Talk:Wikiversity

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This page was previously nominated for deletion. Please see prior discussions before considering re-nomination: keep, April 21, 2007, see discussion. keep, 30 March 2007, see discussion. no consensus, 14 Jun 2005, see discussion. delete, 18 Oct 2004, see discussion.

For the Oct 2004 deletion debate on this article, see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Wikiversity. --mikeu (talk) 14:36, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

For the June 2005 deletion debate on this article, see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Wikiversity2. -- Jonel | Speak 06:35, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Notice

Wikiversity has been nominated for deletion from Wikibooks. For the deletion discussion see b:Wikibooks:Votes for deletion/Wikiversity. Please comment on the deletion there, not here. Uncle G 14:01:57, 2005-08-20 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiversity's existence

12 days have been gone and there are more votes for it to exist than there are for it not to exist. What's the problem as of this moment?? Georgia guy 20:39, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

According to this page there was to be a Wikimedia board of directors meeting today with wikiversity on the agenda. A suggested timetable for steps in making wikiversity an independent Wikimedia project is here. --JWSchmidt 22:53, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] the point

is it that you can dump your cranky theories on Wikiversity first, and then quote yourself as a published source on Wikipedia? Dark times ahead, then. Wikiversity will crawl with otherwise unpublished kooks. dab (ᛏ) 15:53, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

No. The Wikiversity proposal does not include any system for publishing original research. In fact, Wikiversity might be able to provide an organized system for teaching Wikipedia editors how to find good sources and cite them in Wikipedia articles. I suspect that many Wikipedia editors have no experience in doing this. Any Wikipedia editor who tried to add material without providing good sources could be "sent to school" at Wikiversity. --JWSchmidt 16:04, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

The original Wikiversity proposal said that Wikiversity should, "test the limits of the wiki model both for developing electronic learning resources as well as for teaching and for conducting research and publishing results (within a policy framework developed by the community)". In the current version of the Wikiversity proposal, "conducting research and publishing results" remains as part of the stated mission of Wikiversity. I think the clear intention of the proposal is that Wikiversity support and fosters scholarly “secondary research” (literature reviews). However, the current proposal also says, "Whether or not Wikiversity will host original research or secondary research is still the subject of debate." The comment by User:Dbachmann (above) expressed a very real concern: if Wikiversity allows original research then special effort will have to be made to deal with crank theories and the problem of "original research spam". I think it is safe to say that original research will only exist within Wikiversity if a policy framework can be developed by the community to deal with the potential problems of original research. Everyone who is interested in Wikiversity should read the current proposal and contribute to discussion of these issues. --JWSchmidt 03:27, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vague

The article really doesn't give much of a clue what this is. "…free, open learning environment and research community…" is so vague as to be vacuous. - Jmabel | Talk 15:51, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I came here to see what Wikiversity is, and I was refracted into a mindless jingoism. What is this? --208.3.137.68 21:41, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, what is it specifically? What is the difference between it and Wikibooks? Dessydes 08:09, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

It's a place for 1) Learning materials (that are not textbooks) and 2) Learning communities (around those materials). Please see the proposal on Meta (which is also on Wikiversity itself, but at least all the links work from the Meta page). Research guidelines still have to be worked out - this is one of the main reasons behind the Beta phase. Cormaggio ^{is learning} 13:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiversity needs translators

Wikiversity is establishing versions in several languages and is going to be holding multi-language discussions in order to develop policies, particularly for research. Wikiversity needs participants who can translate documents from one language into another language. Thanks for your help! --JWSchmidt 22:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reception?

Could we get in this article something on how it's turned out? Last time I saw, it looked like it wasn't working. Nobody was writing in it, and there was an implicit pesimistic air among the editors there. Naturally, I don't have evidence nor sources, but if someone could find any (especially if it's someone who says it's going well), it would be great.--Once in a Blue Moon 19:33, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

While I don't know how this relates to this article directly, I'm puzzled a little bit about the "pessimistic air among the editors there". Frankly, from what I have seen from other "new" wikimedia projects, the launch of Wikiversity was one of the more successful that I have ever seen, with huge amounts of new content being added within hours of when it started, and a rather successful community of individuals striving to reach the original goals of the project.

That said, there certainly were some significant detractors and critics of the project, and it certainly is a much smaller community compared to those working on Wikipedia, but it is still something that has a continual bit of interest, and is not by any means a dead community.

