Teaching-Learning for Wikimedia Projects: Learnings from a TTT Evaluation Study

Background

Train The Trainer is a flagship training program run by the Access to Knowledge (A2K) team, (formerly with the Centre for Internet and Society), now the Open Knowledge Initiatives team at IIIT-Hyderabad to empower emerging Wikimedians from Indic language communities. It is a long-standing program with its inception in 2013 and running for over a decade, with the latest iteration being in 2024. The objective of this program is to train Wikimedians to become leaders in their communities by introducing relevant skills sets and advanced concepts on engagement with the Wikimedia communities and larger open knowledge movement. 

The program has evolved over the years in terms of participation demographics, program design, and organizing team, with some continuing patterns (e.g. number of participants, residential format etc.). There has been no formal evaluation of the program’s impact over the years, so an evaluation study  was conducted from mid-July to December 2025. The A2K team, supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, was housed at the Centre for Internet and Society from 2012-2025. Following the strategic integration of the A2K team with the RCTS, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, this study was undertaken in collaboration with the Open Knowledge Initiatives (OKI) team.

Read the executive summary and the full report here.

Study Design and Methods

The research aimed to understand the long-term impact of the program, and adopted a mixed methods approach comprising a survey and semi-structured interviews with the TTT participants and organisers. The study was also motivated by the understanding that Indic-language Wikimedia communities have grown significantly over the last decade, and their capacity-building requirements have also evolved. There is also better access to training opportunities across the movement, along with the presence of experienced Wikimedians in communities. The objective therefore was to assess the impact of the capacity-building interventions being made through a program like TTT, its usefulness, areas of improvement, and identify ways to reinvent and adapt to the current needs of Indic language communities.

To ensure representation from most participants, the survey was sent to participants from 2013 to 2024 via emails registered to their Wikimedia accounts. 57 responses were received via survey and16 people people from this larger dataset were interviewed. The timeline for data collection was extended to account for adequate representation across demographic variables like age, year attended, language community, and gender. 

Observations and Key Learnings

The following themes emerged from the data collected:

• TTT is an introduction to the wider Wikimedia world to the attendees:  Participants usually learn about new Wikimedia projects, resources, as well as connect with other Indic Wikimedia language communities at TTT. It broadens their capacity by exposing them to a variety of Wikimedia projects, initiatives by other communities (which are sometimes replicated by them in their own community), and a support system of the OKI staff as well a network of other Wikimedians with varying skills. 
• Participants credit the program with building their confidence: Several participants expressed confidence in undertaking leadership roles after attending the programme. SeveralwomenWikimedians appreciated the program for providing them a space to express themselves and to take up diverse initiatives in their community. 
• Leadership, partnership, and outreach skills: Attendees who were mainly contributing to Wikimedia projects individually have undertaken responsibilities like organizing events online and in-person, mentoring newbies, and establishing partnerships. Several participants got involved in building partnerships in these areas- educational and academic institutions, internal collaborations within communities, and with A2K, content partnerships in areas like GLAM, and in the areas of open knowledge and external outreach.
• Skills useful within Wikimedia and outside: The skills learnt at TTT, especially soft skills like networking, communication, organizing etc. are useful to the participants in their professional life outside of Wikimedia projects as well. 

Recommendations for the future

Based on the evaluation, these recommendations have emerged for the TTT’s future iterations

• Involvement of industry experts: In areas that require awareness raising and more rigorous training, involving professionals and representatives is recommended. Technical expertise requires thorough training, especially for newbie Wikimedians.
• Formal follow up and mentorship: Maintaining a platform where participants can reach out for support with regards to individual contribution, tools, organizing events etc. is required. A2K staff and some Wikimedians have been mentioned repeatedly by interviewees as supportive in learning about new tools, skills, planning events, and Wikimedia projects– a board of people who can support them with the same would provide a formal platform from which new Wikimedians can elicit support. 
• Wikimedia outreach support:as most interviewees report that their community does not have enough new contributors, new and creative outreach mechanisms and encouraging retention of new participants should be included in the program to target this.
• TTT should provide a base for healthy community building:Indic-language Wikimedia  communities are volunteer-led and tend to be informal, and TTT can guide with sustainable community-building. Guidance for preventing burnout and promoting equitable practices in governance and community-building will be helpful for communities witnessing stagnation. 
• More hands-on activities: Several responses emphasized on the importance of practical and hands-on activities when asked how they would design a TTT themselves. Thus, hands-on sessions instead of lectures might be beneficial to future attendees. Hands-on sessions were also one of the sessions most interviewees remembered the best across various iterations
• Wikimedia outreach support: Several interviewees mentioned that their community does not have many new contributors, TTT can help in this area by including outreach mechanisms and methods of encouragement to retain new participants in the program. Support for in-person meetups and editathons can be useful in increasing awareness and bringing in new contributors. Adapting to real world challenges (e.g. rural areas with digital knowledge gaps) and being trained in responding to newbies’ queries, being persuasive are also skills required for effective outreach. 
• Future iterations can include training in advanced Wikimedia skills: As the programme usually has attendees with a mix of experience levels and interest, replicating the design of two parallel tracks, in order to offer advanced Wikimedia skills training to more experienced participants would be useful. A predetermined set of skills can be presented for the attendees to choose from and tracks be executed accordingly. 
• Continue supporting diverse languages and gender groups and increase awareness about the same: TTT already emphasizes on the friendly space policy and inclusion of languages and genders in its selection criteria. However, as a training program it can inform participants about the importance of the same in their communities through focussed sessions on community health and trust and safety, and provide a roadmap to safeguard themselves against discriminatory behaviour. 
• Connecting with resources and experts: As TTT has participants from various communities with different needs, it can be difficult to cater to everyone’s specific needs. A channel where participants can reach out to be connected to expert Wikimedians, WMF grantees in their area of interest, tech and tools experts, people experienced in organizing events etc. would benefit newbies.
• Feedback mechanism that works in tandem with cultural norms: Ensuring nuanced and succinct feedback in a culture where straightforwardness might not be the norm requires a change in mode/style of acquiring feedback. A feedback mechanism spread over months in which the impact of the programme is measured in terms of direct action taken by attendees, like organizing events, outreach, and contributing to new Wikimedia projects would better help map the long-term impact of the programme.
• Connect learnings to global developments: A centralised body of emerging leaders trained to engage with priority areas in the movement, for example governance or strategy discussions, or technological developments would be helpful. This would bridge the gap between regional developments and overall movement strategy, and inform decision-making at the global movement level. 

Overall, the TTT program has had a positive impact on Indic language communities, by promoting leadership skills among them. It has managed to support communities over the years, from emphasis in the early iterations on basics like editathons to more complex skills like management and strategy in the latter years. While there is a lot of detail on experiential learnings and improvements in design and workflow; the team did not receive a lot of critical feedback on the overall program and its objectives, for various possible reasons. This is a key learning that will inform the design of  future evaluation studies. Further, in addition to the recommendations above for the upcoming iterations of TTT, the report also offers insights on the need for nuanced and critical feedback mechanisms, and further research on such capacity-building interventions to contextualize and locate them better in an evolving open knowledge eco-system.