard modus operandus, which we developed in 2017 (See Progress report, 2017). In 2021, however, partly as a response to the Corona crisis and subsequent changes in academic forms of education, we tried several collaborations that employ a different working mode (see Impact report, 2020). At the University of Haifa’s Honours program, in a course about encyclopedias and knowledge, the students received a four-part Wikipedia training. At the Hebrew University, a collaboration with the Center for Disability Studies involved students who received a scholarship for participating in this project. The Life Sciences project is a collaboration with the Life Science faculty at the Tel-Aviv University and the Life Sciences department at the Ben-Gurion University, in which any biology student – from second-year undergraduate to advanced graduate (Master) students – can write a Wikipedia article under the supervision of a faculty member and receive academic credit for it.
As we noted in the Progress report, the collaboration with the Honours program did not proceed as expected, and while the participants found the project interesting and reported a positive experience, we conclude that the effort and involvement of WMIL’s academic coordinator was not commensurate with the course products, and the feasibility of scaling up this type of collaboration is low. The collaboration with the Center for Disability Studies was more successful, although the initial goal the organizers had – that each participant would write two articles – turned out to be unrealistic in the time frame of the project. Furthermore, most participants only contributed one article and did not continue editing. Nevertheless, we intend to continue this collaboration in 2022 with participants who are already activists for disability rights, so that their motivation to continue contributing to Wikipedia is potentially higher.
After a rather slow start, the Life Science project at the Tel-Aviv University started to pick up pace. This is partly due to the support of two project assistants funded by the Social Involvement unit at the Dean of Students Office. The assistants’ role is to mediate between the students and their supervisors and WMIL’s academic coordinator, and to ensure that the work is written in form and content that are suitable to Wikipedia, and not as a “regular” seminar paper.
In addition to these new types of collaborations, we have seen more lecturers who do not require our full support, and work more independently. Some are lecturers who participate in the program for a while and therefore already have some experience, while others rely on our teaching materials and chart their own specific course. One such lecturer is Prof. Sigal Tifferet from the Ruppin Academic Center, who used a Wikipedia assignment – specifically, expanding a stub – in a freshman course to develop academic skills, such as information literacy, independent learning and digital literacy. Her teaching model was presented at the 46th International Conference on Improving University Teaching. Other lecturers that joined the program this year include Dr. Moshe Blidstein from the University of Haifa with a course on Roman History, Idan Barir with a course on modern day Iraq and Lee Mordechai teaching Byzantine history – both at the Hebrew University – and Dr. Tal Goldrath with a course on energy production systems at the Shenkar of Engineering and Design.
In total there were 21 courses in which a Wikipedia assignment was used. We were pleased to see eight lecturers from previous years who chose to continue using the Wikipedia writing assignment in their course. The collaboration at the Kibbutzim College of Education in which history students research historical pictures on Commons (see Education Newsletter, August 2020) also continued in 2021, and will run again in 2022. Dr. Tehila Hertz continued the Wikishtetl project, with a writing competition like last year, which resulted in 60 new and expanded articles about about Jewish communities that perished in the Holocaust (See Events section).
Finally, Shani Evenstein-Sigalov, who has been teaching Wikipedia courses to students at the Tel Aviv University since 2013, taught for the second time the all-campus elective course titled “From Wikipedia to Wikidata”, as well as the Wiki-Med course for the 8th year running.
One of our goals for 2021 was to promote the Wikipedia student assignment to at least three institutes to broaden the audience of academics involved in the program. In this context, we identified two academic fields in which we estimate there will be more interest in the assignment – women and gender studies, and environmental and sustainability studies. These are both areas in which there is a knowledge gap on Hebrew Wikipedia and therefore creating a body of knowledge would have a clear and immediate impact. Moreover, these are areas in which lecturers and students are often to some degree activists for the cause and that may contribute to their motivation to join our program.
We contacted the heads of the Gender Studies programs at the Ben-Gurion University and at the Bar-Ilan University suggesting to present the Wikipedia assignment to the program staff. At both universities the response was quite positive. The head of the Ben-Gurion program agreed to use the assignment in a course she will be teaching in 2022, as she wanted to have her own experience before suggesting it to her staff. At the Bar-Ilan University the faculty meeting in which we would present the assignment was supposed to take place in December 2021, but was canceled due to the Omicron wave. We will schedule a new date for 2022.
WMIL’s academic coordinator also met with the head of the Department of Environmental studies at the Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Tel Aviv university. At this meeting we concluded that learning how to write Wikipedia articles could be suitable for students who are interested in environmental politics, and may be offered as an option for the 120 hours practicum which is a mandatory part of the studies. In October 2021 the academic coordinator presented this option in the Porter practicum fair, to a group of around 15 students.
