Education/Program plans/Saudi Arabia

Scope

Arabic is one of the top five languages in the world, with approximately 530 million speakers, yet the Arabic Wikipedia is still quite small with less than 250,000 articles. And less than 500 of these articles are Featured Articles or Good Articles. Over the past three terms, starting in Egypt and later including students in Algeria and Jordan, the Wikipedia Education Program in the Arab world has contributed over 2.3 million words to the Arabic Wikipedia, and has added over 30 Good and Featured Articles.

The Wikipedia Education Program in the Arab world focuses on increasing the amount of content on the Arabic Wikipedia. By partnering with Universities and Schools, the program seeks to have students contribute quality content in their area of study. The program also focuses on diversity and helps close the gender gap by getting more female students to edit Wikipedia in the region.

In Saudi Arabia, the Wikipedia Education Program will get students to contribute high quality translations of articles from other language Wikipedias. Activities will be organized through the Wikipedia Training Center for Translation at King Saud University, but other interested institutions like Princess Nora University may take part as well.

Measuring Success

Goals for the Saudi Arabia program:

• 10 groups of 10 students participate in the program (100 students)
• Half of the students are female
• Each student contributes a full translation of a Good or Featured Article from another language Wikipedia
• 10 of these student contributions are nominated for Good or Featured Article status on the Arabic Wikipedia
• 5 students are trained at Campus Ambassadors and comfortable providing technical assistance for Wikipedia editing assignments
• Half of the professors in the first semester return with new groups of students for subsequent semesters

Model

Big picture

The Saudi Arabia program will start in Riyadh. The Wikipedia Training Center for Translation will act as the main hub for program activity and organizing workshops and providing ad-hoc support throughout the semester. The center is run by four student volunteers and supervised by one professor at King Saud University, but they are able to provide support to other institutions in Riyadh like Princess Nora University.

The center at KSU will set professors up with course pages for each of their groups. Students will participate in basic workshops to familiarize themselves with on-wiki editing. Student contributions will be tracked through the course pages (and later the Education Extension when it is available on the Arabic Wikipedia). The student volunteers at the center will serve as Campus Ambassadors. Male and Female Wikipedians from the local community will serve as Online Ambassadors if they are remote and Campus Ambassadors if they are available for in-person support.

The center supervisor will report on progress to the Arab World Education Program Manager with the Wikimedia Foundation every two weeks. The Arab World Education Program Manager will provide guidance for assignment designs and workshops, and support the program with an end of term visit. The Program Manager will also help organize regional networking and support with other countries and promote the program through the Wikimedia Foundation blog and other media outlets.

Educational institutions and instructors

Roles and responsibilities

Motivations

Recruiting

Training

Supporting

Numeric goal

Wikipedia Ambassadors

Roles and responsibilities

Motivations

Recruiting

Training

Supporting

Numeric goal

Student editors

Roles and responsibilities

Training

Supporting

Numeric goal

Notes

<references>