[Foundation-l] Re: Wikiversity

Tue May 10 21:26:22 UTC 2005

Erik Moeller wrote:
> You are confusing a goal-oriented approach with hurry. There is no
> hurry. There is, however, a grants proposal to the World Bank in the
> works, and before we start seriously working on that, I'd like some
> basics to be settled.

Addressing the list in general:

Wikiversity is a vastly larger and more ambitious project than anything
launched before by Wikimedia. You have no incentive scheme for teachers
besides monetary. You're a bunch of 20-something year old dreamers who
happened to be in the right place at the right time, and you expect
large organisations to give you grants? Perhaps we have an advantage in
that the rest of the world hasn't yet cottoned on to the fact that the
people running Wikipedia were just lucky to discover a good idea early
and enthusiastically jump on the bandwagon, and that the whole thing has
been pulled off with near-zero managerial expertise or effort. They will
cotton on, possibly after a failure or two.

No-one here has experience with running a university. As far as I know,
none of the people involved in this project have even taught at the
tertiary level.

It would be alright if this were a project like Wikipedia, where all we
needed to do is write 2000 lines of code, strike a spark, and watch the
whole thing roar into flame. But it's not. Wikipedia is mostly written
by the huge pool of bored students with plenty of time on their hands.
The vast bulk of them don't have the skills to teach at the tertiary
level, and those that do are already paid for their time at an existing
university.

Of course there are people willing to teach for free, but they are
greatly outnumbered by the people who want to learn for free. In short,
there's no way to obtain an acceptable student-teacher ratio without
paying teachers, and to pay teachers you need an administrative
structure and managerial expertise.

Sorry to be harsh, but it had to be said. I count myself in all
statements about lack of collective skills.

-- Tim Starling