Hi Alison,

Your email has alerted me to just how god-awful we are on Wikiversity at giving an accurate and immediately accessible picture of what we do. Thanks! (And I mean that.)

I read with horror many of the things you wrote. "Virtual offices"? "Looks very formal" "Bringing the old to the new"? Wikiversity, in my opinion, is the very opposite of formality and old-ness - it is an experiment to try to imagine and construct a learning community (and system) from the bottom up.

However, what you've observed is completely valid - there *is* a fairly formal structure in place (for better or worse), which is an attempt to guide people to content and activity, but which sometimes gives people the impression (you're not the first) that Wikiversity is set up like a traditional university. And we have a very chaotic system of introductory pages, including the mentioning of virtual offices, which I'm now going to rewrite. ;-)

But I will counter: there is no distinction between either site in terms of passion or 'radicality' (if that's a word). *Both* sites are attempting to contribute something real and substantial to the world in the form of free educational content. Both are productively chaotic. :-) Neither is (in scope) any more new, old, formal or informal than the other - both work in light of existing educational contexts and practices, and both are trying to rethink and change those contexts and practices through a variety of means. And both have inherent barriers to participation - wiki technology is by no means ubiquitous or accessible to a huge proportion of the world's population.

But there are many baby steps to take along the way, and we need to construct our spaces around these issues, so that we encourage more people to understand our message, and to join the movement. I'm going to work today on addressing the issues you raise for Wikiversity - and I think we could learn quite a bit from Wikieducator at how to present ourselves better.

Thanks again,

Cormac

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:16 PM, Alison Ruth alisonruth@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Leigh

A quick and dirty analysis, but these questions intrigued me as I have seen Wikiverstiy many times, but never signed up.

Differences? Superficially, the front page of both sites sets very different expectations and positions. Wikiversity is fairly monochromatic, all the headings are on blue backgrounds. It looks very formal. WikiEducator, on the other hand, uses a different colour for each heading. There seems to be a brighter environment at WikiEducator.

WikiEducator also has a big invitation in the second heading on the left. "Join us today ~ You'll be glad you did". Under this is a link to create a user account. This is quite clever and potentially gets people in. Wikiversity has a link to request content. There's a barrier to participation.

So a fundamental difference is between 'creating content' and 'requesting content', on top of the perceptual differences arising from colour and positioning of items on the page.

Similarities? Both are actively attempting to create communities of learners. The process for doing that is different for each and without delving a lot deeper, I'm not sure I fully get what the similarities are.

Strengths? WikiEducator is an invitation to be a part of something, to create and grow the community. Wikiversity is an invitation to learn about stuff.

Weaknesses? WikiEducator is new, there seems to be more chaotic development. Wikiversity seems to be trying to emulate the traditional university setup (they even call user pages 'virtual offices').

Why I use WikiEducator? I use WikiEducator because it's more community focused. It's attempting to create new ways of using technology to facilitate learning at a global level. Wikiversity seems to be more about bringing to old to the new, rather than bringing the new to the old. This latter is what I think is happening with WikiEducator. Wikiversity seems very formal, WikiEducator seems like a chaotic outpouring of a bunch of passionate learners and educators.

Projects working closely? There is always room for projects such as these to work together, but as I'm not involved in Wikiversity and only recently come to WikiEducator, I would not want to try to work out how.

Talks? Definitely talks should be started. There is probably the possibility of interlinking the projects and from what I can see, the tutorials WikiEducator has are potentially the reason it will be successful.

HTH Alison

On 18/03/2008, Leigh Blackall leighblackall@gmail.com wrote:

...

What are the differences between Wikiversity and Wikieducator? What are the similarities? What are the strengths and weaknesses of them both? Why do you use one before the other? Do you think the two projects should work more closely? Should representatives from both projects meet in Wikimania this year to discuss all of the above?

--

Leigh Blackall +64(0)21736539 skype - leigh_blackall SL - Leroy Goalpost http://learnonline.wordpress.com

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