[Foundation-l] Wikiversitophia

[Rebecca]

This whole conversation would be more productive if we were  to
> discuss things like: 

It's already been discussed and thought about at some length, but it's
still not ready for prime-time, as I've said before - it needs to be
set out as clearly as Wikinews was.

> who are the students

People who want to learn stuff.

> who are the teachers

People who want to teach stuff, and have enough knowledge to do so.

> levels of education

Any which could be made feasible. I'd probably suggest following a
tertiary structure (as it is a lot more feasible to adapt to wiki
principles), but the material covered would by no means be limited to
that standard.

> course curricula

Developed by interested parties, just as on the other projects. It'd
quite likely have a significant effect on boosting Wikibooks in this
way.

> teacher incentives

The pleasure of it. The same incentives that people find in working on
Wikipedia and all of Wikimedia's other projects.

> structuring lesson plans

Same goes as for the curriculum itself - interested parties could put
this together, most likely a party acting as facilitator/lecturer.

> structure of semesters

Who says we need to go by semesters? As I've said before, think
outside the square. A course takes as long as the course needs to
take. At least at first, I'd be suggesting that we didn't try tackling
anything as large as a semester-long course, due to the risk of
interest petering out, and concentrated on more short-term projects.

> accreditation

None. An accredited wiki-university is a pipedream. It's a way of
allowing interested people to learn, just as Wikipedia is. That's all.

> meeting local educational standards  (which are delineated very rigidly)

See above. If you're not seeking accreditation or official
recognition, you don't need to follow local standards.

> subject matter

There's so much potential for courses in a variety of areas. In the
end, it comes down to the community how far this would stretch, but I
would envisage this going well beyond the standard tertiary fare
(although hopefully covering it), and into other areas of learning as
well (i.e. things that you might learn at a community house here in
Australia).

> interconnectivity between classes

This is a matter for the community. If this proves necessary - and it
may well - then added courses can be drawn up that interconnect with
the original.

> extra-wiki learning

The wiki should suffice for many things, but where necessary, IRC may
be useful if real-time discussions need to be held, and email as a
means of submitting material.

> grading

If we need to grade (and I'm not sure that it fits the wiki model),
then means for doing so can be worked out by those writing up the
curriculum and lesson plans.

> acceptance standards

It's a wiki. Everyone can edit. Everyone can learn. There would be no
acceptance standards.

> why and how a wiki,

There's the potential to take what we've achieved with Wikipedia and
other Wikimedia projects and expand this into the field of e-learning
- by applying some of the lessons learned there, and thinking outside
the box - taking on the elements that fit with wiki principles, and
discarding those that don't (i.e. accreditation) I think we can really
achieve something special.

> Sorry, but claiming that we are starting something new is little more than  a
> placebo for a poorly thought out project. 

Poorly thought out project my ass. It's been thought about in some
depth for many months. The lack of a detailed proposal, ala Wikinews,
is more a matter of my and others being lazy than a lack of a coherent
idea of how this would work. Just because you haven't necessarily
heard about it doesn't mean it hasn't been happening.

-- ambi