Erik Moeller wrote:
You are confusing a goal-oriented approach with hurry. There is no hurry. There is, however, a grants proposal to the World Bank in the works, and before we start seriously working on that, I'd like some basics to be settled.
Addressing the list in general:
Wikiversity is a vastly larger and more ambitious project than anything launched before by Wikimedia. You have no incentive scheme for teachers besides monetary. You're a bunch of 20-something year old dreamers who happened to be in the right place at the right time, and you expect large organisations to give you grants? Perhaps we have an advantage in that the rest of the world hasn't yet cottoned on to the fact that the people running Wikipedia were just lucky to discover a good idea early and enthusiastically jump on the bandwagon, and that the whole thing has been pulled off with near-zero managerial expertise or effort. They will cotton on, possibly after a failure or two.
No-one here has experience with running a university. As far as I know, none of the people involved in this project have even taught at the tertiary level.
It would be alright if this were a project like Wikipedia, where all we needed to do is write 2000 lines of code, strike a spark, and watch the whole thing roar into flame. But it's not. Wikipedia is mostly written by the huge pool of bored students with plenty of time on their hands. The vast bulk of them don't have the skills to teach at the tertiary level, and those that do are already paid for their time at an existing university.
Of course there are people willing to teach for free, but they are greatly outnumbered by the people who want to learn for free. In short, there's no way to obtain an acceptable student-teacher ratio without paying teachers, and to pay teachers you need an administrative structure and managerial expertise.
Sorry to be harsh, but it had to be said. I count myself in all statements about lack of collective skills.
-- Tim Starling