Grants:IEG/WOW! Editing Group/Timeline

This project is funded by an Individual Engagement Grant

Timeline for WOW! Editing Group

Timeline	Date
Project Begins	15 May 2015
Initiate Outreach to Local High Schools	1 June 2015
Design WOW! Editing Group Survey	20 June 2015
Send Out WOW! Editing Group Survey	1 July 2015
Begin Accepting Applications From High School and College Participants	30 July 2015
Begin Interviewing College Participants and Planning First Info Session	15 August 2015
Info Session at Barney's Burgers for High-School Aged Mentees	19 September 2015
WOW! Social #1 with a tutorial presentation on How to Edit Wikipedia by Wikipedia expert, Britta Gustafson	26 September 2015
WOW! Social #2 with a presentation on Women in Media and Fan Fiction by guest speaker, Abigail De Kosnik	10 October 2015
WOW! Social #3	7 November 2015
WOW! Social #4 with a presentation on Women in Computer Science by guest speaker, Justine Sherry	5 December 2015

Monthly updates

June

With the help of Wikipedia's Learning and Evaluation Team and a statistical psychology specialist, we designed a survey on SurveyMonkey to send to college-age women. The WOW! Editing Group Survey begins with a section to learn about the respondent -- from her basic information to her interests in and outside of school. The next section deals with her use of Wikipedia and editing experience. Finally, the last section explains a bit more about our project and gauges preliminary interest. If interested, respondents can leave their emails for future correspondence.

July

We researched student groups and organizations at UC Berkeley that were involved in feminist issues. Using preexisting contacts and establishing new ones, we sent out the survey to over 20 student groups and departments using their list serves and email lists. The survey was released July 1 and results are being accumulated through the beginning of August. We are also doing targeted outreach at several local high schools, including Berkeley High School, to begin recruiting high school women for the group.

August

We have begun accepting applicants from high school participants from Berkeley High School, College Prep, and Maybeck High School. About 15 students have applied so far and seem to have great enthusiasm for the project. We are reaching out to interested college participants and holding short phone call interviews. We are actively interviewing candidates for the new project assistant position. Finally, we are planning our first info session on Berkeley's campus with all interested high school and college participants.

September

On September 19, we hosted an info session at Barney’s Gourmet Burgers in Berkeley, with 12 attendees from Bishop O’Dowd, 5 from College Prep, 5 from Berkeley High, 3 from Albany High, 1 from Bentley High, and 4 from UC Berkeley (mentors). We had group introductions, Jill presented briefly on the program, girls discussed potential topics they were interested in editing and voted on potential T-shirt designs. We also created a private Facebook group for the WOW! participants to post Wiki articles they edited and challenges/successes in the process.

13 mentors from UC Berkeley and 25 high school students attended our first social on September 26. Our Wikipedia expert, Britta Gustafson presented a general tutorial to the participants on basic Wiki editing techniques. Afterwards we carried out a Q&A style discussion. As the editors began to experiment with editing on their own, they “flagged” their computers with post-it notes with questions written on them for Britta to answer out loud for the entire group by performing live editing using our projector and her laptop. This method permitted a fluid and interactive group dynamic and efficiently kept track of everyone’s questions. After the meeting, mentors and mentees formed small groups (of 2 or 3), with whom they planned to meet before the following social.

October

10 mentors from UC Berkeley and 20 high school students attended our second social on October 10. Abigail De Kosnik, an Associate Professor at UC Berkeley for the Berkeley Center for New Media and Department of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies presented on Women in Media and Fan Fiction and afterwards answered many questions from the participants. Britta Gustafson, our Wiki expert, taught the participants how to upload photos to Creative Commons and how to use Flickr to check copyright. Mentors and mentees worked in groups, formulating lists to work on individually and also in their groups.

Between socials, Tiffany Liu, the high school liaison from College Preparatory School, emailed out a follow up survey asking about what the girls thought of the speaker and what they liked about October’s social and what they would improve for the next social. All survey respondents raved about Gail. One respondent wrote, “I loved Gail's talk and her depth of knowledge on women in pop culture and media. I'd never known before that many corporations run by elite, white men bought fan fiction websites, and I really enjoyed Gail's explanation about the impact that has on fan fiction communities that are mostly women.” Regarding what they liked about the social, answers varied, but most respondents mentioned Gail, the opportunity to get to know their group further, and resources for editing. A few respondents wrote that they were having trouble figuring out what types of articles they should write/edit and would like more guidance.

November

On November 7, we hosted our third social. 5 mentors and 15 high school mentees attended. Our planned speaker, Grace Gipson an expert on Women in Comics and Black Superheroes, had to cancel last-minute, so we took the extra time to focus on working through challenges mentoring groups had experienced thus far. Together, we worked through common technical problems, such as figuring out how to customize information boxes in articles. To help the groups with the most common challenge of figuring out what to write/edit about, Jill led the group in creating a sample flow-chart, a brainstorming mechanism. Mentors and mentees then worked in groups on their editing projects.

Between socials, we sent out a survey to keep track of which small groups still needed to meet and of who could attend the last social.

December

5 mentors and 15 high school mentees attended our last social on December 5. Justine Sherry, a PhD student in Computer Science at UC Berkeley presented on Women in Computer Science and her personal work in computer networking, and then opened up the discussion to Q&A. Justine shared her Wikipedia talk page where she keeps a running list of women in computer science who need Wikipedia pages. Jill then guided an open discussion on the WOW! program (what worked, what didn’t, and what could be changed). Mentors and mentees then worked in groups on their editing projects.

Following the last social, we sent out a survey to gain reflections and feedback on the WOW! program.

Is your final report due but you need more time?

Extension request

New end date

Friday, March 18, 2016

Rationale

I'm taking extra time to provide a more detailed information about the project model in my report.

Looking forward to reading more about the model you've piloted! This request is approved. Cheers, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 4 March 2016 (UTC)