On 20.1.2011, at 23.37, Erik Moeller wrote:
This may turn out to be a huge win for free culture if it's administered well. Many of the resulting resources may turn out to be useful for Wikibooks, Wikiversity and Wikimedia Commons.
This is great news. I think WMF should actively promote its services (Wikimedia Commons, Wikibooks and Wikiversity) as platforms for the content creators to host their media in the WMF servers. I have understood that this is what is also done in the GLAM -projects. Most likely the Commons is the most interesting platform for the content creators but, I think the Wikibooks and the Wikiversity with the "create a book" -feature could be interesting for them too.
With this development there is maybe another chance to clarify the "vision" of the Wikiversity. I think with many of the Wikiversitys there is still the challenge to find what is it for. I would propose that Wikiversity could focus on:
(1) collaborative learning in online courses in the P2PU style (http://p2pu.org/ ), just being more community-driven and open, and
(2) building interactive self-study courses (computer-based training)
In wiki-terminology the first focus means that we use the Wikiversity primary as a "meta", for editing course syllabus and coordinating collaborative activities in the online course. When the liquid threads are in place (soon :-), a large part of the collaborative learning can also be ran on the Wikiversity. Real-time collaboration can also take place with IRC, Skype or with other tools.
To work with the second focus one should have in the Wikiversity tools to build interactive simulations and exercises, such as multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blanks exercise, and open-ended question with automated or community checking. I don't know well enough the possibilities of the Mediawiki but maybe one may write extensions like this into it.
I'm especially pleased that they avoided adding non-commercial use restrictions.
Me too.
- Teemu
----------------------------------------------- Teemu Leinonen http://www.uiah.fi/~tleinone/ +358 50 351 6796 Media Lab http://mlab.uiah.fi Aalto University School of Art and Design -----------------------------------------------