Wikipedia & Education User Group/2023 Annual Report

The Wikipedia & Education User Group's major accomplishment in 2023 was hosting the EduWiki Conference in Belgrade, Serbia. We also engaged in a strategic discussion around the future of Wikimedia & Education and hosted our EduWiki Knowledge Showcase.

Governance

Our board was stable throughout the year:

LiAnna Davis, chair
Susanna Mkrtchyan, vice-chair
Ziko van Dijk, secretary
Filip Maljkovic, treasurer
João Alexandre Peschanski, membership admin
Bukola James and Shani Evenstein Sigalov, special advisors

Our board met weekly in the first five months of 2023, as we planned the conference. We also met monthly after the conference to continue planning activities.

Membership

Our user group has experienced an increase in its membership. It now has 403 members and has had the support of 22 affiliates.

Activities

EduWiki Conference 2023

The major focus of our user group was putting on the EduWiki Conference 2023 in Belgrade, Serbia. Our friends at Wikimedia Serbia served as hosts for the meeting, handling negotiations with the venue and travel bookings. Our user group created a scholarship and program committee made up of our members, selected scholarship recipients, and crafted the program.

During the three-day event, we welcomed 100 participants. A big challenge was getting visas for our participants; unfortunately, about 15 people who received scholarships ended up unable to attend due to not receiving visas in time. We are eager to not repeat this in future events.

However, the participants who did come found the event to be excellent. In the post-conference survey, we asked attendees to rank their agreement with the statement “I made new connections with other Wikimedians at EduWiki 2023.” A total of 75% of participants strongly agreed with this statement, and another 20% agreed with it, meaning 95% of attendees agreed or strongly agreed that they’d made new connections at the conference. This meets with our anecdotal reports as well; we planned long lunches and breaks, and we found lots of people intermixing with other attendees.

We can see the recognition piece particularly in our pre- and post- conference surveys. We asked attendees to rank their agreement with the statement “I feel like my work is recognized by other Wikimedians.” on both the pre- and post- surveys. In the pre-survey, only 83% of attendees agreed or strongly agreed with the statement; however, in the post-survey, 95% of attendees agreed or strongly agreed with that sentiment.

As an example of the quality of videos, the EduWiki 2023 Day 1 Opening Session.

We recorded nearly every session at the EduWiki Conference (a handful of presenters opted out). You can see the link to each recording on the Meta page for that session, linked from EduWiki Conference 2023/Program, or you can see the full list of them on our YouTube playlist for the conference.

We are grateful to our friends at Wikimedia Serbia for their truly excellent hosting, the volunteers who helped make our event possible, and all the attendees for engaging in the program so well!

Next EduWiki Conference

We also began planning the next EduWiki Conference, including drafting a grant proposal for the conference. While we had hoped to have the conference in the second half of 2024, its fate is still undetermined as of this report writing.

The Future of Wikimedia & Education Planning

One key element of our EduWiki Conference 2023 was a Future of Wikimedia & Education track, where we engaged in strategic conversations about the needs of our community of program leaders. These conversations (and some Zoom-based conversations) led to the publication of a report, Hubs/Ongoing/Toward a theory of change for Wikimedia & Education (mid-2023). After the publication, we hosted an Wikipedia & Education User Group Open Meeting, in which our consultant, Cornelius Kibelka, presented his findings to our community. Members also presented the findings at Wikimania.

Following this report, we also worked on a Theory of Change report, including engaging in focus groups with our Wikimedia and education community. This report should be published in early 2024.

EduWiki Knowledge Showcase

In mid 2023, we rebranded and reformulated our open meetings to be EduWiki Knowledge Showcase. This plan revolves around Global Open Meetings hosted by affiliates within the movement with support from the Wikipedia + Education User Group members. The goal is to foster a sense of belonging and connectivity and inspire diversity within education programs. These meetings will focus on sharing accomplishments, expert talks, interactive discussions, Q&A, and networking. They will be organized periodically and rotated through different time zones. They will be providing a space for thematic programs that are successful in different regions to share the stories with our global community members. Our aim with the EduWiki Knowledge Showcase is to support the Wikimedia community to make an impact in the education sector and innovate new ideas.

We hosted two EduWiki Knowledge Showcase meetings in 2023:

October 2023 EduWiki Knowledge Showcase featuring WikiCamps, spotlighting representatives from the Central and Eastern European region.
EduWiki Knowledge Showcase featuring Education, Learning, and Fun, spotlighting representatives from Northern and Western Europe.

We look forward to continuing these in 2024.

Mentorship Program

Our mentorship program, which began in 2022, included 36 participants. We wrapped up the second round of the mentorship program in 2023 and are re-evaluating it in conjunction with our broader strategic discussions about a potential education hub. The plan is to overhaul the mentorship program in 2024, in order to provide participants with more structure, resources and focus.

Conference Participation

Wikimania: Filip, Susanna
WikiConference North America: LiAnna
Wikimedia CEE Meeting: Filip
World Literacy Summit 2023: Bukola
Creative Commons Global Summit 2023: Bukola
WikiIndaba Conference Morocco 2023: Bukola
GlamWiki Uruguay 2023: Bukola