Education/Countries/Germany

Wikimedia Deutschland

Department for Education, Science & Culture

The department is tasked with promoting free content in the fields of education, science and culture. It also develops innovative, target-group-oriented information and advice services, to enable people and organizations to use free knowledge in their respective context and to make their digital treasures more accessible for everyone. In addition to this, the department also stages events with partners and arranges international exchanges with various organizations. In order to develop open, forward-looking methods, products and services, the team also initiates research and development schemes and supports innovative projects.

Staff

Heike Gleibs (team lead)
Dr. Dominik Scholl (team lead)
Claudia Bergmann (assistant)
Christoph Jackel (project manager)
Dr. Lucy Patterson (project manager)
Christopher Schwarzkopf (project manager)
Sarah-Isabella Behrens (project manager)
Riham Abed-Ali (project manager)
Holger Plickert (project manager)
Anna-Katharina Gödeke (project manager)
Cin Pietschmann (project manager)

General contact: bildungwissenkultur@wikimedia.de

Current Activities (2023)

The Free Education Alliance

The Free Education Alliance was founded in 2014 based on a initiative of Wikimedia Deutschland as an attempt to make open educational projects and ideas more visible. We aim for the consideration of a sustainable transfer of competencies that can be realized through open practices such as working with or producing open educational resources. For the last five years, we built connections to the decision-makers in Germany and established ourselves as experts and leaders in the educational sector.

As a coalition that combines almost 20 organizations and more than 40 educational practitioners we show how holistic educational processes can be promoted through Open Education using a Collective Impact approach. Collective Impact is the commitment of a group of actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem, using a structured form of collaboration. With the support of the still growing community of Open Education advocates we managed to get heard and have a voice in educational matters.

Forum Open Education

To push the efforts of the Free Education Alliance and the community, we aimed for an even more open exchange with the politicians and a lasting relationship with them. Since it always takes us a lot of resources to enter their spaces of political discussions and be heard, we created a new space where everyone can freely join and exchange ideas and thoughts. The idea was to get the political debate back to the people. In Ancient Rome, for example, decisions were made in the form, a gathering place of great social significance. We used the idea to bring together civil society, educational practice and political decision-making bodies in order to discuss the future shape of the educational landscape.

The goal of the Forum Open Education was to make decision-makers see and understand the advantages of Open Education and to start conversations. We use these conversations to set impulses in the educational sector, share our suggestions on reaching Quality Education, and pave the way for cooperation. Especially, since Germany’s national government agreed upon a comprehensive educational strategy, we are now trying to increase the pressure to the responsible authorities to implement said promises.

We hope that this forum, which takes place once a year, can open up the educational sector minimize the influence of the profit-oriented companies and makes decision-makers sensitive for the advantages of Open Educational Resources and Practices. Step by step, were building bridges and long-lasting connections, so that slowly but surely we get invited more often to comment on current topics of discussions and more and more politicians see us and our partners as full-fledged actors in the political field. We can only encourage everyone in the Wikimedia Movement to:

GLAM on Tour

The GLAM on Tour project promotes the networking of Wikipedia volunteers and cultural institutions on a local level. Based on existing initiatives from many volunteer Wikipedia activists, cultural practitioners become acquainted with Wikipedians. These organize together with the cultural institutions and with the support of Wikimedia Germany special tours for Wikipedians, scientific lectures on current exhibitions, photo excursions or writing workshops.

Coding da Vinci

Coding da Vinci - The culture hackathon is a joint project of the German Digital Library, the Research and Competence Center Digitization Berlin (digiS), the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany and Wikimedia Germany.

As an interdisciplinary project it manages to create links between the cultural and technical realm and shows the surprising possibilities in open cultural data. In a six-week sprint phase, teams of hackers collaborate with cultural institutions to develop working prototypes. for apps, web pages, data visualizations, games, or interactive installations that show surprising and inspiring ways how institutions can convey and use collection objects in new ways.

Past Activities (2010-2022)

Open Science Fellows Program

The Open Science Fellows Program was launched in 2016.The program promotes opening up research and teaching in accordance with the principles of open science, a movement that enables researchers and society as a whole to access scientific research findings. The goal is to support scientists in making their own research more accessible. The idea of improving access to science and research in accordance with the principles of open science is at the heart of the program, with transparency, reproducibility and comparability of scientific research as basic prerequisites. In particular, exchanges and networking between individuals active in open science must be promoted in order to further advance the opening up of science and research. In addition, the program offers participants the opportunity to network with experts from various disciplines who will provide insights into their independent research practices. More Information about the Open Science Fellows Program can be found on Wikiversity.

There is a list of our past activities.

Publications

Charting Diversity

"Charting Diversity - Working together towards diversity in Wikipedia" deals with diversity and its importance to Wikipedia, documenting our current knowledge on the matter, setting out fields of action and concluding with a catalogue of measures to serve as motivation for our future work. The study incorporates the opinions and ideas of male and female Wikipedians, gathered at numerous meetings, workshops and at the 2013 Wikimedia Diversity Conference in Berlin.

» Download as a pdf file (424 KB)

Open Content

"Open Content - A Practical Guide to Using Creative Commons Licences" was published by Wikimedia Deutschland, the German Commission for UNESCO and the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Centre (hbz) in 2014. Its intention is to provide interested individuals and organisations with practical guidelines for the use and application of open content licences.

» Download as a pdf file (2400 KB)

Wiki Dialogues

"Wiki Dialogues - A concept for digital learning in Wikipedia communities" was published by Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia CH and Wikimedia Österreich in cooperation with Beuth University of Applied Sciences in 2015. A Wiki Dialogue is an online format for digital, dialogue-oriented learning, where Wikipedians discuss various topics related to Wikipedia and its sister projects and work on topics together. These topics go beyond writing Wikipedia articles to focus more on overarching aspects of working together within Wikipedia.

» Download as a pdf file (1900 KB)

Praxisrahmen OER

A Framework of Practice for OER in Germany was published by Wikimedia Deutschland in 2016. The Framework of Practice proposes concrete recommendations to policymakers and educational actors regarding the ways in which the creation, distribution, and use of OER can be funded and supported. The report identifies challenges, puts forward concrete ideas, and demonstrates prospects for a broad implementation of OER in the German education system. It was the summary of the project Mapping OER, funded by the ministry of education in Germany.

» Download as a pdf file (12.62 MB)

Wikipedia:TrainingsKit

For more information, see Wikipedia:TrainingsKit/Mitwirkende (in German)

Reports

Report on Educational Activities 2010-2012

This report is self-critical reflection upon the education programmes as run between 2010-2012. Its main focus is on the concepts and conduction of these, frame conditions and infrastructure. The report tries to balance strengths and weaknesses and helps to deduce new quality-improving measurements.

Educational activities 2010-2012