[Foundation-l] Wikiversity

Tue Aug 15 08:03:24 UTC 2006

Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>  
>
>>Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Has anyone considered the possibility of actually instrumenting an 
>>>online course of instruction (beyond creating the content) and applying
>>>for accredidation of the whole project and going after real funding?
>>>      
>>>
>>What a frightening idea!  A helpful rule might be, "Wikiversity is not a 
>>diploma mill."
>>    
>>
>Not a diploma mill, accreditdation of the content and course materials, 
>similiar to what college textbook publishers do.
>
Even if I were to concede that accreditation were a good thing, I could 
not see this happening for several years.  You can go through a lot of 
bureaucratic nonsense just trying to get things accredited.  What is 
acceptable in one state may not be acceptable in another.  In a wiki 
environment it may be difficult to keep a text that remains unchanged, 
and who would want to when the students themselves may want to 
participate in improving  the material.

Second language learning is probably an easy place to start, but even 
there decent workbooks are more in demand than decent textbooks.  The 
textbooks can be loaned by the school to the students, and be reusable 
for several years.  Workbooks in which students must write will have a 
life of only one school year, after which they become worthless because 
of all the writing in them.  Several schools in our district offer 
Chinese language lessons, but the cost of workbooks and other study 
material varies considerably depending on the resourcefulness of the 
teacher.

Ec