Our goal was based on the planned collaboration with the Ministry of Education
No. of Newly registered
80
38
56
Our goal was based on the planned collaboration with the Ministry of Education
No. of Articles / Content pages
4500
2383
~114,000
Index of choice (1)
5 “data and information” classes.
n/A
n/A
Our goal was based on the planned collaboration with the Ministry of Education
Index of choice (2)
A training course for the teachers of these classes about Wikidata in general
and the Wikidata 10th-grade project in particular.
n/A
n/A
Our goal was based on the planned collaboration with the Ministry of Education
This program focuses on promoting collaborations for content creation and enrichment of Wikidata. Because there is currently no established Wikidata community in Israel, the program focuses on collaborating with relevant audiences in academia, the education system and GLAM institutions.
Academia
Despite our efforts (see Capacity Building and Skill Development section) we did not succeed in creating new collaborations for content creation in 2021. There is currently only one university in Israel that offers Information Studies (the Bar-Ilan university). Although a Wikidata internship was one of the options their program’s students could choose from, we did not receive any applications from suitable candidates.
Wikidata content was created in Shani Evenstein-Sigalov’s courses at the Tel Aviv University, in which 237 new items were created and statements edited on another 190 existing items.
High schools
As noted in the Progress report, due to budgetary issues, the collaboration with the Ministry of Education in the “Information and Data” matriculation track (previously known as Cyber Informatics) could not proceed as planned. The ministry halted all teachers’ trainings, and therefore the planned Wikidata teachers’ training (an 8-part online training by WMIL’s Wikidata coordinator) has been postponed to an unknown date. Our pilot study last year has indicated that without proper training teachers are unable to guide their students through the project. Consequently, our goal of having 5 classes participating in the collaboration could not be achieved.
GLAM
The majority of content creation in2021 was part of the ongoing collaboration with the National Library, to synchronize their National Authority File with Wikidata. After a successful pilot with publishers data, the project took off in earnest in September, when WMIL’s volunteers began with massive uploads. More than 110,000 items were edited and 646 new items were created, adding a total of ~ 65 MB of data.
The collaboration with the Israeli Film archive was delayed several times due to various reasons, but the first data is planned for upload in Q1 of 2022.
No. of new Institutes uploaded to the GLAM Wiki Dashboard
0
28 GLAM institutions using the Dashboard, of which 5 Israelis and 23 International GLAM Inst.
At the time of preparing the work plan, the development of the dashboard was in its very early stages, therefore we could not estimate when we could start uploading GLAM users’ media files to the dashboard and to what extent. Accordingly no quantitative goal was set. (This comment also applies to the matrix below)
Images uploaded to the Commons
0
55,010
IDF Spokesperson Archive - 2458 media files
The National Library of Israel - 48,500 media files
Files uploaded through the Israeli Pikiwiki project in cooperation with the Israel Internet Association and WMIL - 4052
The GLAM Wiki Dashboard, reached its technological prototype and friendly UX design stage during early 2021. This phase enabled us to start uploading to this platform diverse GLAM end-users who turned to us and can now follow the usage of their free-content files, uploaded to Wikimedia projects, and their overall impact. It also provides us with important feedback that helps validate ideas that can be tested in the next stage of the development process. By the end of 2021, 28 GLAM institutes are using the tool, including 5 from Israel, and 23 from around the world (Sweden, Brazil, Belgium, USA, Argentina and Portugal) Additional institutions are in process of adopting it. The tool has already been translated into 5 languages. An interesting collaboration was also created between our development team and the Brazilian User Group development team aimed at improving features. We will be happy to explore additional such collaborations and invite interested colleagues from the movement to touch base with us.
A feedback survey we have conducted during the second half of 2021 among the Dashboard users, identified a very high level of satisfaction. Wikimedia Argentina digitization project coordinator, for example, wrote the following: “This project has a really big potential not only for the GLAM partners, but every chapter who works with them. It already fulfilled in the actual state most of the necessities we have around reporting success (or not) to our partners, avoiding the need to fetch all the data manually with 3 or 4 tools then process it in a human readable report, or teaching them how to use them, with the extra that sometimes they temporarily don't work. From the Culture and Open Knowledge Program of Wikimedia Argentina, and especially the Digitization Project, which I have been leading for the last 5 years, we strongly endorse the development of this tool under the lead of Wikimedia Israel".
Our activity in this field is focused on the development and cultivation of training infrastructure that is essential for all WMIL activities. This includes two main aspects: (1) the instructional team (i.e., the human resources engaged in training, namely team members and our main group of volunteers), (2) our instructional materials, tools and resources.
