2024:Program/Extracurricular Wikimedia organisations: how to connect universities with the movement
Session title: Extracurricular Wikimedia organisations: how to connect universities with the movement
- Session type: Panel
- Track: Education
- Language: en
Education is one of the fields where Wikimedia can have its biggest impact as we work to make the sum of all human knowledge. Many Wikimedians integrate Wikimedia in their curriculum, teachers' training programs and so on but the practice of ECWOs is not yet well explored. Running Extracurricular Wikimedia organizations (ECWO) in educational institutions offers more flexibility than traditional Wikimedia practices as part of the curriculum itself. It allows training the students as open knowledge activists going beyond rigidly pushing Wikimedia to their coursework. This session covers the structure, activities and experiences of the ECWOs from around the world.
Description
[edit | edit source]Session recording available on today’s Youtube stream: https://www.youtube.com/live/OyyYA4iWkyA?t=15301
The presentation covers various examples of extracurricular Wikimedia organisations around the world. Universities, are a place where knowledge is disseminated and created for the benefit of the human generations. As this is happening, many students are uniting forces in order to create their own clubs in universities and promote free knowledge ideas to their communities. Given that students are specializing in various knowledge fields, and in general they have ideas that can help a lot in the improvement of the movement (leading skills, programming) Wikimedia can be a very good place for them.
Additionally, according to the findings of a research by Wikimedia Poland why Youth is not actively contributing, which was presented in their annual conference past year, young people often don't contribute, due to long-circulating stereotypes regarding the reliability of Wikipedia, the lack of material benefits from volunteering and other reasons. Extracurricular Wikimedia organisations are playing a crucial role to change it as their massive appeal inside their usually large student community and flexibility help a lot in improving the popularity and the appreciation of Wikimedia in young people while also promoting Wikimedia with pioneering ways understanding the needs of young people. For example, games, social events and cultural activities have been pioneered by ECWO members thus going beyond the traditional outreach model.
In this presentation we will document various examples of student clubs in the world. Improving the presence of the movement in youth is extremely significant to fulfill one of the key recommendations of the movement chapter. We will delve in the way of governance of the ECWOs and their collaborative methods in order to give information about how they are functioning. We are also going to show how the ECWOs are contributing to a better Wikimedia movement and encourage inclusion in the movement.
We are going to present lastly, the lessons learned about the most optimal methods to engage young university students. The target is to show the effectiveness of developing ECWOs around the world and inspire more communities in engaging with that.
Session recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyyYA4iWkyA&list=PLhV3K_DS5YfL7A2HXrpt8ZgnWlGjp0vIP&t=15303
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Collaboration of the Open?
At first knowledge exchange between Wikimedians, a feature which is very significant for the movement to go forward, the diffusion of the movement and its values to the young students which are in a formative age of their lifes, is a key reason which aligns ECWOs with collaboration of the open. Through Wikimedia, students become open knowledge activists and have the potential of joining and supporting like minded movements too, while ensuring the renewal of the movement with people who can bolster their affiliates. Their governance methods, through their flexible methods, can improve the governance of affiliates. Furthermore, ECWOs on their capacity can play a significant role in the movement.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
[edit | edit source]Speakers
[edit | edit source]- Nikos Likomitros
- Nikos Likomitros is a Greek Wikimedian. He contributes since 2013, regularly from 2016 there. He has been involved with young Wikimedians since pretty earlier in his Wikimedia career, by helping a lot with cementing a stable community of youth, teenagers and students. He has organized various editathons in Greek Wikipedia and is a member of the Greek Usergroup. Moreover since 2023 he is involved in the Wikivibrance network and he is involved on youth projects, while he is also member of CEE Youth Group. He is interested on affairs related to youth and Wikimedia movement but also for developing communities. He has done Wikimedia outreach in 2 universities so far, being a key member of Wiki for Minorities international network and recently made an online webinar for Greeks in Germany. He also attended CEE Youth Group meeting in Prague, Czechia where he learned a lot about youth projects from around CEE and shared his own experiences. He's interested on international collaborations, the future of the movement, governance, experience exchange and Wikimedia ecosystem.
- Aafi
- Aaqib Anjum Aafi is an alumnus of Jamia Millia Islamia, a premier university in New Delhi. He is the founder of the Deoband Community Wikimedia (DCW), a thematic user-group affiliate of Wikimedia Foundation. He has been contributing to Wikimedia movement since 2019 and is an admin on Wikimedia Commons and the Urdu Wikipedia. He is a seasoned leader in the Indian Wikimedia ecosystem.
- At DCW, Aafi has helped establish Wiki Club Jamia, Wiki Club AMU, and Wiki Club Deoband - to help introduce Wikimedia movement in educational institutions, alongside leading all of its programs. There, he also introduced DCW Conversation Hour, an open conversation hour for everyone, which has had 19 editions until now. Aafi has been to WikiConference India 2023, Wikimania 2023 and Wikimedia Summit 2024. In July 2023, he was awarded by Bayt al-Hikmah Deoband for his contributions to Digital Empowerment.
- Ege
- I am Ege. I am a Computer Science student in Sabancı University, minoring in Gender Studies. I have been a Wikimedian for 3 years, I like analyzing and fixing issues on Wikidata. I have done projects about Queer subjects and about Lexemes on Wikidata. I am really excited by Abstract Wikipedia and want to work on that when it starts.