There is much in Morley's questions/frustrations that I can empathise
with, but there is a lot of sense here from Michael. I'm not going to
labour over everything but I'll pick out some salient points (as I see
them).
Morley:
>Accredited universities do not have a lock, a
>patent on the terms "teacher", "student", "instructor"
or "course". Lots of
>institutions of learning which do not give or require accreditation use
>these terms every day, world wide. There's no good reason for the
>Wikiversity to avoid commonplace terminology.
>
Michael:
Well I agreed with your position above initially.
However, after
watching a few teenagers set themselves up as "Department Heads" I now
have a better appreciation of some of the nuances of anonymous internet
participation. Something most of the members of the Board of the
Wikimedia Foundation have probably been immersed in for several years in
various ways.
As I now see it the good reason to avoid common place terminology is
that it carries a lot of baggage. Most people hear teacher and think
"qualified professional compensated by the institution" not "precocious
teenager or retired project manager who can help me review
thermodynamics if I cross check and verify all facts and reasoning for
myself".
This is a thorny issue and one we definitely need to address more
head-on in the not-too-distant future. Wikiversity will definitely
have people who are there to help other people learning and there will
be other people simply there to learn (or perhaps even to "be
taught"). I don't think there is anything wrong with calling oneself a
"teacher" or "student" (in fact, some people have suggested that we
need some sort of differential login for teachers and students in
particular circumstances). However, I think the fundamental tenet of a
learning community is that anybody can be either/both simultaneously.
This is why I like the proposed Wikiversity motto: "Where the teachers
learn and the learners teach" (and its variants).
Teenagers calling themselves professors or heads of department - well,
we need to avoid being too ageist here and recognise that some of the
best contributors to Wikiversity so far have been teenagers (and the
fact that we will need to invert, to an extent, the age-old
preconceptions of who a "teacher" is - or "expert", for that
matter).
But I find personally distasteful something we've seen in the past
which is like someone "claiming" a department for themselves (simply
because they were first on the scene). This is really bad for building
and developing a learning community. What I think we need to be doing
is to list ourselves as "participants" - then, some of us will
facilitate, point etc, and some of us will ask to be guided - and we
will switch between these roles depending on our needs, knowledge etc.
Fundamentally, in my view, Wikiversity isn't about the *conferring* of
such titles as "teacher" or "professor" on people - though we
*should*
recognise the expertise someone brings to Wikiversity, including that
of being a teacher in a brick-and-mortar institution. However, we need
to adapt the "baggage" of such terms to the building of such an open
learning community/system as Wikiversity.
By stating up front this is NOT an accredited
learning situation that whole
issue really ought to be put aside and simply get on with it. To ban courses
or to try to invent some other word, to ban teachers or try to invent some
other word, you're making the institution look foolish.
Actually I am not responsible. The "institution" can only look foolish
if the terms and the name Wikiversity are activating preconceptions in
the listener. Thus demonstrating what others have called "the wisdom
of the Board" in asking that we avoid these terms to reduce confusion to
newcomers.
I don't think we are about banning teachers - or even courses. As far
as defining Wikiversity goes, I'm not a hardline radical (even though
I would like us to become something radical). I think we have
considerable flexibility in our proposal - and this includes
constructing materials in the format of a course that someone can
follow themselves - with links to pages where activities, discussions
take place between people in the role of teachers/facilitators and
some people in the role of learers/students. Specifically how this
works hasn't been fully explained (or 'discovered') - this is one of
the primary things that we are trying to learn about as we experiment.
So, I would urge you, Morley, to be experimental, and not see this is
as a stumbling block. And if you/we find that there is a particular
element to our processes that are particularly brilliant or
problematic, we can start to develop guidelines help pages, and maybe
policies around these elements. But really, to a large extent, we are
more knowledgeable than the board in this respect - part of the
original rejection and subsequent furore around the "exclude online
courses" recommendation was because there was a lack of clarity in the
original proposal. What we have now does not - as far as i see it -
prevent anyone from following a "traditional" route as their preferred
mode of pedagogy. However, for better or worse, I am going to revive
his discussion soon - probably on the Foundation-l mailing list - to
try to get some clarity on why the original proposal was rejected and
place it within the context of recent discussions.
A Wikiversity with teaching materials but no
support for online teaching
would be a major piece of foolishness. And to obsess over this issue is
simply alienating.
?? Forgive me but I think you are completely wrong above. If
Wikiversity accomplishes nothing but becoming a large online free
repository of useful GPL'ed teaching/studying/learning materials
covering wide sections of human knowledge then it will be an outstanding
accomplishment rivaling the invention of the printing press.
Personally I think we can establish support for online learning and have
been continually amazed that no professional instituation or government
has tackled this for the shear economic benefits to society ..... the
ever present fear of layoff I suppose. Perhaps amateurs and
professionals working together at Wikiversity can accomplish this
obvious benefit of interactive learning computer technology. If not,
then just the repository of GPL'ed information will still be of great
value to every society which chooses to allow its free use.
I fully agree with Michael here. In fact, a "free repository of
resources" was one of the original proposals for wikiversity - and one
which i thought we were being forced into following the board's
original rejection. Since then, however, we have sculpted a proposal
which promotes the developing of learning communities - so we
explicitly also allow for teaching and learning - however successful
or not this experiment will actually turn out to be.
There are other points that I'd like to address, but I think I've
sketched my general take on this for now. Fundamentally though, I'd
like to thank you Morley for your keen interest and dedicated and
patient work on-wiki. I'll be seeing you around. And, also, good to
hear from you again, Michael :-)
Warm regards,
Cormac