[Foundation-l] Formal request: Wikiversity project

[Rebecca]

I believe Wikiversity has already gone as far as it can go under the
banner of Wikibooks. The layout for the entire site is already there.
I just don't think any further delay is going to be helpful to either
project - Wikiversity is never going to go any further with the low
rate of contributions to Wikibooks, whereas if it does take off
seperately, it may be able to boost Wikibooks up too.

As with all our other projects - once we create the wiki, and link to
it from the pedia, the content will come. I'd also be very wary about
using the term "degree", though. IMO, Wikiversity should just be a
place where you can do courses to learn stuff, and help teach other
people in your areas of skill. The latter area would also be vital, as
the faculties would be the perfect place to coordinate the putting
together of textbooks that made any coherent sense. If we tried to go
any further than this sort of structure (i.e. getting into "degree"
territory), we'd get into a fairly messy area which I see no reason to
go.

Questions such as providing help, I believe, could be addressed once
the seperate wiki was live. The most obvious answers there would be
email and IRC, but I'm sure there's other ways of solving that one
too. Ec asks how we would be able to determine that a student has
completed the required work, and indeed, this is going to be one
important area to work out. Would we set specific tasks, that would
then be handed in, or would it be more of a self-learning thing, with
textbooks and then people on hand to assist you if you need help?

I don't think a Wikiversity is going to be superior to a traditional
university, as such (although there's the potential for much more
interesting courses, based on the current content of Wikibooks!)  The
difference is that it will be free, it will be wiki, and it will be
something new. In other words, a logical extension of where we are
now.

I believe we can pull it off, but I also believe that we'll be waiting
to eternity if we expect the textbooks to come first. The answer is to
use the faculty system on Wikiversity as a basis for creating them -
and for that, we need people - which means a seperate wiki.