[Foundation-l] Vote to create Wikiversity Vote

[Cormac Lawler]

On 11/3/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> When I first suggested the name Wikiversity in an exchange with Mav it
> was only semi-serious.  While I sincerely believe in the idea, I also
> see that no-one has yet appeared with the vision needed  to really take
> this idea forward.  The vision that Jimbo provided to the development of
> Wikipedia is simply not there for Wikiversity.  The "Vision" section of
> the proposal starts with "Wikiversity could ...".  Great visions do not
> start with a conditional verb.
>
> The vision must go further than a mere listing of proposed courses or
> textbooks.  Relying too much on our experiences with established
> universitie (or our rebellion against them) is nothing more than a
> recipe for "same old, same old".  If a Wikiversity is to really succeed
> it must offer something different.  An electronic version of traditional
> techniques is not different enough.  Nothing in what I have read in
> these discussions shows that anybody has any idea about the nature of
> education and how people learn.  Has anyone considered why it is that
> critical thinking can only start when the prejudiced logic of earlier
> education has been unlearned?  How does Wikiversity adapt to NPOV?


Ray (et al.),

you might be interested in a conversation I had with
JWSchmidt/JWSurf/Memenen about wikiversity (which for the moment I've
put in my user space):
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Cormaggio/Wikiversity_chat_04Nov2005

I mentioned your last email, and I hope you don't feel misrepresented
by the reaction. But we both feel that Wikiversity needs to grow
through a collaborative process, and that asking for what it's 'going
to be' is premature and inappropriate (there will probably be a range
of ideas about how individual courses will run, for example - to
account for different learner and teacher styles). However, I think we
both have a pretty well-formed vision about how we see wikiversity
developing and working - an indication of which you can find in this
conversation - although there are other views and debates which you
can find at wikibooks:Wikiversity:About and its talk page:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity:About

Regarding Wikiversity's identity, there will probably be courses that
are quite conventional, not much more than teaching materials and
associated questions. But some courses will be quite different - I
would be interested (and JW is too) in creating learning communities
that work and learn together, possibly even creating content for
Wikipedia or Wikibooks. You can see my brief ideas on how people learn
on the meta page learning community, which I've linked to from
Wikibooks:Wikiversity:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Learning_community
and a more detailed explanation in my dissertation, linked from my
Wikipedia user page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cormaggio

Critical thinking will be central to what I and JW will be doing - see
my sketch for a course on media literacy, which I would like to form a
large collaboration on:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Media113

I hope this gives an indication of some visions of wikiversity. Part
of the problem at the moment is that debate/info is spread over too
many locations, which would be eased by having a dedicated project.
But I'd like to invite anyone reading this to contribute to this
vision instead of criticising it from afar - the meta:Wikiversity page
is a compendium of ideas through time and is possibly the best place
to collate everything together. Alternatively, you could start your
own ideas for a course at Wikiversity's current location at wikibooks,
and outline what you would like to teach and/or learn and how you
would like to do it..

Cormac / Cormaggio