It should be pointed out (and added to the article somehow) that Wikiversity is the only Wikimedia sister project that has gone through the official new project approval process. It could be argued perhaps that Wikinews also went through the process, but the official guidelines weren't established until after Wikinews became official. Other sister projects like Commons, Wikibooks, Wikisource, and Wiktionary were established at a much earlier era when mainly it took convincing Jimbo that it was a good idea to create a sister project...or simply get the support of the developers (as happened with the Wikimedia Incubator project).

The harshest critics about Wikiversity are from the academic community, who are upset at the presumption of this being compared to an actual university, and citing concerns about accreditation and other issues from any on-line learning environment being organized with people lacking PhDs or other academic credentials. Some criticisms are valid, but I would say if you want to know what is going on, visit the website and check it out yourself. It is just one click away! --Robert Horning (talk) 04:51, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikiversity is a complex project and faces many challenges - I've written about some of these challenges in my paper for Wikimania 2007. You could also read Teemu Leinonen's paper, more about the project's definition. Addressing these challenges might look like pessimism to outsiders, though I would see it as part of its fundamental groundwork. I wouldn't agree with Robert that the harshest critics of Wikiversity are from the academic community - I've heard many opinions from academics, educators, Wikimedians and others which range from unbridled optimism to deep scepticism. This is just part of the terrain that Wikiversity traverses. :-) Cormaggio ^{is learning} 18:22, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that Wikiversity has "turned out" yet ... it's still much in its formative state but is progressing quite nicely in relation to the duration of its existence. I'm also not clear on where you have witnessed this "implicit pessimism" ... from my perspective, while there are clear detractors (as there are in almost all Wikimedia Foundation projects) there is definite sense of optimism about the potential of Wikiversity from a lot of its active participants; its difficult to see just what a 'future' WV may look like, but thats the nature of this game from what I can tell and there seems to be enough people willing to try to take it wherever that future may be that I'm interested in seeing it along on this course and I think the foundation should as well. All that said, this article sucks and I'm going to recommend to the WV community that we get on it for part of Edit Wikipedia Week. Countrymike (talk) 22:46, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Much of the negativity is from people who drop in looking for great things of interest to themselves only to be disappointed that no one has created it for them yet. They often sneer and then vanish with little productive contribution. Wikipedia survived these hit and run consumers who do not yet quite grasp the wiki way and Wikiversity will also. Meanwhile game developers, artists (CGI or physical ... we can find scanners to get the data in), and java hackers are welcome at v:cisLunarFreighter or v:Lunar Boom Town. Neither are focal points of huge numbers of dynamic web editors yet but I have been having some fun getting ready to pour some aluminum green sand castings and thinking about studying Java so I can move my own art around a web page. A few drop ins have added useful welcome additions so the potential for a community to grow is there. Lazyquasar (talk) 19:22, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Validationn of 3rd party sources

If someone feels like validating that some of the quotes provided under the section "Applicability to Modern Learning" are from 3rd party sources viewed as reputable perhaps we can remove the "No third party sources" tag near the bottom of the article. Lazyquasar (talk) 09:38, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] possible ref

Possible reference for the line: "Interestingly, Wikiversity embodies James Grier Miller's concept (1982) of the University of the World." New structures for lifelong global education --mikeu (talk) 13:54, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Though the page does appear to discuss wikis, it doesn't seem to discuss Miller (at least not on the linked page, given my very cursory look) and I wonder if it would be considered a reliable source. At minimum, the statement would require better attribution 'cause right now it looks like some editor made the connection and happened to have a reference. I could be missing some information, but it still looks like WP:OR to me, possibly a WP:SYNTH. WLU (talk) 17:45, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes cannot be Wikified

Skomorokh, quotes by their nature cannot be wikified. The quotes have been provided to demonstrate that Wikiversity is indeed notable at the leading edge of pedagogical research and belongs in Wikipedia just as other similar inititiatives such as MIT's OpenCourseWare or One Laptop Per Child programs. If you wish to reinsert the wikifiy tag please place it near the top of the article to indicate you wish the entire article wikified without inviting insertions into quotes provided with citation to original sources for readers eddification. Many people have asked what is Wikiversity and what makes it notable. These research papers help answer those questions in detail for anyone who wishes to learn about Wikiviersity or edit the article in good faith. Thanks for your consideration in this matter. cc Wikiversity discussion page. Lazyquasar (talk) 17:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

One thing that could be done is to convert the inline citations to footnote referencing. See Wikipedia:Citing sources for how to wikify the links. --mikeu (talk) 14:56, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

