Talk:Wikiversity
[edit] LQT
w:v:Wikiversity:Strategy | w:v:Wikiversity talk:Strategy
[edit] Importance of Wikiversity
How important is Wikiversity to strategic planning Wikimedia-wide?
Notice that links v:Wikiversity:Strategy and v:Wikiversity talk:Strategy don't work. That's because Wikiversity is not even on the interwiki map. That indicates that WMF thinks little of Wikiversity. One can map through w:v: which takes your browser to Wikipedia and uses its v: mapping to get you home. It is entirely possible that Wikiversity could be a place for Proposal:Sponsored research and development of enormous scope and range. One example: Work on developing a sustainable international structure could be of interest to the The Pew Charitable Trusts or who knows who. CQ 16:40, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
- {{sofixit}}. The interwiki map is editable, I believe. :) If not, a bugzilla request will get it added, just as it did this wiki. -- Philippe 17:42, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
- Looking at mw:Manual:Interwiki you have to be an admin. I'll look into it more. Ah, but look at this - wikiversity:wikiversity:strategy and wikiversity:wikimedia work ok. You just have to write it all the way out. CQ 19:35, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
[edit] MediaWiki Project
See Mediawiki language and project support or MediaWiki or Mediawiki project and language support or MediaWiki project and language support or MediaWiki language and project support or Mediawiki Project and Language Support or ...
No ... It's MediaWiki & language and project support CQ 19:45, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
- Moving .. just in case :
* Fact base (← links)
* User:Mwpnl/sandbox (← links)
* Talk:Participation/Drivers of participation archive 1 (← links)
* Fact base/ko (← links)
* User:Jan eissfeldt/to do (← links)
* Fact base/pl (← links)
* Template:Translation/MediaWiki & language and project support (← links)
* MediaWiki & language and project support/en (redirect page) (← links)
o User:Mwpnl/sandbox (← links)
o MediaWiki & language and project support (← links)
o MediaWiki & language and project support/fr (← links)
o Template:Languages/MediaWiki & language and project support (← links)
o Template:Translation/MediaWiki & language and project support (← links)
* Talk:Wikiversity (← links)
--CQ 19:48, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
-
- There. I moved it to MediaWiki language and project support. Lots of mediawiki work to do here. Interwiki linking, categories, ... lots and lots. CQ 19:53, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Contents
| Thread title | Replies | Last modified |
|---|---|---|
| The state of the union. | 2 | 00:15, 4 February 2010 |
| A note on Wikiversity | 9 | 00:03, 4 February 2010 |
I'm interested in the future of Wikiversity.
Currently I am still studying the history of the discussion about what WV is supposed to represent. It seems as though the participants that were wrangling with this question stopped engaging in this activity about a year ago and went "dark" so this has been purely a forensic process for me.
There are two little bits of information that I have not been able to achieve clarity on, 1) what is an online course, and 2) more importantly why was this the condition for accepting the proposal to allow WV to exist as a sister project? The best information regarding the second part is the documentation of the vote that limits WV from offering "online courses" Original Proposal. Unfortunately no explanation, reasoning or definition is given here without which the pitfalls of an "online course" can not be circumvented, perhaps, in an experimental new type of "online course".
Later attempts to define online courses have included a how-to, similar to what is found on Instructables in the section entitled "WV:Online_Courses", and yet in contradiction, in another area entitled, "Being Educational" the author recommends "a page or article is divided up into segments marked with titles such as 'lesson 1', 'lesson 2'”. All of this muddiness exists within the set of main pages that are intended to provide a universal WV definition for all future users of the project. And for the record, segmented articles abound on WV.
I am particularly interested in the problems that community developed "online courses" may have. The problems of defining pedagogy (aim for just one pedagogy or categorize different ones?), within a fashion suitable for being directed by a discursive community, and then consequently developing the attending learning goals and structure in a similar way, are an extremely interesting set of problems to me and I am eager to dive in to those problems and begin to developing organized disciplined discussions on the matter. Unfortunately I am unable to consider embarking on this because of the lack of clarity surrounding the definition of an "online course". Can someone tell me if there is any chance we will be able to discuss topics at WV similar to "developing curricula the wiki way" or "assessing the prior knowledge of WV learners"?
Are these problems that excite me the very same problems that weighed heavily on the hearts on the Wikimedia Foundation members that voted on conditional approval of the WV project? Or are they a different set of concerns that could stand to be better articulated such as a desire to develop a repository of learning objects?
Well, one of the things about Wikiversity is there is quite a bit of autonomy over how you would you to present your course or subject. Most educators have different styles, and one may work for one educator and may not for another.
