MonthlyReport-Oct2020
October 2020
October was a busy and exciting month for the project team because it has been the month in which the Wikipedia Education programs organized in the framework of the project were actually started to be carried out. It was also the month in which our partnership talks with GLAM institutions have started to produce more concrete event being planned. To meet the project goal of increasing communication between local editors we made two online editor meetings this month as well.
Education Programs
In October online courses have started in most of the universities in Turkey. During the month, we have started to carry out the Wikipedia Education Program in some university courses as we have agreed previously, while we continued our talks with some others to carry out in their courses as well. Following talks and courses were made during the month.
Civil Engineering department at MEF University
On the first day of the month, we joined the meeting of the Civil Engineering department of MEF University, Istanbul. For this term, it was agreed that the Wikipedia assignment will be given in the courses of an instructor who is already familiar with Wikipedia editing. Although many of the participants did not feel themselves ready to integrate the Wikipedia assignment in this semester, the meeting was very positive in terms of creating awareness and willingness on several instructors for Wikipedia editing with their students. The Wikipedia Education program offered some ways to solve several problems the instructors were complaining (i.e lack of writing skills, bad copy-paste habits, not using vocational terms properly in Turkish since the curriculum was English); therefore they were glad to learn about Wikipedia assignments and were willing to implement it for the next semestres.
Core Program at Kadir Has University
That week another Wikipedia Education program talk was with Kadir Has Üniversity, Istanbul. The university has started a new program called "core program" for freshmen which involves a common curriculum to foster creative inquiry in students. We have searched in what ways we could integrate Wikipedia editing activities to this common program. Therefore, this talk was also very important not only for this project but for a future partnership. Wikipedia editing assignment could be integrated to the program through several lessons in the common curriculum; such as "Critical Reading and Writing in Turkish", and "Civic Responsibility Project" courses. Such integration does require more advance planning but as a beginning we have agreed to meet with the volunteer students this semester in the framework of their Turkish lesson and continue our talks for a wider integration.
Graduate and doctoral courses at Environmental Engineering department at Bursa Uludag University
October 19th was the first day when we have started to carry out a Wikipedia Education Program in a university course. The program started in the department of Environmental Engineering of Bursa Uludag University. Unlike undergraduate lessons, the graduate lessons are being carried out in face-to-face settings in that department. So, a wikipedian has visited the course in the university to start the program. The students were required to edit articles related to waste management in Turkish wikipedia. They had an opportunity to learn the functioning of Wikipedia and the core pillars from an experienced wikipedian and ask their questions. Next day, we have met with the doctorate students who are required to write Wikipedia articles on biotechnology. The students have examined Turkish Wikipedia articles in their field of expertise and they were very much surprised to see that very important articles were lacking. They were excited to get the responsibility of filling that gap.
Undergraduate course at Library Education department at Hacettepe University
Another university at which the Wikipedia Education Program has started in October was Hacettepe University, Ankara. We were very excited to meet with the freshmen at Library Education because they will be potential partners of wikimedians at several projects after their graduation. We feel it was important that they have learned Wikipedia editing in the first year of their university life. Those students will be learning and then writing articles on basic library concepts. We are glad for the positive reaction we have received from librarians and librarian associations when we shared posts related to this course on social media.
Graduate course at Psychology department of Bursa Uludag University
On October 28th, we were invited to an online course to meet students of a graduate program at the Psychology department at Bursa Uludag University. A small but diverse group of students were required to edit articles related to parenting at Turkish wikipedia.
Editor community meetings
In October, we organized online community meetings on 6th and 20th. The main topics discussed were current partnership talks, participation in Online CEE meeting, a bot about updating Turkey's village articles, discussion on changes on the main page of Turkish Wikipedia. The meeting notes in Turkish is available here: 6th, 20th (in Turkish).
GLAM partnership talks
We had partnership talks with three municipalities :Istanbul, İzmit Metropolitan Municipalities and Nilufer Municipality of Bursa.
İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB)
We were very excited when IBB reached us and requested to meet for introduction in August. IBB is an institution having many affiliate organisations, many of which has great archives such as Ataturk Library, Istanbul City Theatres, Atatürk Museum. We had talks with Digital Media Unit and were told that it's them who will be guiding us for future collaborations with affiliates. We had decided to first make a training session about editing Wikipedia and other wikimedia projects for the employees of the unit so that they will understand the projects better and work on possible partner projects more easily. We did a face-to-face training session with the members of the Digital Media team in the first week of October at Istanbul.
Nilüfer Municipality
During the month we have searched for contacts in other municipalities of Turkey to discuss similar partnership possibilities. We had a brief meeting with Nilufer Municipality. Several partnership ideas were discussed to share digital assets of the Municipality at Wikimedia projects. Our suggestion was sharing the documents, video and photos related to musical instruments museum that will be open soon at Wikimedia projects. At the end of the meeting we have decided to start a partnership with working on making the villages of Nilufer more visible on Wikimedia projects by using the material that will be donated by the municipality. We will be starting by creating a Wikiproject on Villages of Nilufer at Turkish Wikipedia. This will be in line with existing work of the community members that recently working on improving village articles.
Izmit Metropolitan Municipality
In October, another municipality we have contacted for a GLAM Partnership was Izmit Metropolitan Municipality. We made two online meetings, followed by a visit to the Municipality for face-to-face training. As with the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, the Izmit Metropolitan Municipality contacts first wanted to be trained on editing Wikimedia projects themselves. At the end of our second online meeting in which we explained Wikipedia editing; they have come up with the suggestion of organising an edit-a-thon at the Documentation Center for improving the content related with the city in Wikimedia projects.They have also started to upload selected files from the photo archive in the Documentation Center. We were very glad to see the enthusiasm of the participants.
Pera Museum
Following our first talk in August, we had another partnership talk with Pera Museum on October, 21st. This time we could proceed and come up with a plan about future partnership. In the past, we had a partnership with this museum about one of its Orientalist paintings collections. This time our offer was working together to disseminate more information on Wikimedia related to themes of temporary exhibitions of the Museum. The Pera Museum have shared their exhibition plan with us; they are interested in getting permission from the artists to share the photos of their works to be shared at Wikimedia projects and willing to host edit-a-thons to where the curators of the exhibitions, galleries, academicians are invited to contribute and required written material will be made available at the museum. We also talked about a mechanism to give wikipedians contributing the related articles free entrance to exhibitions and similar small advantages.
