I agree with Teemu. Definition of both missions give us the difference:

> I think Wikibooks mission
> is very clear: "to create a free collection of open-content textbooks".
>
> The mission of the Wikiversity should then be: to create and run free
> learning projects.

I also think that Wikiversity needs the opportunity to host peaces of Wikibook´s texts and Wikipedia´s articles and modify them. But just peaces. Full texts should be placed on those pages.

And something from international point of view. I am Czech, my native language is Czech. Actully Czech wikipedia is on the 22nd possition with its more than 80 000 articles. We are also having in our language other projects excepting Wikiversity and Wikinews. Other projects allready exists for a few years, but they are still in the phoetal phase. Number of speaker of Czech language is decreasing. It means, we are practicaly running just Wikipedia.

I dont prefer English for communication, thats why I found a few month ago Czech Wikiversity on beta, but now I see, that I we would not be abble to go for new language version request on meta. There are just about 3-5 interested people in extendeing its content. There is noone interested in maintaining that system. We are having no resource on Wikibooks. So I would say, we are wasting a lot of energy and time there. And this would be simillar on other wikiversities.

So for this time, it seems me familiar to centralize all of these people under one website and for the deep future, there might be a possibility to differ these languages for different domains.

And one more thing on the and. Ive been on WM Polska conference this year, having a presentation about Wikiversity. Most interest was there from the site of Wikibookians, but their opinion was pesimistic. I think wikibookians are a little bit affraid of loosing something. It is important to explaing that Wikiversity is completly different projects and not just Wikibookians will make Wikiversity´s community. See en.wikiversity, there are also people from Wikipedia (like me) and for the future I think, new people from outside will joint - with methodological skills.

Juan de Vojníkov (aka Juan)

2007/11/13, Teemu Leinonen <teemu.leinonen@taik.fi>:

Hi Cormac,

thank you for raising up this important topic in the list. I hope
this does not end-up to be a re-run of argumentation you and me
already have had.

Cormac Lawler kirjoitti 13.11.2007 kello 23:20:
> this has had the
> practical outcome that these communities have extended the scope of
> the Wikibooks project from what other Wikibooks projects are doing -
> in hosting lesson plans and pedagogic guidance for using these
> textbooks in class. (This latter seems to be more suited to
> Wikiversity in my mind at least - is this also the same for you,
> and/or is it a problem?)

I think the whole Wikiversity should give-up the "content production"
and focus on hosting communities of learners who want to do things
together. This way Wikiversity should have only good descriptions of
"learning projects", which are communities interested in to help each
other to learn something. David Wiley's syllabus of Introduction to
Open Education class is a great example of this kind of use of a
wiki, here:

http://www.opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?
title=How_to_use_a_wiki_to_facilitate_learning

This way the Wikiversity pages should focus on to manage the
"learning projects", whereas the "learning content" would be there
where they naturally belong to: in the other Wikimedia project's
sites, such as Wikibooks, Wikicommons, Wikipedia etc. These projects
are already there to have "educational content" in them. In the
Wikiversity learning project pages there would be then of course
links to the content pages (Wikibooks etc.).

> Put another way: what does Wikiversity do (or intend to
> do) that Wikibooks can never do, as presently defined?

Making a meaningful structure for "learning projects" and offering
them for people so that it is very easy to participate in them is
something Wikibooks probably will never do. I think Wikibooks mission
is very clear: "to create a free collection of open-content textbooks".

The mission of the Wikiversity should then be: to create and run free
learning projects.

> So, the 'international' dimension here comes down to whether it is
> possible - or useful - to define how Wikiversity and Wikibooks would
> relate _in_all_languages. If it is possible and/or useful, then it
> might be timely to actively construct such a map of how the two
> projects relate (eg how much overlap is ok, what the scope of each is,
> and how they can share resources etc), and set out a framework for how
> different languages can be set up, defined and organised around
> various activities.

I think the Wikiversity should be one, but multi-lingual. In
Wikiversity we should offer "learning projects" in many languages and
not build many parallel Wikiversitys in different languages. The
languages could simple be defined with categories. This would promote
people to do some studies on Wikiversity also in some foreign
language, which is very "educational". :-)

- Teemu

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