A number of comments:
1. If the aim is to provide multimedia learning materials for all age
groups, not just university-level, then Wikiversity is a very bad name.
Go for another one - Wikilearning, Wikicollege, Wikischool, something
else. Just something which does not automatically imply that it is just
for university-level learning. Otherwise, you will put off a lot of your
target audience just with the name. Seriously. Give a dog a bad name...
well, you know the rest.
2. Do bear in mind that Wikibooks does use multimedia already -
at least in terms of audio files - and will wish to continue to do so. Some
textbooks already have exercises and Q&As. If these can be made
more dynamic on Wikibooks in the future, then I'm sure they will. Audio
textbooks also, to my mind, fall within Wikibooks' domain. It's not
clear to me whether the Wikiversity proposal seeks to dilute effort
on these elements of textbooks, or not.
3. The aims Cormac lists for Wikiversity do not appear to agree with
Michael Irwin's aims for Wikiversity. If the scope is not clear amongst
the potential initial participants, it sure won't be clear amongst potential
students.
4. Wikiversity seems very ambitious (more ambitious than Wikibooks, and
Wikibooks, to date, has not yet delivered as much as we would wish). It's
fair to ask - however noble the ideas- why you think they will work.
Kind regards
Jon
----- Original Message ----
From: Cormac Lawler <cormaggio(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>rg>; Wikimedia
textbook discussion <textbook-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, 19 June, 2006 1:10:41 PM
Subject: [Textbook-l] Wikiversity
Dear all,
Wikiversity is a proposed Wikimedia project, based specifically around
education and learning - the proposal to set up Wikiversity as a
Wikimedia project is at:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal>.
This proposal has been an attempt to address the fact that the last
proposal (see: <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity>) was not
approved by the board (the background to this is summarised on the
current proposal's page).
For the last three months or so, the proposal (which was already in
development) has been extended and reworked by the Wikiversity
subcommittee (see:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity_subcommittee>). The
subcommittee is now pretty much satisfied that we have constructed a
proposal and scope for the project which gives it the flexibility to
develop, but also the clear rationale to exist as a separate project.
I'm now in the process of negotiating this with the Special Projects
Committee, hopefully to get it set up quite soon indeed :-).
In brief, the proposal is to:
*Host multimedia learning materials for all levels (ie not just
university) in all languages
*Develop learning communities around these materials
*Host research - possibly original research (though this will need to
be discussed by its community)
There is more to the proposal and scope and, if you are interested, I
would urge you to read the proposal and its related pages, which you
can find through a navigational template at the top right of
meta:Wikiversity pages. There is also a very basic mock-up of the
front page of Wikiversity, geared towards the current proposal, at:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Example>.
One of the things the board last recommended was that the community be
"joyful" about the proposal before setting up Wikiversity. So, this
post is to gauge just how joyful people are about the proposal, what
you think works and what doesn't, what you would change, add, remove,
etc. I would like to use this thread to discuss what the best way
forward for Wikiversity would be, so we can give it the best start we
can.
Yours,
Cormac Lawler (m:User:Cormaggio)
(on behalf of the Wikiversity subcommittee)
PS: Please feel free to post this message (or a modification of it) at
appropriate places - I'm just posting this initially to foundation-l
and textbook-l (even though it slightly duplicates a discussion
already underway at the latter).
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