Program’s status and main challenges
Our instructional program reached various significant accomplishments, particularly in methodology and development of materials, both in the Hebrew- language educational program and the Arabic-language one, as well as in the senior-citizens program (see details below).
Upgrading the instructional material about encyclopedic writing, while adapting it to the various audiences and programs we have
Not completed yet
Not completed yet
The combination of general workload, the challenging conditions of the Covid-19 crisis, and the parental leave of the team member who led the process, did not allow us to complete the venture during the current year.
Index of choice (2)
Development and upgrading of materials for the educational system programs dealing with Wikipedia in Hebrew and Arabic and with Wikidata
Completed
Completed (Exceeded the planned)
Certain processes we led in recent time have ripened and allowed us to hold, for the first time, two unique teachers’ training courses, one in the framework of the “Students Write Wikipedia in Hebrew” program, the other was part of the “Students Write Wikipedia in Arabic” program (details below).
Hebrew educational program
Yad Vashem ViewCooperation with Yad Vashem in developing a training course for teachers:
During November and December 2021, we planned and carried out with Yad Vashem (the Holocaust remembrance center) a first of its kind teachers’ training program. The target audience was history teachers who participated in the Tamar program of the state’s religious educational system. These teachers were highly experienced in leading students in research works that could serve as alternatives to certain Bagrut (matriculation) exams. The program included lessons about WP’s interface and its community, the reliability of information sources, as well as practical work, including writing an expansion for a he-wp article. This experience was made possible thanks to the Yad Vashem team’s hard work in preparing topics and appropriate information sources. The program also included a tour in Yad Vashem, which exposed the teachers to a lesser known corpus of knowledge resources.
Instructional materials: As part of our preparations for the pilot project of writing articles about civic studies during the school year of 2021-22, and as part of our cooperation with the MOE's Tamar program (which offers an alternative to certain matriculation exams), we wrote detailed guidelines about the requirements of the project, which include the appropriate topics and the required processes of research and writing. These guidelines serve as a reference for the teachers who lead the project and to help them understand its standards and objectives.
Arabic educational program
We developed for the first time a training course for teachers of the Arabic-language education system, about the pedagogical applications of Wikipedia, approved and endorsed by the Ministry of Education and recognized for salary credit purposes (details under “Arabic Education Program”).
We upgraded a presentation meant for the educational teams involved in the “Students Write Wikipedia” program.
We developed a special work plan for teachers who conduct classroom lessons about the “Students Write Wikipedia in Arabic” program. The work plan is divided into 12 double lessons. Each lesson includes the specific content and the assignments for the students and the teacher. In this way, all teachers who participate in the program work according to clear standard milestones. The plan helps the teachers understand the steps ahead of them and implement the process at their own pace while keeping the school’s schedule.
We developed teacher’s guidelines for grading, which serve as an evaluation tool to assess the students’ performance in their article-writing assignments. The guidelines instruct the teachers on how to evaluate each component of the work in each of its stages, according to the process of writing a WP article.
Wikidata: In July 2021, the Brazilian Portuguese version of the tutorial website for the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) was launched, in collaboration with the Wikimedia Users Group in Brazil. This is the first translation of the tutorial in collaboration with another Wikimedia affiliate. Another collaboration is currently underway for Italian.
In 2021, we continued our efforts and dialogue with faculty members of academic programs from various academic institutions to include Wikidata as part of the curriculum in the field of data sciences. Despite the positive reactions around Wikidata, none of the stakeholders we met with was inclined to introduce it as part of the curriculum. Part of the problem is that no one has any practical experience with Wikimedia projects. In the absence of a thriving open-source community in Israel, and lacking Wikidata expertise, more incentive and reward are required to induce lecturers to include Wikidata as part of the data science curriculum.
We did introduce Wikidata to the staff of the Instructional Technology faculty at the Holon Institute for Technology, as Wikidata is quite relevant to their program, which trains students to effectively use information and communication technologies for learning, instruction and training in organizations and institutions. Following the meeting in December 2021, there is already one lecturer who will include a Wikidata assignment in her 2022 course.
In November 2021 Wikidata was presented to the Digital and Technological Information department at the Ministry of Justice, as part of a suggested project of creating a Wikibase instance for a Semantic Web Database for all Israeli laws.
During 2021, we raised public awareness of Wikimedia Israel’s activities and the Hebrew Wikipedia in various arenas, including systematic use of old and new social platforms, fostering existing partnerships and investing in new interorganizational ones, and maintaining our ongoing cooperation with the community of he-wp editors. In addition, several marketing projects of ours caught the local media’s attention (details below).
