[Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity

[Rebecca]

On 5/11/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> I considered writing a similar statement earlier in the thread, but then
> I reflected upon it and was no longer sure it's true. Wikinews in
> particular is probably similarly ambitious if you consider the stated
> long term goal to become an alternative to established news agencies and
> to build a global network of citizen journalists. However, Wikisophia
> can certainly be defined in a way to match or exceed Wikinews in its
> ambitions.

Wikiversity can, yes. That's what we've been saying all along.

> Probably, but you are missing one of the key points of eLearning, which
> is to greatly reduce the time investment required by the teacher. Jimbo
> is currently learning German using various resources, such as flash
> cards and audio records. Wikisophia could provide similar resources and
> online courses which require no continued teacher participation. Some of
> this material would be appropriate on Wikibooks, some would not;
> importantly, Wikisophia would also index resources outside our current
> projects.

This is one area in which you're dead right. Think outside the box,
people. There may be plenty of courses in which a facilitator plays a
continual role, but there may not be in others. In any case, such a
facilitator is going to play a very different role to that of my
lecturer at university in the real world.

> Again, if we use a name like Wikiversity, we set an expectation that
> there will be "professors" lecturing eloquently about certain subjects,
> which is of course not very feasible for the reasons you cite.

The same argument could have been used when we set up Wikipedia -
after all, the expectation then was that you needed each article in an
encyclopedia to be written by academics and peer reviewed. They may
indeed have that expectation, but that's where we need to show them
that that expectation is wrong.

> I'm all for it, but these are long term goals. In the short term,
> Wikisophia can be useful as a repository and index of educational
> resources, with some careful dabbling in teacher/student interaction,
> certification and original research.

A respository and idex of educational resources is Wikibooks. Careful
dabbling in teacher/student interaction, actual courses, and
potentially certification and original research is Wikiversity. This
is why we define our projects before creating them, instead of
creating great white elephants.

-- ambi