In case anyone's interested, I've had a conference submission accepted
for the Open Educational Resources conference in Manchester this May.
http://www.ucel.ac.uk/oer11/
The ambiguity of the title is deliberate.
Title: Wikipedia and Higher Education: Beat them or join them?
Conference Theme: Collaboration and communities
Abstract: Max. 350 words
The presenter works on OER projects in Higher Education, and
also in a voluntary capacity for Wikipedia, which aims to bring the
world's knowledge to all of humanity. Both efforts are worthwhile, but
their reach and impact is very different.
I will argue that Wikipedia and its related projects have achieved
enormous impact due to cultural factors that are only evident "behind
the scenes". These cultural factors, including very high degrees of risk
tolerance and individual empowerment, are largely alien to present-day
Higher Education and become more so as universities become increasingly
managerial. Some attempts to improve on the Wikipedia model, such as
Citizendium, lack this special ingredient and enjoy considerably less
impact.
Universities have entirely different strengths from Wikipedia, but
cannot put off the decision of whether they will try to compete with it,
work with it for the common good, or work in a complementary way. If
they want to be more wiki-like, they need to realise that this is not a
matter of mere technological change, or even of individual practice.
--
Dr Martin L Poulter ICT Manager, The Economics Network
Based at the ILRT, University of Bristol:
http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/
The full experience:
http://infobomb.org/
Wikipedia contributor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MartinPoulter
Bias research:
http://biasandbelief.wordpress.com/
Comedy music:
http://www.myspace.com/glandscape
Community blog:
http://doodznchyx.wordpress.com/