One thing that could be done is to remove that section. Its the majority of the article and reads like a giant advertisement created to promote the subject.--Crossmr (talk) 01:17, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Applicability Section

Since no one really wanted to discuss the content itself, let's be bold. While there are a lot of good quotes here, they're best used as citations for content, and not simply as the content themselves. If the major content of an article is just quotes from other sources, what kind of article do we have? Not a very good one in my opinion. I'd recommend an interested party take these sources and create their own words to discuss the applicability of wikiversity using these as citations. Otherwise it just reads as some kind of testimonial section, or an advert as I tagged it. "Hey look how great this subject is, all these people say so!"--Crossmr (talk) 03:16, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

If anyone needs those quotes for creating a section based on their own words, feel free to grab them from the history[1]--Crossmr (talk) 22:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I reinserted the refs since these are needed to address concerns [2] about primary sources. I left out the quotes since that seems to be the main point of contention. I realize that the refs need to be wikified. Please be patient, it is the holidays, and it might take a few days for me to cleanup the section. --mikeu (talk) 13:23, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

are they refs though? is any of the article based on them, or are they really just external links at this point? It seems that they were just there to support those quotes.--Crossmr (talk) 15:10, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

We're trying to improve the article and address the concerns that have been noted in edit summaries and on this page. The idea is to incorporate info from those references into text that describes the subject of the article, as was requested.--mikeu (talk) 15:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I never said you weren't trying to improve the article. I'm trying to improve the article as well. I'm also not saying don't include them, I'm simply saying they should be in the right place. Listing them in the references section if none of the article has actually been written using them as a reference could be misleading and confusing to a reader. One because it makes the text look more heavily sourced than it is, and two if someone were to try and verify information and begin reading sources they may read one of these sources and think "Nothing in this article appears to be drawn from this source, why is it listed as a reference?" and move to remove it without realizing they're there temporarily until the section is rewritten using our own words.--Crossmr (talk) 20:13, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I undid my inclusion of the refs, for a couple of reasons. First, there were some errors in the attribution of the quotes. Second, the comment above about confusion due to placement. Lastly, I think it would be better to work on the material in a sandbox and only include it in the live article when it is more polished. I copied the section to User:Mu301/Sandbox. As a first step I corrected a number of errors (such as crediting a quote to an editor, instead of the author) Next I will try to pull some ideas out of the quotes and write some descriptive text. Although it is in my userspace I encourage others to help me create a draft that can be worked back into the main article. --mikeu (talk) 00:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

As an editor who has repeatedly requested that reliable third party sources be added to this article, I support their inclusion in a less than ideal form (ex links perhaps) until someone get around to integrating them. Skomorokh ^incite 16:26, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

After cleaning up the citations, I reinserted them in the external links section, per above suggestion. I'm not too concerned about them getting pruned since we are working on a rewrite of the quote material at User:Mu301/Sandbox to be included later.--mikeu (talk) 03:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please incorporate this material into the article.

