The idea of creating a Wikiversity to supplement Wikibooks has been in the pipeline for a long time. The domain name (www.wikiversity.org) has been registered forever and I think there's a sufficient amount of support to proceed.
I believe that it would *significantly* help Wikibooks, which appears to be struggling with a low contribution rate.
There's already a structure for the entire site up on Wikibooks. I've been meaning to request this forever - I'd really like to see Wikiversity get out of beta, and finally go live.
- ambi
What exactly is the reason to get a separate wikiversity fot this, and not make it a sub-project of Wikibooks? What can be done in Wikiversity that would not be okay in Wikibooks? I am afraid that splitting off will work negative rather than positive on the contribution rate.
Andre Engels
On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 12:29:18 +1000, Rebecca misfitgirl@gmail.com wrote:
The idea of creating a Wikiversity to supplement Wikibooks has been in the pipeline for a long time. The domain name (www.wikiversity.org) has been registered forever and I think there's a sufficient amount of support to proceed.
I believe that it would *significantly* help Wikibooks, which appears to be struggling with a low contribution rate.
There's already a structure for the entire site up on Wikibooks. I've been meaning to request this forever - I'd really like to see Wikiversity get out of beta, and finally go live.
- ambi
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--- Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
What exactly is the reason to get a separate wikiversity fot this, and not make it a sub-project of Wikibooks? What can be done in Wikiversity that would not be okay in Wikibooks? I am afraid that splitting off will work negative rather than positive on the contribution rate.
Wikibooks rather, would be a sub-project of Wikiversity. Finished textbook editions would be used in Wikiversity courses (all editing toward creating new textbook editions would still be on Wikibooks).
Just as a university is different from a textbook-writing house, Wikiversity will be different from Wikibooks (textbooks are only one part of the materials needed for a course; lesson plans, test question databases, classroom forums, and other things are needed for online courses). Although, I did a long time ago suggest expanding the focus of Wikibooks to be Wikiveristy, I am now of the opinion that the two functions (creating textbooks and creating courses) would best be separated.
But I am suspending judgment as to if this is the right time to launch Wikiversity since I'd like to see some more development of the idea and focus toward improving our repository of textbooks first. We may also, for example, wish to obtain a grant to develop a few specific courses prior to any launch. Until then the idea could further be developed on Meta and Wikibooks.
BTW, I own Wikiversity.org and Wikiversity.com and hereby give those domains to the Foundation.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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I believe Wikiversity has already gone as far as it can go under the banner of Wikibooks. The layout for the entire site is already there. I just don't think any further delay is going to be helpful to either project - Wikiversity is never going to go any further with the low rate of contributions to Wikibooks, whereas if it does take off seperately, it may be able to boost Wikibooks up too.
As with all our other projects - once we create the wiki, and link to it from the pedia, the content will come. I'd also be very wary about using the term "degree", though. IMO, Wikiversity should just be a place where you can do courses to learn stuff, and help teach other people in your areas of skill. The latter area would also be vital, as the faculties would be the perfect place to coordinate the putting together of textbooks that made any coherent sense. If we tried to go any further than this sort of structure (i.e. getting into "degree" territory), we'd get into a fairly messy area which I see no reason to go.
Questions such as providing help, I believe, could be addressed once the seperate wiki was live. The most obvious answers there would be email and IRC, but I'm sure there's other ways of solving that one too. Ec asks how we would be able to determine that a student has completed the required work, and indeed, this is going to be one important area to work out. Would we set specific tasks, that would then be handed in, or would it be more of a self-learning thing, with textbooks and then people on hand to assist you if you need help?
I don't think a Wikiversity is going to be superior to a traditional university, as such (although there's the potential for much more interesting courses, based on the current content of Wikibooks!) The difference is that it will be free, it will be wiki, and it will be something new. In other words, a logical extension of where we are now.
I believe we can pull it off, but I also believe that we'll be waiting to eternity if we expect the textbooks to come first. The answer is to use the faculty system on Wikiversity as a basis for creating them - and for that, we need people - which means a seperate wiki.
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