Wikiversity/Modified project proposal

This page has been moved to Wikiversity Please do not make any changes or additions to this page. You can read, edit and discuss the most up-to-date version at v:Wikiversity:Approved Wikiversity project proposal.

Wikiversity

Current proposal

Scope

Example

Learning

Online Course

What Wikiversity is not

Wikiversity subcommittee

Moving Wikiversity forward

Wikiversity (overview)

Wikiversity in Wikibooks

Edit

This page is a modified proposal for Wikiversity to become a sister project of the Wikimedia Foundation. The first section of this page ("Historical review of the Wikiversity project", below) contains a description of how the original Wikiversity project proposal was produced. The modified proposal is in Part 2, starting with "Mission".

Historical review of the Wikiversity project

Wikiversity was proposed for deletion from Wikibooks in August 2005. Soon after that, there was a proposal to make Wikiversity an independent WikiMedia project. In addition to the information on the proposed projects page, information about the original proposal was described in a mailing list post and on the Wikiversity page of the WikiMedia meta-wiki.

An old proposal and discussion can be seen here : Wikiversity/Original proposal.

A modified project proposal follows (Part 2)

Missionto:

• languages
• materials
• urces for Wikipedia articles)

See more on and . In the fulfillment of its mission, other tasks and goals may be initiated and developed by participants to support learning and the creation of new content. In particular, guidelines will be developed during the beta phase of Wikiversity's development on hosting and fostering research based in part on existing resources in Wikiversity and other Wikimedia projects.

Resources

Resources will include teaching aids, lesson plans, curricula, links, reading lists, etc. Each subject area (or 'course', 'project'), essentially, each community, creates a web of resources that would form the basis of discussions and activities within that field of Wikiversity, and that could be used by any other educators for their own purposes. Some of these will link up with other Wikimedia projects, such as Wikibooks and Wikipedia - a key to these resources should be that they prompt further work (practice/discussion/reflection/criticism etc).

Research

Wikiversity could act as a repository of research carried out by the Wikimedia Research Network or other people involved in wiki-based research, and could also host the proceedings of Wikimania. Whether or not Wikiversity will ever host original research in addition to secondary research is the subject of debate (see talk page) though original research could take place based on materials in Wikiversity (eg. materials on sociology prompt a survey research project). Guidelines for what would be appropriate research will be developed during the beta phase of the project through a community consensus process, and reviewed (by the Special projects committee) after six months. There will not necessarily be "approval" of research added to Wikiversity - though some sort of review process needs to be established which will deal with potential problems.

Scope of Wikiversity

What Wikiversity is

• A repository of free, multilingual educational resources.
• A network of communities to create and use these resources
• A group effort to learn. Which may or may not be led by an instructor, who may or may not be an expert on the topic.

What Wikiversity is not

• A duplication of other Wikimedia projects. While Wikiversity complements other Wikimedia projects, it will not simply duplicate their content. So, if you want to read about a topic, you may be better off visiting, say, Wikipedia or Wikibooks, but if you want to learn about this topic, you can do so at Wikiversity. Learning materials will be created and used on Wikiversity, but materials on other projects may also be used as learning materials themselves or even places to consolidate this learning, ie writing an article, manual etc based on what you've learned. There may be some overlapping, but each project will maintain its own focus.
• A degree or title granting institution: Wikiversity will not confer degrees or any other academic qualifications, nor will it entitle people to call themselves "professors", if they are not professors.

Work done on Wikiversity will hopefully be useful to other projects. When participants have significant results they may be used to improve other Wikimedia projects, and indeed other online learning, reference and data sources.

See more at: Wikiversity/What Wikiversity is not and Wikiversity/Scope.

Features Wikiversity will/might need in the future

• Metadata - there is currently work on a Metadata patch, which will be able to be added to Wikiversity retrospectively.
• Page protection - there may be a need to restrict editing of pages or groups of pages to within groups of people (such as a research community, for example). However, this needs to be done with care, so as to minimise the exclusion of people to the work of that community.
• Software - there is currently no software needed to get Wikiversity going, but participants are welcome to experiment with additions to the source code which might help the work of Wikiversity in some way. Implementations of these ideas will have to be done through the appropriate channels (probably the Special projects committee).

Further discussion

There has been some discussion of how to satisfy the Board's request for modification of the original Wikiversity proposal, which can be seen through these (and associated) pages:

• Talk:Wikiversity#Current status
• Moving Wikiversity forward
• b:Talk:Wikiversity#Decision on Wikiversity?

Please place all additional discussion of modifications to the Wikiversity proposal on the discussion page for the modified proposal.