Video transcript · 6 min · 792 words

Expanding Wikipedia education partnerships with universities: transcript

Basak, a founder of Wikimedia User Group Turkey, gives a lightning talk at Wikimania 2023 on finding university partners for Wikipedia education programs. She shares tactics drawn from the Turkish user group's work, from using personal contacts to tracking student edits and sharing success stories.

Key points

Basak has run Wikipedia education programs in Turkey since 2016, and in two years the group gave presentations at 24 universities in 11 cities.
The group does not try to change negative attitudes toward Wikipedia but looks for academics who already view it positively.
One tactic is to start from your inner circle: her own program began in a graduate course taught by her sister.
Tracking recent edits in your home wiki can reveal students submitting assignments at the last moment, which leads to their professors.
New users editing articles about academic institutions may work at those universities and can be approached.
She also suggests attending academic events, asking the Wiki Education Foundation to forward contacts, and sharing success stories on social media because universities follow each other.

Chapters

0:06Introducing the Turkey user group and its education program
0:37Looking for academics with positive attitudes
1:39Starting from your inner circle
2:35Tracking recent edits to find students and professors
4:18Events, Wiki Education contacts and social media
4:53Closing and host announcements

Full transcript

0:06Hello, this is Basak. I'm from Turkey and one of the founders of Wikimedia User Group Turkey and I run Wikipedia education programs in my country since 2016. In the next five minutes, I would like to talk about how we grow our program and give some ideas about how to find relevant education partnerships. Turkey is a country of 85 million people, and we have more than 200 universities across 81 cities.

0:37And in last two years, we had Wikipedia-related activities, presentations in 24 universities at 11 cities with two people, and we are so proud of this. these are some of the logos uh of the universities we have worked with uh but you might ask like everywhere everywhere else in the world there are some negative attitudes towards wikipedia among academicians So, the strategy of our group has always been not focusing on these negative attitudes and trying to change those attitudes. Rather than this, we look for those people who have more positive attitudes. The problem is because they can be the right person to start an education program in that institution. But the problem is where are they, how we can reach them.

1:39so these are a few suggestions to find those people first you might start from your inner circle which means that do you or any of your user group members have friends family members relatives who teach at a university you should first talk with them and as integrate Wikipedia editing to their courses and grow your program from there in my case it was my sister who teaches psychology at a university and we started from one of her graduate courses this is a memory from this course and please be aware that there are many instructors professors who think that wikipedia editing will be useful for their students and they start doing things teaching editing to their students even though they don't know any wikipedians or they don't know wiki editing very themselves.

2:35Reaching out to those people, offers help, would be a good contact start point for starting a partnership with this institution. But how to find them? We suggest tracking the recent edits in your home wiki. Please remember that students always have a tendency to submit their assignments at the last moment. So if you recognize that many new beginners are editing some articles related to the same topic, at the same time, they might be students submitting their wiki assignments.

3:10So you can contact them through wiki channels and ask, are they students? Who is their professor? And then contact with the professor, suggest helping. another thing that you can track is the wikipedia articles at your home wiki about academic institutions sometimes you might recognize that those articles are being edited by some new users they're changing name of the director or number of the students etc those people might be people working in the university and if it's so this is a sign that there are some people in that institution who are concerned about content of wikipedia at least about their institutions article And who might be open to learn more wiki editing. So contact with them. Ask help. You can help. And then tell them wiki skills are required for all students. And they might offer to them all. I have a few more suggestions. Like get yourself invited to academic events. You can make presentations about in many events.

4:18And I would suggest contact me with the VK Education Foundation because they only support institutions in Canada and the United States, but if you know they are contacted by people from other countries, so they might forward some people to you. And my last suggestion would be tell your success stories at your social media and tell your partners to share your stories at the social media because universities always follow each other.

4:53And if they see that one students of one university makes Wikipedia, they are willing to do the same as well. These are the end of my suggestions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Basiak. I appreciate that at every lightning talk, there is also a thunder of applause. So please keep those thunders of applause running. And of course, if you are sitting somewhere to the side, please come closer. Please come to the center sectors because the speakers want to give you their best Wikimedia experience and you want to get the best Wikimania experience.

5:35So, yep, if you're sitting on the side, you'll have a better Wikimania experience out here in the center. And now I'll hand it over to the next speakers who are already at the podium, ready to tell you their story.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Wikimania 2023 - Plenary - 18 August - Lightning Talk - How to expand the Education Program Partnership in your local community.webm by Wikimania 2023 (2023-08-18), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. The transcript, summary and chapters on this page are shared under the same licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.