Our major events and projects during 2021 are as follows -
As every year, we celebrated with our community two anniversaries -
Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary was commemorated in an online meetup of 83 community members. We held a series of games focused on knowledge of Wikipedia. This celebration received wide media coverage, particularly in the local written press (Maariv, Davar, Haaretz and the magazine of the Hebrew University’s Department of Communication and Journalism).
The Hebrew Wikipedia’s 18th anniversary was commemorated in July in a community meetup of 65 Wikipedians aged 9 to 79. The meetup included trivia quizzes about Wikipedia and discussion groups for discussing community-related issues. We uncovered the WikiSwitch game initiated by WMIL and developed by two students from Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) as their graduation project with its close help and support.
In cooperation with the publicist Gideon Amichay, we initiated a special public-relation move on the occasion of he-wp’s 18th anniversary - a 30-second video that focuses on myth debunking. The idea was to stress the reliability of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia in light of the spread of fake news, by debunking well-established historical myths based on information available on Wikipedia articles. The film was broadcast several times, in different time slots, on Israel’s two leading TV channels (Channel 12 and Channel 13). It was also screened on the wall of the Azrieli skyscraper in Tel Aviv, where about a million people pass every day. In addition, the film was mentioned in an article on “Calcalist” and on “ice” communication magazine, which chose it as the best public-relation move of that week. The film was seen 7290 times on WMIL’s YouTube channel.
Editing competition “WikiShtetl” - This competition was held for the 5th time and received much more exposure this year. The participants write articles about Jewish communities that were eradicated during the Holocaust and started as an initiative of a lecturer from the Herzog College. This year, Yad Vashem joined as a partner, a move that increased the awareness of this project and its exposure. The partnership included a special help desk operated by Yad Vashem, where data and research materials could be collected for the purpose of writing the articles. Yad Vashem also hosted the moving ceremony which marked the end of the project in October 2021. The content yielded 60 new articles and was covered by the most widespread newspaper in Israel, Israel Hayom, as well as the Arutz 7 modern-orthodox magazine, Davar Rishon newspaper, and the online magazine of Israel’s biggest trade union “Hahistadrut”. Through these publications, “WikiShtetl” competition has become more relevant to larger and more diverse audiences.
On the occasion of the International Women’s Day, seven influential and leading women in WMF and WMIL’s activities were interviewed for a featured article on the chapter’s newsletter of March 2021. Women’s engagement in Wikipedia was promoted also in the following ways: new articles about women were written within the framework of the WikiProject - “Women in Red”; a new editing course for female senior citizens was launched as part of our commitment to increase the involvement of women in editing and creation of WP articles (more details under “Wiki-Women”, par. 2.1).
We launched an Instagram page for the Hebrew Wikipedia in April 2021. Within nine months, the page gained 550 followers, and made WMIL’s he-wp-related activities more accessible to hundreds of youths who had not been so intensely exposed to our activities before.
Wiki-Talk webinars - In 2021 we continued our webinar project and held ten meetings about Wikipedia-related topics, free content and other relevant issues. These meetings were moderated by the chapter’s partners, community members and the chapter’s team members. Turnout was 45 participants on average.
Wiki Loves Monuments - Within the framework of this photography contest, 1194 photos of heritage monuments were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. We continued our tradition of having an article-writing contest about these monuments in parallel. This contest yielded 54 articles about local and world heritage monuments.
Article improvement contest - Our traditional contest "From a stub to a Featured Article" Yielded in 2021 38 improved articles, 58 new articles and 70 new images.
Newsletters - During 2021, four users were sent to WMIL's diverse audience of followers and subscribers. In each quarter, a newsletter was sent to more than 5000 members of our mailing list.
Exposure to organic content on Facebook - During 2021, 6657 people were exposed to WMIL's Facebook page in each quarter (26700 people in total throughout the year). the number of page followers and likes remained stable. The exposure is organic and the content is not promoted or paid.
Resource development in 2021 has been very challenging. Some funds that were expected to be confirmed and received from a local Philanthropic Foundation, by mid-2021, have been postponed to the end of the year and spread over three years, instead of two years as originally planned. The decision regarding another grant designated to a different project that we were to receive at the end of the third quarter of the year was postponed to 2022
The process of fundraising and seeking income sources is conducted continuously throughout the year. Many of the local foundations, to which we appealed this year, rescheduled their decision-making deadlines due to internal issues. Replies for the 2021 applications submitted, remained in the pipeline, and are expected for 2022.
