Wikipedia:Education Working Group/Wikimedia Foundation Role

We're asking volunteers to come up with a proposal for a new Education Program Structure that will replace the role of the Wikimedia Foundation, come May 2013. To be fair, many of our volunteers work so closely with one aspect of the Education Program that they may not have a full scope of what exactly Wikimedia Foundation staff are doing in the background. Here is a list of some of the things Wikimedia Foundation staff members do to support the Education Programs in the United States and Canada and whether or not the Foundation will have the capacity to continue this role after May 2013.

Roles the Wikimedia Foundation will no longer play in the U.S. and Canada after May 2013

  • Strategic planning and program design (examples)
    • How can we expand the program?
    • How will expansion impact editors and Wikipedia infrastructure?
    • How can we provide better support to professors and students?
    • How can we achieve a higher level of institutionalization?
    • How can we make individual courses more effective?
  • Securing the funding for the program
  • Being the "escalation point" for — and helping to address — any major conflicts and problems that arise
  • Designing English Wikipedia–specific training materials for professors, ambassadors, and students
  • Supporting the recruitment of professors and ambassadors
  • Day-to-day coordination with professors and regional ambassadors
  • Traveling to universities and professional conferences, as requested by program participants

Roles the Wikimedia Foundation can continue to play for all countries after May 2013

The Working Group may be interested in creating a new Education Program Structure that taps into the available resources from the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation is committed to the success of the program and will be able to provide some support, should the new Structure desire it. The Wikimedia Foundation is happy to offer support on the following tasks to any country's Wikipedia Education Program, with a special focus on Education Programs in targeted geographic areas in alignment with its strategic plan (Arabic-speaking countries, Brazil and India).

  • Global learning and documentation, i.e. ensuring that learnings and best practices are shared across different geographies.
  • Datatracking and analysis, i.e. defining metrics for success; measuring the impact of the program; providing the local teams across countries with periodic statistics.
  • Software development, i.e. improving the existing MediaWiki Education extension and developing tools for educators and students across different Wikipedia language versions.
  • Communications support, i.e. facilitating blog posts on the Wikimedia Foundation blog; including information about the U.S. and Canada programs in a bi-monthly newsletter about all countries participating in the Wikipedia Education Program.