Grants talk:Project/Rapid/UG LEV/2017 Education Program in Palestine/Report

Questions and Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hi fjmustak and Mohammad Hijjawi, thanks very much for your work on this Education Program and for preparing this report on your experience. I'm Jethro, a community organizer working with the Wikimedia Foundation and will be reviewing and leaving some feedback on your work. Here are my comments I have:

• Can you provide some explanation about why you decided to scale back from 3 programs to one larger program? There could be a lot of reasons for this, and it's not necessarily a problem at all, but I am curious about why this change occurred from your original plans.
• You reported that some students were not very enthusiastic about the program. Was attendance or participation mandatory?
• Thanks for you preparing this blogpost on the program and its outcomes. It's wonderful to see so much recognition of everyone's talents and contributions.
• One question about the article links in this spreadsheet; these articles all appear to be in the user space, not the article space. Have they been moved to the article space on Arabic Wikipedia, or is there a plan to do so?
• Finally, could you calculate the exact amount of remaining funds you have leftover and add it to this section of your grant report? You can leave this amount in ILS. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Congratulations on your project. When you're able, please respond to the questions I've asked above. That said, I am approving this report, as well as the reallocation of your remaining funds to Grants:Project/Rapid/UG LEV/Spring 2018 Education Program in Palestine and Jordan. Thanks very much for your contributions to education in Palestine. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:53, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks I JethroBT (WMF)! Here are the answers to your inquiries:

• Scaling back the original three programs to one was mainly because of lack of ability/time from the professors who had initially shown interest in accommodating the programs. The one that did go through was expanded from the original anticipated number of 20 students to 31 who showed interest, the professor of the course "Dr.Mohammad Ghazal" liked the idea of the program very much so he suggested that we include more students.
• Participation by students was not mandatory, as opposed to some other programs we've held (and are currently holding) where participation is mandatory and graded. We've realized that when participation is voluntary, better vetting of students may be worthwhile (a fewer number of enthusiastic participants are bound to be more productive than a larger group of not too interested students, especially with nothing at stake) our current programs focuses on most interested students only
• I share your feeling about the blog post, and would like to commend Mohammad Hijjawi on his tireless documentation of Wikip(m)edia activities in Palestine and beyond.
• The articles were initially written in user space, and once they were done, Mohammad Hijjawi started moving them into article space (finishing 4 out of the 11 articles to date) {{:ar:نظام أشتو لتصنيف التربة|1}}, {{:ar:انسياب أرضي|2}}, {{:ar:رمل|3}}, and {{:ar:كارل فون ترزاغي|4}}.
• I've added the amount of remaining funds to the report page Many thanks! --Fjmustak (talk) 14:36, 10 March 2018 (UTC)