In 2016, Wiki Ed kicked off the largest targeted content initiative ever
undertaken in the Wikimedia world: the Wikipedia Year of Science. When the
year wrapped up in December, our programs for the initiative had added
nearly 5 million words of content to the English Wikipedia. More than 6,300
students edited more than 5,700 articles on STEM and social science
subjects on Wikipedia, and improved biographies of 150 women scientists.
The amount of content added during the Year of Science is impressive:
nearly 5 million words fills 3.5 full volumes of the last print edition of
Encyclopædia Britannica.
But simply touting our numeric successes isn’t enough. As part of Wiki Ed’s
commitment to the Wikimedia movement, we also wanted to evaluate our work —
and document and share our learnings.
We’ve published our Year of Science evaluation on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Foundation/Year_of_Science_e…
The report highlights what we did as part of the Year of Science in the
Classroom Program, the Visiting Scholars Program, and other projects, as
well as indications of what worked, what didn’t, and what we learned from
the Year of Science. Our goal in publishing this report is to enable other
groups considering creating a large-scale content initiative like the Year
of Science to be able to learn from what we did.
I encourage anyone who’s interested to read the detailed report, or for a
TL;DR version, check out the green “Learnings” boxes. We welcome questions
on the talk page of the report or at Wikimania 2017 in Montreal, where I’ll
be presenting on the Year of Science initiative and what we learned from it.
LiAnna
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LiAnna Davis
Director of Programs; Deputy Director
Wiki Education Foundation
www.wikiedu.org