Now, I must note, the use of "course" mostly refers to a university based course where someone receives credit. You can have a class on Wikipedia that is not connected to a university, call it a course, and it wouldn't fall under many of the statements that the page linked above is describing. :) Ottava Rima 20:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I believe that as well, there are many pedagogies and for many reasons. In which case simply clarifying the intent of the reference to Instructables from the page WV:Online Courses would be enough. The intent should be to say "this is not an example of a conventional course". You say the defining difference is a lack of accreditation. I believe that is what it is supposed to mean as well, with "believe" being the operative word.
I think considering that it is within the mission statement, this ambiguity shouldn't exist. Perhaps it is an issue that I alone am tripping over.
During one of our discussions, universities and institutions were brought up. I made a note about how it would be nice to have some sort of WMF authority to initiate and make deals with such groups. Here is an example of the potential of university work: Wikiversity:Trade Finance. In that matter, there was more government initiative than Wiki initiative. It would be nice to be able to outwardly search for such collaborations. Ottava Rima 14:56, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
I think it's important to note that the WMF doesn't actually have any authority in that area to give or lend. :) Content decisions are made by the projects. We have a business development team (OK, it's one guy and his laptop) that arranges major business deals, but anything else is sort of handled ad hoc. Can you give an example of what time of deal you're thinking of?
Well, the WMF could put forth some kind of official letter (even if its just on their website and it can be linked in an email) expressing how they are welcoming universities to collaborate on various projects with them (such as using Wikiversity to help create an online classroom environment, uploading old texts from their library to Wikisource, digitize images in their collections and uploading them to commons, etc). Some university bureaucrats are just wary of making deals or negotiating with those who lack an official title or capacity. Ottava Rima 00:12, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
I'd love it if we could capture this idea, and any other Wikiversity specific ideas at Wikiversity. The more we can learn about what individual projects need to be successful, the more easily we can figure out the correct groups within the movement to handle them. I'm going to move this thread over there, if that's okay... Can you come up with a couple other people from Wikiversity to be involved in a brainstorming session?
I just introduced a thread to indicate my interest in the Wikiversity project. I didn't want to hijack this thread's purpose, to discuss developing the involvement of academic communities, to indicate my interest. However I am very interested in the future of WV.
For the record many educators enjoy a high degree of autonomy in their colleges or universities, and approaching them individually with invitations to become involved will mostly like be welcome from anyone that cares about education, regardless of their official capacity. I am thinking of inviting many of the professors that I have enjoyed taking classes from to take part in this project. The only difficulty with that right now is that I am not sure that what I would be offering them is very well defined. It seems as though the project was established as being relatively open ended but it hasn't yet achieved any self-organization other than in the most abstract sense. There isn't, at this particular moment, much current discussion occurring. Therefore unless the professor specialized in education, I wouldn't have a pitch to give them at the moment.
Mbrad, I'm glad you wrote that, I was just reading it! What would it take, in your opinion, to get Wikiversity to a point where you would feel comfortable recommending/inviting? Bear in mind, I know next to nothing about that project. ~Philippe (WMF) 04:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
In my opinion, the concept of applying the community magic of Wikipedia to organizing courses and curricula would be very exciting to me and I would want to invite my professors to engage in that discussion.
I think in order to want to involve them in the project I would have to have specific tasks to ask of them to help with that fall within their interests, and not offer them something arbitrary. I couldn't just say without regard for their actual pedagogy, "hey professor there is this website where you can let your students write about your subject and learn by doing that". I don't think it is a very common teaching activity to have your tertiary level student create a lesson, in any case. I understand that in lower education, teaching methods that involve online activities are increasing, and are perhaps an essential strategy, but on the level of tertiary education, this would be an uncommon strategy for involving university students most of the time. There are a few projects where this makes sense for students on that level, but for the most part I can't see myself asking my professors to teach their classes differently, or trying to sell them this particular teaching method. Still I think this strategy is embedded in WV. I think it is implied in the concepts of "learning by doing" and in "learning groups", and it is therefore enforcing one pedagogy over any other.
While I might be able to get away with putting courses together for others to enjoy, even if it is not the stated purpose of WV, because WV also says that it is open to new definitions of itself. The problem is that new technology will also keep becoming added to the list of solutions for various problems that arise in course ceration. I may want to develop an extension, for example, that "enrolls" a student by placing a semantic tag on their user page, thus enabling a system to group student together in time. This would probably require an extension. I think the technological solutions are also an interesting aspect of WV's potential and I am interested in exploring hacking MediaWiki myself. However this, if anywhere, is where the WV mission will probably be invoked and thus the extensions will not be added. At least that is the impression I have.
Mbrad, I would encourage you to articulate your ideas on the Wikiversity page itself, not just this talk page. Furthermore, it would be great if you could recruit other Wikiversity contributors to the page to discuss the following question: What kind of support (and from whom) do you need to be more effective? The Wiktionary page is a great model for this. Thanks!
Thank you for linking me to that page. I didn't know it existed. I'll see what I can do to contribute positively to that page, as well as in regard to finding WV community to involve.
