Barry Newstead, Frank Schulenburg, Moushira Elamrawy and I (Sara Yap), traveled to the Middle East in October to meet with Wikipedians in the Arab world and begin the expansion of the Wikipedia Education Program. Adel Iskandar, a professor at Georgetown University who taught in the U.S. Global Education Program pilot, joined the team to meet with professors and Wikipedians in Qatar, Egypt, and Jordan. These meetings will inform the planning of the Arabic Education Program, which will be launched in 2012. Over the course of a 14-day visit to Egypt, Jordan and Qatar, the Wikimedia team connected with local experts, university staff, student groups, and attendees at an Arabic Wikipedia Convening in Doha which was co-hosted by WMF together with the Qatar Computing Research Institute. The convening focused on ways to catalyze high quality growth of the Arabic Wikipedia across the Middle East and North Africa.

In collaboration with local participants, Wikimedia Foundation aims to develop the quality and quantity of contributions in Arabic Wikipedia. The trip to Egypt, Qatar, and Jordan was extremely valuable due to the large contribution of the faculty and students we connected with at the universities. To gain a better vision of how to launch the program, we conducted about 30 interviews with professors who teach at Ain Shams, Cairo University, American University of Cairo, University of Jordan, and Qatar University. Through the recommendations of personal contacts and faculty, we met with professors who may be a part of the Global Education Program pilot in MENA. Some learnings include:

• The amount of Arabic readership has increased post-Arab Revolution; people want to learn more about current news and global events, especially within the MENA (pronounced MEH-NA).
• People shared the need for an increase of content in Arabic. Most convincing was a brochure (created by LiAnna Davis and David Peters) that outlined the huge digital divide between the Arabic Wikipedia and other Wikipedia language versions. Some people indicated that they were ashamed by how small the Arabic Wikipedia is compared to e.g. the Portuguese Wikipedia (especially given the fact that so many more people speak Arabic).
• We need to begin with the Education Program with a small pilot and then reiterate.

Wikimedia Meetup in Cairo

With volunteers as the foundation of Wikimedia’s projects, the meetup in Egypt connected our team with the community. For the Wikipedia Education Program, we need a network of local volunteers to support the pilot program (either as Campus Ambassadors, or simply by agreeing not to revert edits automatically), and the willingness to continue on with the Wikimedia project at large. We hope to have more meetups in the region soon and would be interested to hear your thoughts on ideas for future events. Questions and comments from the attendees included:

• Who leads and verifies the corrections on Wikipedia?
• Many people don’t know that they can edit Wikipedia – can the Wikipedia “edit” button be larger?
• If the Global Education Program continues in the MENA region, it will be important to emphasize in the curriculum: how to cite, why students should reference work and be provided with the tools to do so.

The Global Education Program team aims to hire a local team, formalize contacts with professors, and finalize a list of professors and schools to recommend for the program. The Wikimedia team will return to the region in the next few months to conduct trainings for the Global Education Program at universities. The Wikimedia Global Development team would like to hear your thoughts on working in the Arab world, a promising region that we believe will play a significant role in increasing content on Wikipedia.

Mea Salama | مع السلام | With Peace,

Sara Yap, Catalyst Projects, Global Development

Arabic Convening References:

[1] Barry Newstead’s Slides from the Arabic Wikipedia Convening in Doha, Qatar
[2] Frank Schulenburg’s slides on the Global Education Program
[3] Wikipedian Cipher’s Slides on MENA Region Insights and Statistics
[4] Moushira Elamrawy’s Slides from the Arabic Wikipedia Convening

Today is Day One for on-the-ground research in Cairo. The streets are packed with taxis, men bicycling with wooden trays of aish (meaning “bread” and “life”) on their heads and varieties of t-shirts being sold that are emblazoned with “I Love Egypt”. I’ve arrived at a sensitive, yet hopeful time in the country’s current state of affairs. The conversations are abuzz with people talking about politics, protests and what the future holds for the country. I will be in Egypt for the next nine days, as well as in Qatar for the Arabic Wikipedia Convening and in Jordan to research opportunities in the academic community as we find professors interested in adopting a project called the Global Education Program. I have been tasked by the Wikimedia Foundation to help with an initiative that aims to increase Arabic Wikipedia content, as alluded to in this recent post about the Arabic Catalyst Project.

My colleagues Barry Newstead, Frank Schulenburg, Moushira Elamrawy, Professor Adel Iskandar from Georgetown University, and I will be doing research for this project.

Today Adel and I set off to our first school, Ain Shams. The meeting with Dr. Iman (photo) proved hopeful because of her students’ subject matter for their research.  They are doing quite a bit of publishing in the realm of Egyptian history, theatre, drama and general research that could enrich the Arabic ecosystem on Wikipedia.

The challenges will be steep because of the lack of computer access on campus; however, the content for the project seems somewhat promising because of Dr. Iman’s track record at the school, her tight knit relationships with her students (graduates would still willingly share their research work even after finishing the university), the level of her students’ research (with citations) and her interest in the program. Some of the subjects her students have written thesis papers on include:

1. Phaedra
2. Cleopatra
3. Shakespeare
4. History of Censorship in Egypt
5. Egyptian Arabic Theatre
6. Dissidence in Society: Comparisons in Theatre Plays
7. Theatre of the Revolution
8. Voices of the Marginalized

Through discussions, the key lessons that may help the Global Education Program include:

• Learn from the current Wikimedia community in the MENA region
• Encourage new ways to successfully build the projects
• Find ways for students to succeed by having them write on topics they are actually interested in researching.
• Incentivize the program by finding academic rewards (whether it may be through grades, letters of recommendation, etc.)
• Leverage the current situation around the Arab Revolution to move students’ disenchantment with the academic system towards improving the relationship between the teachers and students at the university

This project comes at a time when many administration and faculty members are leaving the university. Tomorrow we set off to the campuses of Cairo University. It’s so good to be back in مصر/Egypt.