Show ->.
Sister Projects Interview: Wikiversity [edit] What is Wikiversity? Wikiversity is the Wikimedia Foundation's youngest project, aimed both at creating educational materials and at providing a forum to learn interactively in a wiki environment. Originally begun in Wikibooks, it was split off officially in 2006, with the English Wikiversity, Beta, and three other language Wikiversities established in August 2006. Contrary to what people might think in relation to its name, Wikiversity is not limited to university (tertiary) level materials/activities, but incorporates in its scope materials and activities of all styles and levels – from pre-school to lifelong learning. There are seven individual language Wikiversity projects – English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish – as well as a multilingual hub for inter-project coordination. Wikiversity is both a repository of educational content, and a space for learning. As a repository, it follows a model similar to other sister projects, particularly Wikipedia and Wikibooks – though it strives not to overlap unnecessarily with these projects – and there are good 'course'-type resources in areas such as filmmaking and technical writing. However, as a learning space, it is in a much more experimental phase – learning about how learning can be facilitated in a wiki (specifically Mediawiki) model, and how other technologies (such as IRC, voice chat, blogs, as well as a dedicated "sandbox server") can be utilized to augment the wiki model. There is a strong emphasis on "learning by doing" (or "experiential learning") in the Wikiversity learning model – and there are also initiatives to make Wikiversity a personal learning environment (see examples). Several reading groups have evolved, which indicate promising and viable means of "learning the wiki way". Wikiversity's scope, mission, and inclusion guidelines differ radically from the other Wikimedia Foundation wikis, in that it encourages the use of the wiki for building learning communities, and voicing opinions – many users have blogs in their userspaces, and there is a certain amount of freedom to go beyond NPOV through disclosing bias. There is also freedom to undertake and report on certain types of original research, the horticultural Bloom Clock being the oldest and largest of the research projects. Due to its educational mission, Wikiversity also has a more tolerant approach towards content and activity, preferring to educate rather than deter participants (by deleting or banning). [edit] How did Wikiversity evolve historically and how has it progressed? The roots of Wikiversity go back to August 2003, when Wikibooks was being formed and the idea of a larger learning project was being brainstormed. As a result of these discussions, Wikibooks was set up as a textbook repository, and Wikiversity was set up as a sub-project within Wikibooks. When Wikiversity was proposed for deletion from Wikibooks, there followed a vigorous and lengthy discussion about where and how Wikiversity would exist, and what its future would hold. This prompted the development of a proposal – on Meta – to set up Wikiversity as a separate Wikimedia project. After much discussion, and one rejected proposal, Wikiversity was finally launched in its "beta phase" as an official project in August 2006. Wikiversity has never officially been declared to have emerged from its beta phase, and the probability is that it will continue in its experimental phase for some time, perhaps some years. Wikiversity's motto is Set learning free Measuring Wikiversity's progress can be difficult due to its wide scope, but it has managed to build a very strong community, and content has been slowly but steadily created and improved over the first eighteen months (somewhere in between what one would expect of a glacier and a rolling snowball). Currently several users are working on outreach efforts aimed at brick-and-mortar institutions and organizations to see where and how we can be of assistance in helping to create educational materials and learning communities. For further reading, see History of Wikiversity, a summary written by editor JWSchmidt, and the future of Wikiversity [edit] What is Wikiversity's vision and mission? There are many visions for Wikiversity – a repository of open educational resources (see also currently running learning project composing free and open online educational resources), an experiment in wiki-based learning, a global learning community, a radical alternative to fee-based education – but to name a few. Wikiversity is adaptable and broad enough to incorporate many of these visions – and certainly the first three of these are inherent aspects of Wikiversity's scope and mission. Whether Wikiversity will become or provide an alternative to brick-and-mortar institutions is substantially more controversial – having been explicitly rejected by the board in their first evaluation of the Wikiversity proposal. However, there certainly remains room for imagining and defining what role Wikiversity could play in a the world of "open education" – which might involve collaborations between open content/activity sites (like Wikiversity) and accredited institutions (like traditional universities). Wikiversity Mission Statement Wikiversity is a centre for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. Its primary priorities and goals are to: Create and host a range of free-content, multilingual learning materials/resources, for all age groups and learner levels Host learning and research projects and communities around existing and new materials [edit] How is Wikiversity different from Wikibooks? The singular focus of Wikibooks is to create free and up-to-date textbooks for the use of both institutional and non-institutional students and teachers. The Wikiversities differ from this in several ways, perhaps the most important being that we often focus more on participation as the end product, rather than always moving towards a goal of producing content. Wikiversity supports online learning communities, groups of people who are trying to learn about particular topics. Wikiversity is a place where these learning groups can assemble and discover how best to learn things online. Wikiversity is also the first WikiMedia project that is open to hosting and fostering research. Wikiversity's fundamental unit is neither a book (wikibooks) nor an encyclopedia article (wikipedia); it is a learning resource (see Learning Resources). A learning resource is a text or genre which can outwardly resemble a book or an article, but differs in a number of respects. While we haven't settled on a complete definition of learning resources, we can say that possible identifying characteristics may include any number of: segmentation to facilitate learning, sequencing by difficulty level, didactic use of repetition and redundancy, discernible paths from known to unknown, the involvement of an audience of learners, association with a real-world