The fourth edition of the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program for the Arab region was launched between April 15 and August 22, 2024 on the Wiki Learn platform, and The program was organized by by Mounir Neddi and Abdel Ilah Jalal Through the 11 following steps. (For more information about previous versions of the program, see this article.)
1. Update content
Content updating focuses on three axes.
- changing the form of questions from open questions to closed questions, and creating discussion forums for expression and interaction, so that teachers benefit more from each other’s ideas, and so that the learning experience becomes easier and more enjoyable.
- Change the order of some sections, in order to provide a smooth, coherent and engaging learning experience to continue the learning journey.
- Reducing sections that focus on the impact of Covid-19 on education, and adding learning related to AI in education.
2. Increase the number of registrants
The number of registered users is usually much larger than the number of actual beneficiaries. In this case, we consider registration important as well, because it is a first step in breaking the negative image that teachers have about Wikipedia in education. In order to increase the number of registered users, we have opened up more to the Arab world. This year, about 1,130 teachers from Morocco and the Arab region registered for this training, through the registration form, Compared to 700 last year.
3. Increase the number of beneficiaries
We believe that achieving goals and making an impact is not necessarily related to the number of graduates, but to the number of beneficiaries. Teachers who benefited from the first unit only, became able to guide students on the best way to use Wikipedia and benefit from its features, and became able to maintain the safety of students while using Wikipedia, and of course they changed their negative representation about Wikipedia, and they have an account on it now. That is why we set among our goals to increase the total number of beneficiaries, which reached 400 beneficiaries out of a total of 1130 registered. Compared to about 300 last year.
4. Periodic meetings on the Zoom
One of the secrets of our success in this program is our diversification of communication methods. We work with teachers from two continents and more than 20 countries, of different ages, cultural backgrounds and abilities. Therefore, it is necessary to have communication channels that suit everyone. We organized meetings on the Zoom platform throughout the training period. The goal was to track the progress of the participants, maintain their motivation, review the most important topics of the week, and discuss and solve technical problems. These discussions were successful, with attendance always exceeding 30 teachers, and we recorded them and made them available on the training platform for all participants.
5. Telegram group for solving technical problems.
A group was created on Telegram to track the problems of participants, which included 227 members. We had to track teachers’ technical difficulties throughout the day. An average of 50 messages per day, throughout the training days. Most of the teachers told us in the evaluation form, that their success was due to personal follow-up of their problems via Telegram.
6. Progress tracking system
We have developed a system that is updated periodically, which shows us which teachers are late to complete the units. Then, we send them periodic reminders with their names and links to follow up. Participants in the first survey told us that the reason behind not completing the training courses was being busy and forgetful, so we consider this system to be the key to our success in reaching these honorable numbers. We have sent over 1000 email reminders in total.
7. Exceptional number of graduates
Compared to 70 graduates last year, this year, due to updating the content and developing communication, follow-up and motivation methods, we succeeded in reaching 110 teachers who successfully graduated from the training out of 400 beneficiaries, and became qualified to teach “Media and Information Literacy” to students through Wikipedia.

8. Graduation certificates and badges for motivation
We awarded graduation certificates with a verification ID code, which are automatically issued from the WikiLearn platform. These smart certificates are valuable because they are verifiable. We also provided participants with badges proving their qualification to teach Media and Information Literacy through Wikipedia, which teachers considered to be of great added value to their careers. In order to motivate teachers who wish to complete editing on Wikipedia, we sent them badges on the Arabic Wikipedia.
9. positive evaluation results
The evaluation of the training course by the participants was very positive, whether in terms of organization, communication, technical problem solving or content. We have selected some important statistics to measure the impact (Figure 2). The program was evaluated by 74 participants.
10. What about the WikiLearn platform?
This training was an opportunity to collaborate with the team responsible for developing the WikiLearn platform. The large number of participants in the training was an opportunity to test the platform before it was taken out of the beta phase. We had rounds of conversations with the team represented by Melissa Guadalupe, where we helped the team find various technical problems in the platform through periodic reports, while the team helped us solve these problems and ensure a better learning experience for the participants.
11. What Impact was achieved?
Through our expectations in this program, and through analyzing the data of the evaluation form, we can summarize the impact as follows:
- For teachers who registered for the training but did not benefit from it, we succeeded in changing their negative perceptions about the use of Wikipedia in education.
- For teachers who have only benefited from the first unit of the training, they have understood the importance of Wikipedia in education, and are also able to teach how to access information through Wikipedia and benefit from its features. And how to stay safe while using it.
- For teachers who benefited from the second unit, they also became able to teach methods for evaluating information on Wikipedia based on the policies, instructions and tools for this.
- For those who benefited from the third unit, they also understood the process of producing information on Wikipedia, the methods of working of the Wikimedia community, and everything related to knowledge gaps, and they became able to contribute to reducing these gaps, as they learned the basics of editing on Wikipedia, and ways to organize educational activities to reduce gaps.
- Teachers who successfully graduate from the training are able to use all previous knowledge to plan and manage a lesson that integrates Wikipedia as a tool to teach some media and information literacy skills to students.

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