Mailing List Archive

daniwo59@aol.com:
> This whole conversation would be more productive if we were to
> discuss things like: who are the students, who are the teachers, levels of
> education, course curricula, teacher incentives, structuring lesson plans,
> structure of semesters, accreditation, meeting local educational standards (which
> are delineated very rigidly), subject matter, interconnectivity between
> classes, extra-wiki learning, grading, acceptance standards, why and how a wiki,
> etc., etc., etc.

Yes. Many of these discussions have already taken place on
[[m:Talk:Wikiversity]] and should continue there.

> Sorry, but claiming that we are starting something new is little more than a
> placebo for a poorly thought out project.

Well, first of all, there already *is* a Wikiversity effort on
Wikibooks, whether we like it or not. At some point we'll have to decide
what to do with that. There also is de.wikiversity.org, which was
silently created; I was the first person who publicly stated that it
should not be considered an official Wikimedia effort.

Secondly, I personally have not advocated launching Wikisophia anytime
soon and have made it clear that in my opinion, the project needs a much
better definition and research into its needs before its launch. The
fact that I am advocating that this process should continue under a new
name doesn't mean that I want it to be finished tomorrow.

It seems that many people equate discussion with "impatient people
wanting the project to be launched", perhaps because this is the way
that things were done in the past. Personally, I think the discussion
we're having is an important prelude to seriously rethinking this idea,
and properly defining its scope (I do not allege that I have provided
such a definition, merely an outline thereof).

Erik

This whole conversation would be more productive if we were to
> discuss things like:

It's already been discussed and thought about at some length, but it's
still not ready for prime-time, as I've said before - it needs to be
set out as clearly as Wikinews was.

> who are the students

People who want to learn stuff.

> who are the teachers

People who want to teach stuff, and have enough knowledge to do so.

> levels of education

Any which could be made feasible. I'd probably suggest following a
tertiary structure (as it is a lot more feasible to adapt to wiki
principles), but the material covered would by no means be limited to
that standard.

> course curricula

Developed by interested parties, just as on the other projects. It'd
quite likely have a significant effect on boosting Wikibooks in this
way.

> teacher incentives

The pleasure of it. The same incentives that people find in working on
Wikipedia and all of Wikimedia's other projects.

> structuring lesson plans

Same goes as for the curriculum itself - interested parties could put
this together, most likely a party acting as facilitator/lecturer.

> structure of semesters

Who says we need to go by semesters? As I've said before, think
outside the square. A course takes as long as the course needs to
take. At least at first, I'd be suggesting that we didn't try tackling
anything as large as a semester-long course, due to the risk of
interest petering out, and concentrated on more short-term projects.

> accreditation

None. An accredited wiki-university is a pipedream. It's a way of
allowing interested people to learn, just as Wikipedia is. That's all.

> meeting local educational standards (which are delineated very rigidly)

See above. If you're not seeking accreditation or official
recognition, you don't need to follow local standards.

> subject matter

There's so much potential for courses in a variety of areas. In the
end, it comes down to the community how far this would stretch, but I
would envisage this going well beyond the standard tertiary fare
(although hopefully covering it), and into other areas of learning as
well (i.e. things that you might learn at a community house here in
Australia).

> interconnectivity between classes

This is a matter for the community. If this proves necessary - and it
may well - then added courses can be drawn up that interconnect with
the original.

> extra-wiki learning

The wiki should suffice for many things, but where necessary, IRC may
be useful if real-time discussions need to be held, and email as a
means of submitting material.

> grading

If we need to grade (and I'm not sure that it fits the wiki model),
then means for doing so can be worked out by those writing up the
curriculum and lesson plans.

> acceptance standards

It's a wiki. Everyone can edit. Everyone can learn. There would be no
acceptance standards.

> why and how a wiki,

There's the potential to take what we've achieved with Wikipedia and
other Wikimedia projects and expand this into the field of e-learning
- by applying some of the lessons learned there, and thinking outside
the box - taking on the elements that fit with wiki principles, and
discarding those that don't (i.e. accreditation) I think we can really
achieve something special.

> Sorry, but claiming that we are starting something new is little more than a
> placebo for a poorly thought out project.

Poorly thought out project my ass. It's been thought about in some
depth for many months. The lack of a detailed proposal, ala Wikinews,
is more a matter of my and others being lazy than a lack of a coherent
idea of how this would work. Just because you haven't necessarily
heard about it doesn't mean it hasn't been happening.

-- ambi

Rebecca a écrit:

>>Sorry, but claiming that we are starting something new is little more than a
>>placebo for a poorly thought out project.
>
>
> Poorly thought out project my ass. It's been thought about in some
> depth for many months. The lack of a detailed proposal, ala Wikinews,
> is more a matter of my and others being lazy than a lack of a coherent
> idea of how this would work. Just because you haven't necessarily
> heard about it doesn't mean it hasn't been happening.
>
> -- ambi

Ambi, please let's keep the discussion polite :-)
Now, what would be great... over the next few months, would be that you
guys working on this (with germans and spanish... are there other
languages working on this right now ?) try to make it something more
coherent on meta for us.

I would be very interested myself. And I am ready to show it to
academics I know in France, Marocco and Algeria. Might be a nice
preambule for getting more known and respected in those circles. Please
help us here Ambi.

Ant

Hi,

Le Wednesday 11 May 2005 18:06, Rebecca a écrit :
> This whole conversation would be more productive if we were to
>
> > discuss things like:
>
> It's already been discussed and thought about at some length, but it's
> still not ready for prime-time, as I've said before - it needs to be
> set out as clearly as Wikinews was.

Sorry, but seeing your answers below, this project seems very amateurist, not
really thought of.

> > who are the students
>
> People who want to learn stuff.

Several billions people on earth. Hopefully, we are restricted to our
planet...

> > who are the teachers
>
> People who want to teach stuff, and have enough knowledge to do so.

Against, this amazingly vague and unclear.

[skiping other very vague explanations]

> Poorly thought out project my ass. It's been thought about in some
> depth for many months. The lack of a detailed proposal, ala Wikinews,
> is more a matter of my and others being lazy than a lack of a coherent
> idea of how this would work. Just because you haven't necessarily
> heard about it doesn't mean it hasn't been happening.

This project needs real planning before doing anything else.
This is not the case upto now seeing the debate here.
BTW, why not using Wikiedu for the name, which was suggested by Anthere,
I think.

And I thing we are undertaking too much at the same time.
We can't continue starting a new project every three months, especially seeing
that recently started projects have still a lot of problems to solve.
Others people have described this very well in this thread.
It's urgent to wait before starting anything new.

> -- ambi

Yann
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