[Textbook-l] Wikiversity

Wed Jun 21 05:30:31 UTC 2006

Jon wrote:

>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.
>  
>
We do not necessarily want a lot of kids to show up by themselves with 
no supervision from parents, teachers or other adults.   Wikiversity 
captures the essence of a University which is provide a place where 
scholars and students and participants of all kinds get together to 
collaborate on the exchange of knowledge.    A high school in the U.S. 
focuses competition and keeping the kids from working together too much 
to make evaluation of each child or student's progress easy.  I suppose 
one could capture this competitive model with a wiki but it seems an 
outmoded approach whe the internet is proving that collaboration between 
widely separated people physcially scattered across the planet can excel 
and even begin to supercede individual efforts.

> 
>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.
>  
>
The Wikiversity proposal seeks to dilute nothing already in progress in 
other projects.   Rather provide a workspace where participants not 
quite ready to provide top notch outstanding materials for the other 
projects can work.  If the combined efforts of Wikiversity's 
participants start to produce excellent materials for the other wiki 
projects, the materials can be forked or transwiki'ed and linked to as 
appropriate for maintenance for serving to the general public.  
Wikibooks does not necessarily want aggressive students or participants 
changing their best material without a reasonable time delay and 
validation of the new material.   Wikiversity allow a workspace where 
less capable participants just learning the material can make their 
tweaks and have lengthy discussions without distracting higher level 
authors or the public from the already existing excellent material 
deemed worthy to be served to the general public.

> 
>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.
>  
>
The scope is as clear as it can hope to be without some participants 
trying a few things and finding out what works.  There has been 
substantial discussion and several approaches identified with varying 
levels of support from various people kind enough or interested in the 
the project to donate their time commenting on what they think will work 
or is or is not a good idea.  In my view you are absolutely correct.  
There will be substantial discussion and trial and error amongth the 
initial participants as a common vision of Wikiversity that is 
satisfactory to the rest of Wikimedia Community and attractive enough to 
new participants to thrive and grow.

Cormac and I disagree primarily on initial tactics to initialize the 
project efficiently.   I think we both agree substantially in our vision 
of what a Wikiversity might become.  The question of how to attract 
sufficient participation to achieve a critical mass where anyone who 
drops in or hears about Wikiversity understands intuitively how they can 
benefit from the project while productively contributing to a project 
that will substantially impact the future of the internet and thus the 
human species.  

> 
>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
>  
>
I think Wikiversity will work and augment at least Wikipedia and 
Wikibooks substantially because in the front of every hundred dollar 
physics, engineering, computer science, technical writing or poetry 
textbook I have ever purchase there is a substantial forward or credits 
page detailing the authors appreciation of the cast of hundreds if not 
thousands of assistants, editors, users, etc. who have contributed in 
some significant way to improving the draft version or previous edition 
of the book.    As we lay out learning materials or learning trails or 
learning activities at Wikiversity we will naturally be routing 
interested traffic through useful materials at Wikipedia, Wiktionary, 
and Wikibooks as well as other potentially useful sites around the 
internet.   All of the Wiki communities are setup to capture and thrive 
on diffuse input from casual users as well as higher level busy experts 
who wander by with comments.  I see Wikiversity as a way to encourage 
larger volumes of Wiki users at all levels from the internet accessible 
people around the planet who are interested in specific learning 
communities but not so dedicated as to tackle an entire high quality 
encyclopedia article or textbook.

Further, a static high quality data product can become intimidating and 
inaccessible to new users whereas an entire learning community or group 
will include people at all levels who can help each other understand 
difficult concepts poorly expressed in the current top level material or 
help each other find appropriate level material expressed via an 
appropriate paradigm to match the participant having difficulties.

Thanks for your interest and queries regarding Wikiversity.

regards,
lazyquasar