educational context, the setting of explicit learning goals, conformity with a real-world curriculum of learning, a style which reflects an immediacy of a learning situation or other stylistic criteria typical of didactic intent. In short, it's about learning rather than exposition. While it is true that a "participatory" concept has entered some of the Wikiversity planning processes, it is a subset of actual editing efforts which reflect heterogeneous educational visions and methodologies. For more comparisons and questions, you can look at Wikiversity FAQ. [edit] What are the main terminology differences used by Wikiversity? Some examples are: sysops are Custodians articles are Learning resources or learning projects [edit] So I'm a newcomer to Wikiversity. What can I do? It depends who you are and what you want to do! If you want to find content that could be useful to you in teaching a class, or helping you learn, you can browse Wikiversity's portals and categories, or search for specific content. If you want to learn about something, you can browse Wikiversity's learning projects (or simply follow the method for searching for content – often pages titled like resources are in fact more like learning projects). If you can't find anything that will help you, you can set up a page or project that frames the subject of what you want to learn, and invite people to help you or collaborate with you to learn about something that specifically interests you. Often the best way for new contributors to become involved is to simply introduce themselves on the Colloquium. Let the community know what they're interested in, and ask for advice on how to start. If the new vision for Wikiversity is generally accepted, newcomers will find a slightly stronger encouragement to identify with (and perhaps combine) various roles – i.e. educator, learner, researcher, maintenance. In earlier Wikipedia days, newcomer activity was naturally more strongly orientated towards productive roles, whereas the typical Wikipedia user is now primarily a consumer. Wikiversity is still in its formative phase, which means that productive roles such as educator, researcher and maintenance receive more emphasis and this is where newcomers would mostly focus their activity. This continuing emphasis on productive roles as in the early days of Wikipedia is one of the things which makes Wikiversity especially attractive for experienced editors from other Wikimedia projects. [edit] What are some of the tasks done by administrators (custodians)? Administration on Wikiversity is handled quite differently than it is on other projects (for one thing, they're referred to as Custodians, not "admins"). The original cohort were very concerned by the political connotations of Administratorship on other Foundation wikis (especially Wikipedia), so we decided to use a different name, and we also adopted a very different method of allocating the tools by using a "mentorship" strategy. Rather than electing Custodians before they receive the tools, we instead allow established and experienced custodians to mentor new custodians for one month, and then seek community input after that "probationary period" is over. In most cases, this has been quite effective in removing the political elements of it, which is important to us because we want to encourage all trusted users to have the tools available if and when they might need them. As far as the actual tasks go, they're no different from any other wiki. We clean up vandalism, block vandals, delete junk, etc. Custodians also take part in tasks as applying and creating with others policies such as NPOV in the educational context. [edit] What language projects are there in Wikiversity? Currently there are six languages available (English, French, German, Greek, Italian and Spanish) and the Japanese Wikiversity approved but not yet created. Other languages are incubated on beta wikiversity while they build their communities. They are separated after certain criteria which include e.g. having 10 or more active editors. Wikiversity as a whole is less than 2 years old, so there simply hasn't been as much time for other-language projects to develop. Hierarchy of Wikiversity schools and topics [edit] I noticed some namespaces here that are not available found in Wikipedia. Can you explain when and where they are used? Part of that comes from a lot of people having a lot of ideas early in the process. Originally, there was discussion of having a somewhat hierarchical structure of Schools, Departments, and Classes, but the Foundation objected to this structure, and in general we've found ourselves doing quite well without it. The "Topic" namespace was originally somewhat of a replacement for Departments, but has since developed to become more of an organizational tool. The Schools themselves have been largely inactive lately, as community members concentrate more on the main namespace. More info can be found at Wikiversity namespaces. [edit] Being one of the smaller sister projects, are there plans to encourage more people to register and contribute? Outreach has been a focus since the beginning and is now also supported with the Wikiversity:Vision 2009. Contributors are attracted from our sister projects, but also from outside institutions and communities. However, our most successful recruiting has probably been passive: people come across us from one place or another and have an "aha!" experience when they recognize our scope and potential, and when they find the welcoming and supportive community which is the foundation of our efforts. We also "recruit" people from Wikipedia pages/articles to related learning projects that we have on Wikiversity. The Ivan Illich page on Wikipedia, for example, has a template that draws people to the Wikiversity reading group for Illich's text. [edit] Does Wikiversity host original research? How do you manage this research? What are the current research projects? Yes, Wikiversity is a place for developing and hosting research projects. Some of the successful projects are Bloom Clock and Wikimedia Demographics. Join also the discussion about forming an academic board to oversee and manage research projects – see Wikiversity research. [edit] What is the most pressing problem facing Wikiversity? How can we solve it? Adaptation of MediaWiki (technical) and liason with WMF (policy) in order to provide an optimal online environment for wiki-based learning. For example, being able to embed multimedia, show rss feeds, favourite pages, use web2.0 social networking, wysiwig editing, etc. to encourage learner participation, and to help foster learning communities and powerful wikiversity-based learning experiences. One way to progress here is with the Topic:Sandbox Server 0.5. [edit] Wikipedia maintains a set of "Featured Articles". Is there a similar scheme which showcases Wikiversity's best works? Yes, see Wikiversity:Main Page, there are: Today's featured project Today's featured educational image