Wikiversity Information

Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project,^[2] which supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from more structured projects such as Wikipedia in that it instead offers a series of tutorials, or courses, for the fostering of learning, rather than formal content.

History

Wikiversity's beta phase officially began on August 15, 2006 with the English language Wikiversity. Before it was created in Wikibooks, another project by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Project details

Wikiversity is a center for the creation of and use of free learning materials, and the provision of learning activities. Wikiversity is one of many wikis used in educational contexts,^[3] as well as many initiatives that are creating free and open educational resources.

The primary priorities and goals for Wikiversity are to:

• Create and host a range of free-content, multilingual learning materials/resources, for all age groups in all languages.
• Host scholarly/learning projects and communities that support these materials.^[4]

The Wikiversity e-Learning model places emphasis on "learning groups" and "learning by doing". Wikiversity's motto and slogan is "set learning free",^[5][6] indicating that groups/communities of Wikiversity participants will engage in learning projects. Learning is facilitated through collaboration on projects that are detailed, outlined, summarized or results reported by editing Wikiversity pages. Wikiversity learning projects include collections of wiki webpages concerned with the exploration of a particular topic.^[7] Wikiversity participants are encouraged to express their learning goals, and the Wikiversity community collaborates to develop learning activities and projects to accommodate those goals. However, as the project is still in its early stages,^[8][9] its learning model is still in development.

Learning resources are developed by an individual or groups, either on their own initiative, or as part of a learning project.^[10] Wikiversity resources include teaching aids, lesson plans, curricula, links to off-site resources, course notes, example and problem sets, computer simulations, reading lists, and other as devised by participants – but do not include final polished textbooks. Texts useful to others are hosted at Wikibooks for update and maintenance.^[11] Learning groups with interests in each subject area create a web of resources that form the basis of discussions and activities at Wikiversity. Learning resources can be used by educators outside of Wikiversity for their own purposes, under the terms of the GFDL and a Creative Commons license (like Wikipedia).

Languages

There are currently eleven language Wikiversities – English, French, Finnish, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Czech, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese; Wikiversity projects in other languages are being developed at the "beta" multilingual hub.

For newly established specific language Wikiversities to move out of the initial exploratory "beta" phase, the new Wikiversity community must establish policies governing research activities. Wikiversity may act as a repository of research carried out by the Wikimedia Research Network, or others who are involved in wiki-based, or other research. Wikiversity hosts original research in addition to secondary research, unless a specific language group decides upon no research. It is expected that researchers will respect and update guidelines for appropriate research through a community consensus process.^[12][13]

See also

• Wikiversity interview
• OpenLearn — a project of Open University to deliver free educational resources
• WikiEducator

References

1. ^ Alexa rank
2. ^ Welcome speech, Jimbo Wales, Wikimania 2006 (audio)
3. ^ "Wikis and Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool" by Piotr Konieczny; International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning;January 2007, Vol. 4, No. 1.
4. ^ Approved Wikiversity project proposal, Wikiversity
5. ^ Wikiversity:Learning, Wikiversity
6. ^ Wikiversity learning model, Wikiversity
7. ^ Wikiversity learning projects portal, Wikiversity
8. ^ Wikipedia, the Free Online Encyclopedia, Ponders a New Entity: Wikiversity by Andrea L. Foster; The Chronicle of Higher Education; December 16, 2005.
9. ^ Wikiversity Gains Momentum at PC World
10. ^ "One Laptop Per Teacher: Content and Curriculum for (in-service) Teacher Training" by Ian Kennedy, Delia Pass and Roxan Cadir; Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2007; pp. 2564–2569
11. ^ Wikiversity:What Wikiversity is not, Wikiversity
12. ^ Scope of research on Wikiversity (in development), Multingual Wikiversity hub
13. ^ Wikiversity research guidelines (in development), Multilingual Wikiversity hub

External links

• The Wikiversity multilingual portal – with links to all Wikiversity sites.
• The English language Wikiversity (in beta phase)
• "Resources for Professional Development" Prepared for the Fall conference of the Missouri Juvenile Justice Association, October—2006, Office of State Courts Administrator, Division of Judicial Education P48.
• "Conference Review" by Peter Mulholland; Journal of Emergency Primary Health Care; Vol.4, Issue 4, 2006. (pdf version)
• Topps, D. "Sharing medical educational resources using free and open-source software." in 7th Annual WONCA Rural Health Conference – Transforming Rural Practice Through Education. 2006. Seattle, WA, USA.
• "Access to Global Learning: A Matter of Will" by Steven R. Van Hook; Education Resources Information Center; (ERIC Document No. ED492804); April 27, 2006.
• "Organic Education: Nine Best Internet Tools" by John Paull.
• "Using Wiki to Promote Collaborative Learning in Statistics Education" by Dani Ben-Zvi; Technology Innovations in Statistics Education; Volume 1, Issue 1, 2007, Article 4; Page 4. (pdf version)
• "Bootstrapping a Semantic Wiki Application for Learning Mathematics" by Claus Zinn.
• "Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age" by Axel Bruns; Proceedings ICE 3: Ideas, Cyberspace, Education.
• "The Challenges and Successes of Wikibookian Experts and Wikibook Novices: Classroom and Community Collaborative Experiences" by Suthiporn Sajjapanroj, Curt Bonk, Mimi Lee and Meng-Fen Grace Lin.
• "Wiki or Won't He? A Tale of Public Sector Wikis" by Marieke Guy; Ariadne, Issue 49; October 2006.
• "New-Media Art Education and Its Discontents" by Trebor Scholz.

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