Grants:PEG/WM RS/Wikipedia in Schools 2012-2013/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY 2012-2013 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/WM RS/Wikipedia in Schools 2012-2013.

You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Compliance and completion

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?: Answer YES or NO.; YES

Is your project completed?: Answer YES or NO.; YES

Did you use any of the grant funds?: Answer YES or NO.; YES

Activities and lessons learned

This section describes what the grantee did, and what the grantee learned from implementing the project. This section should be useful to others implementing similar projects and is an opportunity for the grantee to reflect on the project's performance.

Work on this project this year included eight institutions. We learned that there are a lot of schools and faculties that were interested in the project and wished to participate, and that we needed to put more effort to get in touch with them and cooperate effectively. After this project, we have a clear vision of the next steps, ideas and working system for future involvement. On the other hand, we weren’t able to materialize all potential partnerships, because our group is small, and we need more time and people. One idea is to have one person employed and responsible for WMRS educational program, which would make cooperation with educational institutions much more effective.

Activities

Provide a detailed list of activities performed to complete this project, descriptions of these activities, and the amount of time spent on each activity. This section should also include a list of participants, or a link to pictures, blog posts, or videos from the project or event.: We made cooperation with the following institutions:

1. 7th Belgrade Gymnasium
2. 3rd Belgrade Gymnasium
3. Zemun Gymnasium
4. Faculty of Organizational Sciences
5. Faculty of Drama Arts
6. Faculty of Mining and Geology
7. Faculty of Mathematics
8. Faculty of Computer Sciences (Megatrend University)

We also worked on these topics:

9. Promotional material

7th Belgrade Gymnasium

Duration: December 2012 – May 2013

Participants: three classes on two subjects (Geography and English)

Number of participants: 62

Overall: Students involved in this project wrote 31 new articles about geography, biogeography and biographies in two different school subjects – geography and English language. Basic issues for students were understanding licenses and the importance of valid references and sources.

Link(s): Project page; Category page

3rd Belgrade Gymnasium

Duration: December 2012 – May 2013

Participants: two classes on one subject (Informatics)

Number of participants: 60

Overall: Students involved in this project wrote 71 new articles, some of which topic-less and some were about Pascal programming language and Informatics in general. Basic issues for students were understanding licenses and the importance of valid references and sources.

Link(s): Project page; Category page

Zemun Gymnasium

Duration: January 2013 – May 2013

Participants: one class on one subject (Informatics)

Number of participants: 11

Overall: Students involved in this project wrote only 3 new articles about geography, biography and history. Basic issues for students was understanding licenses and the importance of valid references and sources, but also elementary wiki-syntax.

Link(s): Category page

Faculty of Organizational Sciences and Faculty of Drama Arts

Duration: March 2013 – June 2013

Participants: three groups of students (Informatics)

Number of participants: 80

Overall: Students involved in this project wrote 34 new articles about different topics from all areas of human interest. Students generally didn’t have problems while writing their articles.

Link(s): Category page; Category page

Faculty of Mining and Geology

Duration: April 2013 – June 2013

Participants: one group of students (Introduction of We and Internet Techs, Construction and Analysis of Algoritms)

Number of participants: 30

Overall: Students involved in this project wrote 124 new articles about different topics from all areas of human interest and articles about geology. Basic issues for students were the lack of communication and the fact that Informatics is not their obligatory course, so they needed a little bit more workshops.

Link(s): Category page

Faculty of Mathematics

Duration: April 2013 – May 2013

Participants: two groups of students (Informatics)

Number of participants: 80

Overall: Students involved in this project wrote 238 new articles from the area of informatics and computer science. These articles were obligatory for students and they got grades for writing them. Students were mainly translating articles from English Wikipedia, so they were generally of very good quality.

Link(s): Project page; Category page

Faculty of Computer Sciences (Megatrend University)

Duration: February 2013 – June 2013

Participants: one group of students (Informatics)

Number of participants: 35

Overall: Students involved in this project wrote 18 new articles from the areas of geography, history, informatics, biographies etc. Basic problems for students were bad understanding of wiki-syntax, especially of text formatting. Also one of the problems was low interest for the involvement in the project.

Link(s): Project page; Category page

Conclusion

After this year Serbian Wikipedia got 501 new articles in a lot of different topics and areas. Many of them are very good and some of them could potentially become good or featured. This project overall was very successful based on the quality and quantity criteria. There is lot of space for future improvements, in terms of approach to project development. This year we set good foundations for this project, but the things we need to improve are as follows:

Number of workshops
Quality of workshops
Special focus on licenses, sources and references
Personal training and preparation

Promotional material

We updated, arranged, translated and prepared some promotional material for our educational purposes. This material is printed and we are using it for our lectures and workshops in schools and faculties.

