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L&E Newsletter / Volume 1 / Issue 1 / July 2014
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Welcome!
The Learning & Evaluation team is happy to launch its newsletter, an informative product that will be issued quarterly and seeks to highlight learning and innovation within the Wikimedia Movement. Join us every three months to find stories of successful programs, news on evaluation resources and ideas to bring forward new initiatives! Subscribe and get the new issue on your user page every quarter.
Frontpage
Looking Back: First Year of Annual Plan Grants

How far do WMF Grants reach? The FDC process has now been in place for two years. We are now at a point of reflection on the outcomes of the ~$11M in investments.

Re visit the presentation shared on the virtual meet-up:

After the first round of impact reports, we have gathered enough data to understand how chapters handle programmatic work. In this presentation we go over what chapters received funding and what progress was made over strategic goals. Most importantly, still: what did we learn from Wikimedia grantees? What programs have proved the most success? What is a healthy balance between staff and volunteer hours? If you have follow up questions or comments from the presentation, email us!

Building successful surveys

Ask the right questions and unlock data about your programs.

Go through the presentations shared at the virtual meet-up:

On June 12, L&E team held a virtual meet-up to share successful stories from program leaders about using surveys to evaluate programs. In this occasion, Daria Cybulska (Wikimedia UK) and James Hare (Wikimedia DC) shared their experience using surveys to evaluate programs. During the meet-up, our team shared a presentation on survey resources. Other resources from the meeting include Daria’s presentation, that has the resources she used for research: background information, questions asked and more.

We are also working on building a question bank, a resource that any program leader could consult to design a survey and evaluate different programs.

Are you using surveys to evaluate your programs? Tell us more. Leave a comment on this page or contact eval@wikimedia.org PE&D portal has resources about surveys:

Stay tuned

blogs, events & more!
Read our blogposts

Every month, we share knowledge with a focus on programs, process or tools on Wikimedia Foundation's blog. Find all our entries on the Wikimedia blog

Featured blog posts:

Beginning to Understand what Works: Measuring the Impact of Wikimedia Programs The picture is clear that Wikimedia volunteers do incredible work to create free knowledge and to promote the free knowledge movement. But this picture is incomplete without the data to help tell the story. Putting numbers behind our stories and activities helps the community and the public to better understand what is actually happening. Read more.

A Collaborative Definition of Impact: Building Metrics Together Sharing evaluation information across the movement helps program leaders all over the world benefit from each others know-how and strategies for program design. Evaluation metrics are important tools to help make decisions like, how much time and how many resources should I invest? Every program has at least one purpose or goal behind it, and having a systematic way to measure the results of those goals helps program leaders to better tell the story of their programs; what worked, what didn’t, why or why not.Read more.

Calendar

Schedule the next events from Learning & Evaluation team and note down the deadlines for IEG grants.

Individual Engagement Grants:
Round 2 2014 is starting soon.
Proposals accepted through September 1 to 30.
Grants announced: December 5.

Annual Plan Grants:
Submit your chapter's letter of intent from October 1 to November 1.

Projects and Event Grants:
Proposals accepted at any time. Submit yours today!

Every month, learning & Evaluation team hosts virtual meet-ups to share new Evaluation resources, experiences and workshops. Don’t miss them! Add Next L&E Events to your watchlist. Follow our Google+ page.

Grow the awesome

A program in the spotlight.

Evaluation with a focus on programs:

Wikimedians in Residence is a well known program that several chapters all over the world execute, in different contexts. Wikimedia UK has recently dedicated 6 months to evaluate their initiatives in this programmatic line. Looking into a reknown program can be revealing: you test your assumptions and may find new ways to empower the same initiative.

Aside from the report, we worked with Wikimedia UK in generating an infographic that captures the findings.

Read the full report and take a look at the outcomes!

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Share your idea

IdeaLab is a space where wikimedians all over the world share their inspiration with others.

The Wikimedia projects have thousands of possibilities to capture information and data, and generate new educational and cultural products. These are a ideas where you can collaborate:

Your idea could help execute this potential and generate new possibilities for users all over the world. If you are not sure yet what the outcome could be, share your inspiration in the Lab! It could be the seed of a new program, a product or tool that does not exist yet.

Join the IdeaLab community. You can help develop ideas in many ways: with technical skills, translating, networking and more. Share your own!

Learn from your programs

The Program Evaluation & Design portal has tools to learn about your activities and measure their success.

What goals do you want to achieve? What are the actual outcomes of your programs? Learn from others, plan your next program, measure your program's success and share what you know.

In Grants:Evaluation, you’ll find different resources to self-evaluate: Learning Patterns, Learning Modules, Measurement Tools, Reports and Case Studies

Some of the latest Learning Patterns are:

The PE&D team also hosts virtual meet-ups to launch new tools or share experience in using them. Join the next virtual meet-up! Share what you know with the PE&D Community. Introduce yourself in the Parlor!