Grants:PEG/FF portal/Recommendations/Faculty of Economics Skopje/Report

• Once a funded project is over, Flow Funding members and funded individuals/groups/entities are expected to report separately on how the money was spent and what impact was achieved using the form copied below.
• The Flow Funding coordinator will then seek community input to openly analyze the reports. Funds recipients will be subject to the WMF Grants Program reporting requirements.

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement? Yes.

Activities

Lecture about Wikipedia (8 April 2013)

• Event: Presentation about creating and editing a wikipedia article
• Date: 8 April 2013
• Time: 14:45-15:15
• Place: The Faculty of Economics Skopje
• Number of students at the presentation: approximately 150
• Presenter: Toni Ristovski (Ehrlich91)

The main purpose of this event was to introduce the students into the world of Wikipedia. A presentation was given about the key elements of creating and editing an article. There was a great interest about the project by this group of students, given the fact that their presence at the event was not mandatory. The number of the students is given according to the maximum capacity of the amphitheatre (350 seats).

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Lecture about Wikipedia (9 April 2013)

• Event: Presentation about creating and editing a wikipedia article
• Date: 9 April 2013
• Time: 09:45-10:15
• Place: The Faculty of Economics Skopje
• Number of students at the presentation: approximately 150
• Presenter: Toni Ristovski (Ehrlich91)

The main purpose of this event was to introduce the students into the world of Wikipedia. This presentation was held to the second group of students that have undertaken the subject Statistics for Business and Economics. As with the previous presentation, the key elements of creating and editing an article were explained here as well. The presence was not mandatory and there was also a great interest in this presentation. The number of the students is given according to the maximum capacity of the amphitheatre (350 seats).

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Lecture about "Vector Autoregressive and Vector Error Correction Models"

• Event: The main lecture named “Vector Autoregressive and Vector Error Correction Models”
• Date: 6 June 2013
• Time: 12:00-17:00
• Place: The Faculty of Economics Skopje
• Number of participants: approx. 50
• Lecturer: PhD. Igor Masten (professor at the University of Ljubljana)

The main purpose of this event was to share some of the newest theories and their applications in time series analyses. This is the first lecture with practical applications in which the audience could follow using a laptop. Once the lecturer was introduced with the project, he agreed to show the applications of the theories presented using an open source program called JMulti (which can be downloaded for free on www.jmulti.de). The lecture was open to just about anyone that is interested, free of charge. The structure of participants included professionals, teaching staff and most important-students (more than half of the participants).

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Project goal and measures of success

Project goal

The main goals of the project have been fulfilled: providing free knowledge to a wider audience and creating and expanding articles on Wikipedia in the field of Statistics.

Measures of success

Creating and expanding articles on the Macedonian Wikipedia

• Number of students engaged: 232 students
  • 222 students from the first year course "Statistics for Business and Economics" were given the task to work in pairs and create articles on mk.wikipedia.org on topics about statistics and famous statisticians.
  • 10 students from the upper class course "Time Series Analyses" were given the task each to create an article about various topics of time series analyses.
• 106 articles in the field of statistics were created and expanded (see the list at the end of this section).
• 1 professor including his assistant monitored the quality of the articles. The students were given extra points for creating better articles.
• 2 lectures given by Toni Ristovski (Ehrlich91) - a Wikipedian in which the main purpose was to teach the students the basics of creating and editing an article.
• As is mentioned before, the quality of the articles varies. However, more than half of the articles were middle-sized or large.

Providing free knowledge (lectures)

• 1 lecture given by PhD Igor Masten on the subject of “Structural Vector Autoregressive models”.

Lessons learned

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects?

•  ' Professors and other faculty staff were very supportive of the idea of free knowledge and helped the project a lot, making arrangements with the Faculty for the equipment and the place where the lecture was held. This kind of support and help could be found for future projects such as this one.
•  Oppose Wikimedia Macedonia was surprisingly not supportive of this project. Therefore the project continued as a separate one, supported by WMF but not Wikimedia Macedonia. Hope that similar future projects will be recognized and supported.
•  ' Few members of the Macedonian Wiki-community volunteered to help the execution of the project. Their enthusiasm helped the successful completion of the project and were a vital part of it.
•  Oppose When receiving funds on a private account, there are problems with paying tax. In the case of Macedonia the law does not cover "receiving grants on a private account" and I had consult the Government tax department to check if I do have to pay tax. Since the law is not clear on this particular case, the documentation is proof enough that there is no need to pay tax. The lesson is-check with tax authorities when receiving the grant on a private account.
•  ' Finding ways to promote and use open source software could prove very useful, as the participants of the final lecture were very supportive of it and also very interested.
•  ' A lot of new articles have been created on the Macedonian Wikipedia, which are here to stay. Creating content on other Wiki projects such as Wikibooks and Wikiversity.
•  ' The professor giving the lecture was impressed by the implementation of Wikipedia in the educational process. There was a great interest in implementing Wikipedia in his courses at the University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
•  Oppose Lack of time and volunteers. Although the individual help of volunteers has proved crucial during the project, there have been not enough volunteers. Future projects such as this one could involve more volunteers (with the support of Wikimedia Macedonia) and use the funds more efficiently by using more of the Wikimedia projects (as I mentioned before- Wikibooks and Wikiversity)
•  ' Guest lecturers (and people in general) have different eating habits. By being flexible with the number of meals ( and keeping to the limit of maximum meals planned) according to the guest's need, money can be saved.

What impact did the project have on WMF mission goals of Increased Reach, Increased Quality, Increased Credibility, Increased and Diversified Participation?

1. There have been around 200 students participating in creating the articles with most of them not having edited articles on Wikipedia before. This resulted in enlarging the mk.wikipedia.org community.
2. The creation of article was controlled by the Statistics professor which improved the quality of the statistics articles in Macedonian altogether.
3. As for the credibility of Wikipedia content, each of the articles was required to have relevant sources.
4. There is a possibility of implementing Wikimedia projects at the lecturer's University ( University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia).
5. There is a greater interest for Wikipedia by the professors at the Faculty of Economics for implementing creating articles as an activity.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

Did you send WMF documentation of all expenses paid for with grant funds? Yes.

Details of expenditures:

Date	Expense	Amount (MKD)	Amount (EUR)	Planned amount (EUR)
5 June 2013	Taxi from the airport to Skopje	900	14,70	25
5 June 2013	Welcoming lunch	5890	96	100
5 June 2013	Compensation	-	500	500
5 June 2013	Reimbursement for an air-ticket Ljubljana-Skopje-Ljubljana	-	248	244
6 June 2013	Accommodation	9440	153,50	150
6 June 2013	Coffee break	4120	67,20	100
6 June 2013	Meals for the lecturer	1930	31,50	60
6 June 2013	Taxi to the airport from Skopje	900	14,70	25
	Other expenses	0	0	216
	Total expenses	-	1.125,50	1420
	Remaining funds	-	294,50	0

Will you be requesting re-allocation of remaining grant funding? No.

Will you be returning unused funds to the Wikimedia Foundation? Yes.

Additional requests and related proposals

Please link to related grant proposals here: There are no additional requests and related proposals.