Despite the fundraising challenges we had this year, we were able to meet budgetary needs. This is mainly due to certain budget items whose use was reduced (such as a reduction in total wage expenses due to unstaffed periods created during recruiting processes of some of new staff member instead of the departing ones, and maternity leave period of one of the staff members, during which most wage expenses are paid by the National Insurance ), or activities that were originally budgeted but not realized - such as participation in the movement international conferences and reduced number of in-person activities.
Several organizational changes that took place this year:
Appointment of a deputy to the Executive Director: A new position that was staffed by one of the most experienced team members aimed at improving the chapter’s functioning and efficiency, while allowing future growth and development. Beyond the organizational aspect, this step sets a goal and puts an emphasis on the entire sphere of content and educational programs, as well as the development of our instructional capabilities, which constitute one of the chapter’s major strengths, to be further expanded in the future.
Human-resource changes: Replacements for the positions of Coordinator for Arabic Educational Programs and of Finance and Administration Coordinator have been appointed. A new Marketing and Events Coordinator was recently appointed as well ( already during 2022).
One member of the Board of Directors was replaced following the election held last June.
Table 2Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source
Currency
Anticipated
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Cumulative
Anticipated ($US)*
Cumulative ($US)*
Explanation of variances from plan
Balance 2020
ILS
250,000
349,954
349,954
74,295
103,999
The Covid-19 pandemic, which started in early 2020 and the many lockdown months, in which we worked mostly at home, caused the cancellation of all face-to-face activities and travels abroad. Part of the budget allocated for these purposes was not used, which left us with unplanned surplus.
Revenues from private donations
ILS
15,000
12,006
803
2,969
2,911
18,689
4,458
5,554
Sponsorships
ILS
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Foundations
ILS
367,750
36,720
10,009
32,692
157,077
236,498
109,288
70,282
Revenues from membership fees
ILS
1,000
580
360
0
0
940
297
279
Wikimedia Foundation
ILS
1,107,250
775,075
0
332,175
0
1,107,250
329,053
329,053
Revenues from collaborations
ILS
10,000
1,116
2,572
3,780
7,000
14,468
2,972
4,300
Revenues from courses
ILS
5,000
2,180
1,800
2,100
1,920
8,000
1,486
2,377
Round Up
ILS
125,000
30,018
21,340
32,590
47,914
131,862
37,148
39,187
Revenues from companies
ILS
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
In-kind Donations
ILS
(-)
Total revenues (should equal the sum of the rows):
ILS
1,881,000
1,207,649
36,884
406,306
216,822
1,867,661
558,996
555,031
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
$ Rate 0.29718
Spending during this period (12 months for impact report)
Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.
Table 3Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense
Currency
Budgeted
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Cumulative
Budgeted ($US)*
Cumulative ($US)*
Percentage spent to date
Explanation of variances from plan
Enhancing diversity
ILS
273,690
80,232
37,238
54,015
18,960
190,445
81,335
56,596
69.58%
The coordinator of this field took a parental leave, hence part of the budget allocated for her salary was not used.
Wikidata and Enhancing Content
ILS
103,103
28,910
13,508
21,391
20,355
84,164
30,640
25,012
82%
Education - Hebrew
ILS
187,205
58,964
30,170
50,669
33,552
173,355
55,634
51,518
93%
Higher Education
ILS
90,603
29,415
13,487
20,914
20,355
84,171
26,925
25,014
93%
Education - Arabic
ILS
221,205
58,649
34,537
4,271
44,818
142,275
65,738
42,281
64%
The process of recruiting a new coordinator for this field took several months, during which the position was vacant and the budget allocated for it unused.
Training
ILS
142,205
39,938
26,301
34,845
49,359
150,443
42,260
44,709
106%
Owing to replacement of personnel in this position, two handover periods occurred and increased the total cost of this item.
Free knowledge awareness
ILS
66,000
1,286
100
0
13,163
14,549
19,614
4,324
22%
A deferral of an approval of an anticipated grant for the development of the Dashboard, and uncertainty regarding the new deadline of the approval, forced us to limit the tool’s development activity and to focus on maintenance, marketing and minimal improvements.
Global engagement
ILS
41,000
842
1,684
1,896
4,475
8,897
12,184
2,644
22%
In light of the cancellation of the WMF’s conferences, to which most of this item’s budget was allocated, the use of this budget item was minimal.
As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No". YES
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 Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No". YES
Global metrics are an important starting point for grantees when it comes to measuring programmatic impact (Learning Patterns and Tutorial) but don’t stop there.
Logic Models provide a framework for mapping your pathway to impact through the cause and effect chain from inputs to outputs to outcomes. Develop a logic model to map out your theory of change and determine the metrics and measures for your programs.
