I've been involved in several projects on Wikiversity where a formal institution is involved.
See page UCNISS for one example. I help set that up for that teaching and research institute at the University of Canberra. One of the more successful courses we ran using Wikiversity was, The Business and Politics of Support (see BPS2011). James Neill, also at the University of Canberra, uses Wikiversity with his psychology students. See the pages under Motivation and Emotion. Today, the University of Canberra offers little recognition for this work, but the seed was planted and open education and research is getting more support across Australia and internationally. I'm now at La Trobe University in Melbourne, and starting work with several academics there who want to develop open academic practices. Our focus will be around education for health professionals, but presented in a way that should be useful for non professionals as well. See the page Health Education and Development for a WIP in it's early stages.
Wikiversity is positioned to accept unceasing numbers of university academics who are only now beginning to look at openness in their profession. Research funding bodies are starting to demand openness (in access and copyright of reports and papers at this stage, but I'd expect process and data too come as well), and universities are exploring open courses as well.
I think Wikiversity should do very little. It's "community" is precarious, having been through at least 2 major upheavals. It simply needs to maintain the platform spam and vandal free, avoid deletionism, welcome new comers, and highlight new and interesting projects on the front page.
Hopefully conversations like these don't lead to a closure around Wikiversity scope, stemming from some people's performance anxiety in the shadow of Wikipedia. I'm confident that in time (read 3-5 years) Wikiversity will be a vibrant and diverse space for teaching, learning and research. It's critical however, that those who currently work to maintain the space today, avoid the wars and closures of the recent past. On Nov 13, 2012 3:16 AM, "Juan de Vojníkov" juandevojnikov@gmail.com wrote:
Well,
I am not offended. Wikiversity is how it is. If you dont have powers to start a new project within Wikiversity or rebuild actual Research portal than I dont understand, why you are coining with the idea to buid such hub within Wikiversity.
But I should have a look to Meta. I still dont understand, why the Journal team needs also Research Hub - thats extra work.
Regards, Juandev
2012/11/11 Joe Corneli holtzermann17@gmail.com
Hi Juan:
I hope it won't offend anyone too much if I say that the research currently hosted on Wikiversity is not all of high quality. (Note to reader: if you were offended by what I just said, please stop reading now, it's not my intention to offend anyone, I'm just sharing my impressions of the site as I think about whether it is suitable for use as the kind of Research Hub I've been imagining, or as a place to build a scholarly journal, etc.)
Indeed, it's a bit hard to figure out what all is really meant to be included under the "research" label on Wikiversity.
For instance, http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Portal:Research links to the "research-related portal" http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Portal:Mathematics -- but this page says:
"Wikiversity participants who are interested in mathematics are invited to create and develop *learning projects* and *learning resources* and help organize them by developing this portal."
If we return to the Research Portal itself, then there's this:
"Guide to Research: The following is a dynamic listing of all the pages categorised into this portal. To restructure or extend this list, you will need to edit the category system itself. Where are the use instructions for this template?"
(It seems like the curator(s) are having a public conversation with themselves here.)
But, OK, examining the list of pages that are designated as belonging to research, my eyes are instantly drawn to things like:
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Abd/Wikipedia,_Wikiversity_and_disruptiv...
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Brainless_humans_for_transplants(User:Super_Q...) http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Dominant_group
none of which are particularly easy for me to make sense of.
This one is much more straightforward:
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Early_telescope
but it looks more like a student research project, rather than something that is aiming for eventual publication in a journal, or any other sort of further development. And this would describe many of the other articles that I sampled. It's not clear what the difference is between this kind of page and a Wikipedia page on the same topic.
My initial conclusion is that Wikiversity's Research Portal could potentially be used as a research hub like I was envisioning, but it would need to be retooled almost completely, and most of the current content would get pushed into a "student research" or "science fiction" category.
I'm not sure I have time to take on something like this! I'll be focusing on developing my own work elsewhere... and I'll report back to the other people looking at building a Research Hub to see what they think.
Joe
On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 11:42 AM, Juan de Vojníkov juandevojnikov@gmail.com wrote:
Well,
it could go to Wikiversity. Wikiversity is also about research, not only education. Recently I was kicked from Wikibooks, where I left a primary research textbook, so I came back to Wikiversity. That is like GLAM bulletin, which is on outreach wiki, not at its own special wiki.
There is also the other way to have a special wiki for the journal, but
if
there are not many contributors its better to start on existing project
and
than if needed move it outside.
Think also about Wikiversity Beta, which is suppose to be our
multilingual
hub and incubator.
Regards, Juandev
2012/11/9 Joe Corneli holtzermann17@gmail.com
Dear Wikiversity-ans:
There has been some considerable discussion in wiki-research-l about creating a new Wiki Studies journal and/or a new place to do research the wiki way.
One question is, why do we need a new place to do research, couldn't we just use Wikiversity for that? For now, Wikiversity seems to focus on education and specifically-educational research, but might it make sense to broaden the scope to include original research more generally?
If you could have a look at the skeleton of the proposal here and add your input (or via this thread), I would appreciate it!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Research_Ideas/Research_Hub
Thanks, Joe
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