Lessons learned

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects? Consider the following questions and respond with 1 - 2 paragraphs.

What went well?

The number of institutions, participants and new articles are good and positive. Student approach was good; students were interested and motivated to participate. Communication between students went very good. Communication with institutions and their representatives was also pretty well.

What did not go well?

Students had problems with understanding of licences, and the importance of sources and references. They also (but on a smaller level) had problems with the encyclopedic writing style.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

We would focus more on licencing, sources and references so that the students could understand the issue more easily.

Project goal and measures of success

This section should reference the project goals and measures of success described in the approved grant submission. See Grants:PEG/WM RS/Wikipedia in Schools 2012-2013 to review the goals and metrics listed in the approved submission.

Project goal

Provide the project goal here.: Local goals: The continuation of cooperation with educational institutions will enhance our educational program, attract new users and increase quality and quantity of articles on Wikipedia. Beside quality and quantity, Wikipedia will remain in educational institutions as a platform for sharing free knowledge.; Cooperation will also positively affect the type of volunteers who participate in the realization of the project. Successful results are also personal success and impulse for further work.; Global goals: Increasing of quality and quantity of a certain Wikipedia is firstly a success for users of that project, but also for global community. Every local educational program improves and gives legitimacy to global educational programs, which work on introducing Wikimedia projects in educational institutions.; Every global and local goal is directly or indirectly related to the mission and vision of Wikimedia movement and Wikimedia Foundation itself.
Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 paragraphs.: We successfully introduced the project in eight institutions, and we got 500+ new articles on Wikipedia. The number of articles reflects on the goal related to the quantity, and the article content met the quality goal. This project secured the path for future full-involvement of Wikipedia in schools and faculties in Serbia. We will follow and observe in the next period if there are any interested users/editors from our project.; This project positively affected the number of new articles and their quality, which is a global contribution to Wikipedia. Also we succeeded in explaining the importance of Wikipedia and Wikimedia mission to the participants and institutions, which was one of our global goals.

Measures of success

List the measures of success exactly as provided in the approved grant submission, and evaluate your project according to each measure listed there.

number of institutions that will cooperate with us
number of participants
number of new and/or improved articles

Provide an overall assessment of how your project went according to these measures.: According to these measures our project went very good, with a few parts which could be improved. Overall, this project was successful and very important for our educational mission.; Overall - 501 new articles, 8 institutions and 300+ participants are very good figures and a positive foundation for next similar projects.
If you were to plan a similar project, would you measure it differently? If yes, please explain how.: Yes, we would introduce quality metric for articles and every article should be graded on Wikipedia. Other measures would remain the same.

Impact

This section ties this project to Wikimedia's broader goals, and shows what the project accomplished.

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic goals? Please answer in 1 -2 paragraphs and include specific measures of impact such as the number of readers or editors reached by a particular project, or the number of articles edited or improved.

Stabilize infrastructure
Increase participation
Improve quality
Increase reach
Encourage innovation

The number of users has been increased because more than 300 students participated in the project. Article quality has been improved, because around 15% of 500 written articles could potentially become good or featured. With all these figures we succeeded to increase the number of readers, and also the visibility of Wikimedia project (especially Wikipedia) is on a higher level now.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".: YES

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.: These expenses should be listed in the same format as the budget table in your approved submission so that anyone reading this report may be able to easily compare budgeted vs. actual expenses.; Note that variances in the project budget over 10% per expense category must be approved in advance by WMF Grants Program staff. For all other variances, please provide an explanation in the table below.

No	Category	Actual total	Budgeted total	Currency	Notes
1	Working material & Promotional material for students	1,000.00	1,000.00	€
2	Communication and transport expenses	23.47	150.00	€	Transportation of material from printing office to WMRS office
3	Other	8.00	100.00	€	Bank fee
	Total	1,031.47	1,250.00	€

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission): € 1,250.00

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if the WMF grant is your only funding source): € 1,250.00 ($ 1,548.91)

Total amount spent on this project (this total should be the total calculated from the table above): € 1,031.47

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project (this total will be the same as the total amount spent if the WMF grant is your only funding source): € 1,031.47

Are there additional sources of revenue that funded any part of this project? List them here.: No

Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining?: Answer YES or NO.; YES

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)

€ 218.53

If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.

Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.

With this grant we financed activities until August, and next grant will (may) be available through FDC recommendation at the end of this year. So, we would like to use remaining funds for financing activities in that vacuum period (until the of year 2013).