Job Title: Wikimedian in Residence 

Type of role: Contract

Length of Contract: ASAP-Dec 30, 2022

Location: Accra, Ghana/ Remote

How to Apply:  wikimedia@g-set.org

Summary

Ghana Society for Education Technology (GSET) is looking for a Wikimedian in Residence to join our team, reporting to the Director of Strategy & Innovation.  As the Wikimedian in Residence, you will be responsible for working alongside experts to extract structured data from curriculum documents and include it in Wikidata.

This is an exciting opportunity for someone passionate about linked open data, education, technology and innovation who has a deep understanding of Wikidata’s policies and processes and wants to contribute to ensuring that students have access to free, quality, open educational resources aligned with the national curriculum. 

You are responsible for:

• Ensuring that Ghana’s secondary school curriculum data is added to Wikidata by December 2022 using a model that allows for replicability across countries
• Working alongside experts and the Wikimedia community to test and define best practices for extracting structured data from curriculum documents and including it in Wikidata. 
• Collaboratively producing guidelines and documentation on how to replicate curriculum digitization with Wikidata beyond Ghana
• Leading capacity development events that support educators and Wikimedia community members to learn how to contribute education-aligned content on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects 
• Producing ongoing updates and summary reports on a quarterly basis
• Supporting the monitoring and evaluation of project activities 

Skills and Experience:

• Degree in a relevant field (Library and Information Science, Data Science, etc.)
• Extensive experience working with wikidata and wikidata’s policies and processes, and an understanding of the process to request properties and create items in bulk.
• Experience and comfort with manipulating sets of data through tools like Excel, SPARQL, SQL, OpenRefine or similar.
• Experience communicating and collaborating with Wikimedia movement actors 
• Experience working with open knowledge and open content, including understanding how the open-movement uses copyright 

Qualities that are important to us

• Familiarity with digital content management systems used in library or educational settings.
• Awareness of how Wikidata and other structured or linked data systems works, and be comfortable explaining it to others
• Experience creating effective technical communication, such as documentation of tools or software, 
• The ability to consult and work collaboratively with individuals and groups across cultures and timezones 
• Comfortable presenting to large groups 

More about the Wikidata for education Project

In 2020, the absence of curriculum documentation in digitally usable formats prevented education systems from being able to quickly and efficiently respond to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on face-to-face learning.

The Wikimedia Foundation, within the scope of the concept note developed by UNESCO under the Global Education Coalition, is seeking to launch a proof of concept and pilot project as part of broader efforts to align national curricula to content on Wikimedia projects.

The project proposes to establish a data model within Wikidata and Wikibase to enable the easy aligning of national curricula to Wikimedia projects; and make the information more discoverable for learners and educators. This data model will also:

1. Make data about curricula readily available and machine-readable so that developers can create innovative solutions to education challenges.
2. Create an education portal with curated content from Wikimedia projects and other open education resources that is aligned with school curricula.
3. Give education stakeholders the ability to do a comparative analysis of curricula on a global scale.
4. Support the Wikimedia volunteer editing community to improve content related to school curricula.
5. Support countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to provide quality teaching and learning materials to all students and comply with UNESCO’s OER Recommendation.
6. Improve the capacity of the education system to provide contextualized learning opportunities. 
7. Close knowledge gaps on Wiki projects through strategic alignment of content on Wikimedia projects with the localization needs of school systems. 

How to Apply: 

Send an application, accompanied by your CV to the email below using the Job Title as subject.

wikimedia@g-set.org