Cormac Lawler wrote:
If the board is nervous about the didactic model (eg. as Angela said that she was concerned that Wikimedia would be ridiculed if Wikiversity was widely advertised and (I presume) wasn't ready for incoming students), then it could still allow for the remaining two models (which ironically are at polar ends of the pedagogical spectrum), without too much fear of backlash from the press or wider public. However, I would add that excluding the didactic model for now would bitterly disappoint some contributors.
I want to add my $0.02 here asking for clarification about this issue as well, and an understanding if the concern about no on-line courses is to be something temporary (just during the start-up phase of Wikiversity) or if this is a permanent exclusion on the part of the board. It also cuts deep into some major differences between Wikiversity and Wikibooks, as Wikibooks is a place to create instructional materials (particularly textbooks), but not appropriate to schedule a class and display syllibi for a particular course (more of what Wikiversity is about). The reasoning for why on-line courses is to be excluded IMHO has not been satisfactorily explained to the participants on existing parts of Wikiversity other than just a simple whim or suggestion, nor what philosophical camp is pushing for that concept.
Obviously there are hundreds of different opinions on what Wikiversity ought to be, just based on the participation of the voting process of Wikiversity in the first place. Nobody is advocating that we create instantly a multi-college advanced degree-granting research university. Even the best universities started with a simple foundation, and I can give countless examples of even relatively "new" universities with humble origins, and I think Wikiversity should be no different. In the case of Wikiversity, there is also an existing community that has already gone off into some interesting directions, so any exclusions or restrictions are also going to have to address current content that has already been created and try to fit within the current framework that already exists at Wikibooks and de.wikiversity. The minutes of the board meeting didn't seem to address that issue at all.