Grants talk:IEG/WOW! Editing Group/Final

comments from Thepwnco

Latest comment: 8 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

@Jsm0925 and Ajc831: Hello and thanks for your final report! Congratulations too on completing your project and reaching (and surpassing) some of your goals. Here are a few comments/questions I have:

Thanks for your refections on learning listed under what did and didn't work. Do you have any insights into what effect (if any) the Facebook group had on running a program like this? It sounds like Facebook could be a good tool for (informally) tracking edits but it'd be good to hear your thoughts on how the group contributed to/created an environment of peer support for participants.

We really struggled to find a networking/communications platform that everyone was on. Some people used Facebook, others asked me to communicate via Instagram! Some preferred email , others did not. I'll write some reflections on that! Jsm0925 (talk)

Can you provide information about how often small editing groups met outside of socials? Did most manage to meet at least once between socials as requested? I'm also curious to know if the 100+ articles were mostly created during small group meetings, at the socials, or by individual participants on their own time?

Editing groups were required to meet one time between socials. Often they met once and then worked remotely and collaboratively using texts and emails. We thought the socials would be edit-a-thin-like in nature, but they were used to learn more about editing and for the group to bond and get inspired by guests. I will clarify in the report text. Jsm0925 (talk)

I look forward to seeing more content added to the project resources section. Do you plan on including an overview of survey results both from the initial outreach survey and the final survey? This data could provide good lessons for others interested in forming editing groups or running a similar program.

The project assistant is working on a document that will summarize the results of our survey. We no longer have access to the raw data from the survey company.'" Jsm0925 (talk)

Did the final survey ask participants about the intentions to keep editing after and outside of WOW! Editing Group program? If not, do you have any thoughts on editor retention and sustainability following the end of your project?

Our information is anecdotal - mostly drawn from conversations we had with participants throughout the process. Some of them honestly joined the group for the line on the college resume. Others were young activists. But almost all of them want to continue. We plan to ask the participants who edited during our break (Dec-Feb), which will give us more information. Jsm0925 (talk)

I see that you are considering a renewal. FYI, you will need to create a page (click on the blue "request a renewal" button) that expands on your plan and provides a budget. For example, see the renewal request for Art+Feminism's ongoing IEG.

We did this. I am not sure why it isn't linking... Jsm0925 (talk)

thanks again, Thepwnco (talk) 17:09, 15 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, there's a renewal request page over here: Grants:IEG/WOW! Editing Group/Renewal - not sure if it needs to be linked up to this page in some additional way. Dreamyshade (talk) 04:59, 16 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I completed the renewal request by clicking on that link. I am not sure how to link it up otherwise! I'll try to edit the text on the final report page? eek! Jsm0925 (talk)

Just as a response to "Some of them honestly joined the group for the line on the college resume" - in general, I think this is a great and under-used potential motivating factor for new editors! I believe people should be hosting more editing workshops to recruit high school editors to coordinate with this type of strong motivation for developing a new skill. Dreamyshade (talk) 06:52, 19 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

Report accepted

Dear jsm0925 and ajc831,

Thank you for this final report and congratulations on completing the WOW! pilot. I'm accepting it today with the following comments:

Congratulations on exceeding your target of 100 articles. Would it be possible to link to some of the editing work that your students did? I would enjoy seeing some of their direct onwiki outcomes.
I really enjoyed reading some of the enthusiastic comments from participants in the final survey It sounds like your project was effective in generating enthusiasm about editing, and in connecting students own interests with contributing to that topic on Wikipedia. Congratulations in supporting that link!
I think it's worth including a link to your initial survey, already linked in your Midpoint Report, in your Project Resources section so that it is easily discoverable. It's a great tool for shaping the "curriculum" that an organizer sets up to support a project like this one.
The WOW model experimented with several strategies for supporting high school and college women in becoming active editors: (1) creating small mentorship clusters (2-3 people) that paired high school students with a college-age mentor with research experience, (2) hosting larger group socials where all participants could gather to edit together, led by an experienced Wikipedian trainer, (3) providing motivational speakers with subject expertise in topic areas of interest to your participants and (4) using social networking tools to provide additional online connection/support beyond offline events. You've provided some useful documentation of what you did to implement these strategies (thank you!). I'd be really interested in seeing more analysis of how effective they were, individually and in combination with each other. If there were a future organizer who wanted to run this experiment again, but didn't have the bandwidth or the resources to replicate all of the strategies, how would you advise them in terms of which strategies to prioritize, in what circumstances?
In your outcomes section, you report that you recruited 26 high school age mentees and 10 college-age mentors. My understanding is that each mentorship pair/trio was intended to have at least one college-age mentor in the group alongside one or two high-school-age mentees. In the "Progress toward stated goals" section, you report that you had 15 editing pairs/trios. I'm wondering if you can explain further how your small mentorship groups were set up. If there were 10 mentors, I would have expected there to be 10 mentorship pairs/trios. Since there were actually 15, does that mean that some of your college-age mentors were assigned to more than one pair/trio, or that some of the pairs/trios did not have a college-age mentor? Whichever is the case, I'm curious how it worked. If the former was the case, was serving in more than one pair/trio sustainable for the mentors? If the latter was the case, what difference did it make when an editing pair/trio of high school age participants did or did not have a college age mentor? How important were college-age mentors in motivating participation among high school age mentees? How much do you think it would change the impact if, for example, the model were run in a high school with peer-to-peer pairs clusters of 2-3, without the college-age mentors?
Thank you for providing templates with this report to support replication. Especially, the "recipe" is very useful--clear, succinct and flexible for adaptation. I encourage you to add a link to this directly from your learning patterns!
Lastly, I want to underline the point you made in your response above about the motivational power of supporting college ambitions. This does seem like a worthwhile selling point to use with students, especially given that, more than many things that may serve as a "line on the college resume," learning to edit Wikipedia truly does strengthen skills that are meaningful in college and career contexts.

My understanding (perhaps mistakenly) when we met in March was that you would be contacting me when you were done refining your renewal request based on the verbal feedback I gave you during that meeting. I don't have a record of further contact from you, and I'd like to clarify where you'd like to go next with this project. As I told you during that meeting, the renewal request as currently written is not a good fit for IEG. However, as you may know, the new grants program, Project Grants, will begin accepting submissions as of July 1. If you would like to submit a proposal for funding there, this project is a good fit for its scope.

Thank you for your work on this project!

Best regards,

Marti