[Wikiversity-l] Wikiversity and Wikibooks: can we answer the perennial question?

Wed Nov 14 21:00:30 UTC 2007

Hi Cormac, Teemu

I agree with Teemu, although I wonder how successful such free forming would
be in the Wikiversity? To my mind, the thing that makes Wikipedia successful
in terms of participation and collaborative effort is that the project makes
sense to anyone familiar with an encylcopedia. Obviously Wikipedia is far
more than a mere encyclopedia, but with the basic brief understood - to
create factual and informative articles for individual topics etc - then the
collaboration can happen more readily.

With the likes of Wikiversity, and even Wikibooks, the brief is far less
clear and the structure of content or point of entry is even less clear.
This results in a great many different interpretations of what the whole
project should be, as well as the mini projects within it. None of this
negates what Teemu says, in fact it so far supports his proposal that
Wikiversity should abandon content production.

I want to point to a number of articles and projects that I think
collectively illustrate my opinion on the matter and propose models for the
likes of Wikiversity.

   - Deschooling
Society<http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich:_Deschooling_Society>-
a reading group in Wikiversity that is studying the work of Ivan
Illich
   - Otago Polytechnic's development structure in
Wikieducator<http://wikieducator.org/Otago_Polytechnic#About_Otago.27s_Educational_Resource_Developments>-
An at-first difficult to understand model for structuring content in
the
   Wikieducator project. The video may be useful to watch. The structure aims
   to find a balance between the encyclopedia structure that helps to make
   Wikipedia successful, and the individual contextualisation of content needed
   in educational efforts.
   - The gold in a wiki is often in the discussion
pages<http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2007/01/31/the-gold-in-a-wiki-is-often-in-the-discussion-pages/>-
A blog post pointing to various discussion about learner driven wikis
as
   Teemu suggests
   - Wikiversity, Wikieducator, please join to make
Wikilearner<http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2007/02/16/wikiversity-wikieducator-please-join-and-make-wikilearner/>-
A blog post initially pleading for the two projects to join, but is
now
   more in line with Temmu's call for a need for a space that is learner
   generated.

Hope I've added something to this important issue facing Wikiversity and
Wikieducator. Sorry I have nothing to add to the international language
issue/effort.

Regards
Leigh

On Nov 14, 2007 11:03 AM, Teemu Leinonen <teemu.leinonen at taik.fi> wrote:

> Hi Cormac,
>
> thank you for raising up this important topic in the list. I hope
> this does not end-up to be a re-run of argumentation you and me
> already have had.
>
> Cormac Lawler kirjoitti 13.11.2007 kello 23:20:
> > this has had the
> > practical outcome that these communities have extended the scope of
> > the Wikibooks project from what other Wikibooks projects are doing -
> > in hosting lesson plans and pedagogic guidance for using these
> > textbooks in class. (This latter seems to be more suited to
> > Wikiversity in my mind at least - is this also the same for you,
> > and/or is it a problem?)
>
> I think the whole Wikiversity should give-up the "content production"
> and focus on hosting communities of learners who want to do things
> together. This way Wikiversity should have only good descriptions of
> "learning projects", which are communities interested in to help each
> other to learn something. David Wiley's syllabus of Introduction to
> Open Education class is a great example of this kind of use of a
> wiki, here:
>
> http://www.opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?
> title=How_to_use_a_wiki_to_facilitate_learning
>
> This way the Wikiversity pages should focus on to manage the
> "learning projects", whereas the "learning content" would be there
> where they naturally belong to: in the other Wikimedia project's
> sites, such as Wikibooks, Wikicommons, Wikipedia etc. These projects
> are already there to have "educational content" in them. In the
> Wikiversity learning project pages there would be then of course
> links to the content pages (Wikibooks etc.).
>
> >  Put another way: what does Wikiversity do (or intend to
> > do) that Wikibooks can never do, as presently defined?
>
> Making a meaningful structure for "learning projects" and offering
> them for people so that it is very easy to participate in them is
> something Wikibooks probably will never do. I think Wikibooks mission
> is very clear: "to create a free collection of open-content textbooks".
>
> The mission of the Wikiversity should then be: to create and run free
> learning projects.
>
> > So, the 'international' dimension here comes down to whether it is
> > possible - or useful - to define how Wikiversity and Wikibooks would
> > relate _in_all_languages. If it is possible and/or useful, then it
> > might be timely to actively construct such a map of how the two
> > projects relate (eg how much overlap is ok, what the scope of each is,
> > and how they can share resources etc), and set out a framework for how
> > different languages can be set up, defined and organised around
> > various activities.
>
> I think the Wikiversity should be one, but multi-lingual. In
> Wikiversity we should offer "learning projects" in many languages and
> not build many parallel Wikiversitys in different languages. The
> languages could simple be defined with categories. This would promote
> people to do some studies on Wikiversity also in some foreign
> language, which is very "educational". :-)
>
>        - Teemu
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikiversity-l mailing list
> Wikiversity-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiversity-l
>

-- 
--
Leigh Blackall
+64(0)21736539
skype - leigh_blackall
SL - Leroy Goalpost
http://learnonline.wordpress.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikiversity-l/attachments/20071115/dc5a3237/attachment-0001.htm 