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Wikiversity

Screenshot of wikiversity.org home page
URL	www.wikiversity.org
Slogan	"set learning free"
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Educational, self study
Registration	Optional
Available language(s)	Multilingual
Owner	Wikimedia Foundation
Created by	Wikimedia Community
Launched	August 15, 2006
Alexa rank	17,036[1]

Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project,^[2] which supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from more structured projects such as Wikipedia in that it instead offers a series of tutorials, or courses, for the fostering of learning, rather than formal content.

History

Wikiversity's beta phase officially began on August 15, 2006 with the English language Wikiversity.

Project details

Wikiversity is a center for the creation and use of free learning materials, and the provision of learning activities. Wikiversity is one of many wikis used in educational contexts,^[3] as well as many initiatives that are creating free and open educational resources.

The primary priorities and goals for Wikiversity are to:

• Create and host a range of free-content, multilingual learning materials/resources, for all age groups in all languages.
• Host scholarly/learning projects and communities that support these materials.^[4]

The Wikiversity e-Learning model places emphasis on "learning groups" and "learning by doing". Wikiversity's motto and slogan is "set learning free",^[5][6] indicating that groups/communities of Wikiversity participants will engage in learning projects. Learning is facilitated through collaboration on projects that are detailed, outlined, summarized or results reported by editing Wikiversity pages. Wikiversity learning projects include collections of wiki webpages concerned with the exploration of a particular topic.^[7] Wikiversity participants are encouraged to express their learning goals, and the Wikiversity community collaborates to develop learning activities and projects to accommodate those goals. However, as the project is still in its early stages,^[8][9] its learning model is still in development.

Learning resources are developed by an individual or groups, either on their own initiative, or as part of a learning project.^[10] Wikiversity resources include teaching aids, lesson plans, curricula, links to off-site resources, course notes, example and problem sets, computer simulations, reading lists, and other as devised by participants - but do not include final polished textbooks. Texts useful to others are hosted at Wikibooks for update and maintenance.^[11] Learning groups with interests in each subject area create a web of resources that form the basis of discussions and activities at Wikiversity. Learning resources can be used by educators outside of Wikiversity for their own purposes, under the terms of the GFDL (like Wikipedia).

Languages

There are currently eleven language Wikiversities – English, French, Finnish, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Czech, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese; Wikiversity projects in other languages are being developed at the "beta" multilingual hub.

For newly established specific language Wikiversities to move out of the initial exploratory "beta" phase, the new Wikiversity community must establish policies governing research activities. Wikiversity may act as a repository of research carried out by the Wikimedia Research Network, or others who are involved in wiki-based, or other research. Wikiversity hosts original research in addition to secondary research, unless a specific language group decides upon no research. It is expected that researchers will respect and update guidelines for appropriate research through a community consensus process.^[12][13]

See also

• Wikiversity interview
• OpenLearn — a project of Open University to deliver free educational resources
• WikiEducator
• Wikiversity (Wikibooks)

References

External links

• The Wikiversity multilingual portal - with links to all Wikiversity sites.
• The English language Wikiversity (in beta phase)
• "Resources for Professional Development" Prepared for the Fall conference of the Missouri Juvenile Justice Association, October—2006, Office of State Courts Administrator, Division of Judicial Education P48.
• "Conference Review" by Peter Mulholland; Journal of Emergency Primary Health Care; Vol.4, Issue 4, 2006. (pdf version)
• Topps, D. "Sharing medical educational resources using free and open-source software." in 7th Annual WONCA Rural Health Conference - Transforming Rural Practice Through Education. 2006. Seattle, WA, USA.
• "Access to Global Learning: A Matter of Will" by Steven R. Van Hook; Education Resources Information Center; (ERIC Document No. ED492804); April 27, 2006.
• "Organic Education: Nine Best Internet Tools" by John Paull.
• "Using Wiki to Promote Collaborative Learning in Statistics Education" by Dani Ben-Zvi; Technology Innovations in Statistics Education; Volume 1, Issue 1, 2007, Article 4; Page 4. (pdf version)
• "Bootstrapping a Semantic Wiki Application for Learning Mathematics" by Claus Zinn.
• "Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age" by Axel Bruns; Proceedings ICE 3: Ideas, Cyberspace, Education.
• "The Challenges and Successes of Wikibookian Experts and Wikibook Novices: Classroom and Community Collaborative Experiences" by Suthiporn Sajjapanroj, Curt Bonk, Mimi Lee and Meng-Fen Grace Lin.
• "Wiki or Won't He? A Tale of Public Sector Wikis" by Marieke Guy; Ariadne, Issue 49; October 2006.
• "New-Media Art Education and Its Discontents" by Trebor Scholz.

From Wikiversity

Back to the main page |

Tour |

More tours |

Introduction |

Welcome |

What is Wikiversity? |

Mission

Wikiversity is a wiki, which means you can edit pages right now e.g., try editing the Sandbox.

Contents 1 What is Wikiversity? 2 How can I help? 3 Video tutorial 3.1 Make your first edit right now:

What is Wikiversity?

Click edit this page to change a Wikiversity webpage.

Wikiversity is a community devoted to collaborative learning. We build learning resources from the ground up and also link to existing internet resources. Wikiversity uses wiki software, which makes collaboration easy. Wikiversity participants are continually improving the educational content of Wikiversity's pages. See also more about Wikiversity.

How can I help?

You can help. Don't be afraid to edit—anyone can edit, and we encourage you to be bold! Find something that can be improved, either in content, grammar or formatting, and fix it.

You can't break Wikiversity. Anything can be fixed or improved later. So go ahead, edit, and help make Wikiversity the best learning center on the Internet, but we also should not forget to contribute our own efforts to perfect it!

Video tutorial

Watch a 2 minute-long video introduction to Wikiversity which shows how to edit pages. Available formats:

1. QuickTime (QuickTime info) (directly download)
2. watch an OGG version with external player (OGG info). (download)
3. Watch on this page. Click the blue play button at the bottom of the video window, below (it looks like this: ). Note: the default (java-based) option might not be best for you.

Make your first edit right now:

The edit button.

The save page button.

1. Go to the sandbox and click the edit button
2. Type a message in the edit window
3. Click save page to save your writing
   ...or "show preview" to test your changes
4. Please, no profanity, libel, or personal attacks.

Next: Learn more about editing >>

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Please note that Wikiversity is now being operated at http://en.wikiversity.org/ and you should do all new content development on that website instead of working here on Wikibooks. Material in the "Wikiversity:" namespace, will be deleted shortly off this server, unless it changed to meet Wikibooks' inclusion criteria or incorporated into an existing book.

Our Mission

Wikiversity is intended for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. The mission of Wikiversity is to empower people to achieve their educational goals using resources produced by the free culture movement. The goal is to create a community of people who support each other in their educational endeavors.

• Wikiversity Schools

Some Ideas for Effective Initial Participation

• Add or tweak some notes at a course portal. The School of History is now seeking students! The School of Mathematics is now seeking students: School of Mathematics:Calculus.
• Tweak a random text for readability.
• Create an interesting topic portal.
• Create a random lesson plan.
• Assemble an initial list of links useful to others interested in the topic.
• Add an outline bullet
• Add a factual paragraph or bullet to an article or its associated discussion page.
• Publish an essay question and answer or a term paper at an appropriate location.
• Write a draft quiz regarding a random Wikipedia article or other subject of interest and publish it as an appropriate link in a learning trail.
• Review the standards of educational standards organizations.
• Publish your course notes (Students please note that the copyright of handouts belongs to their creators and permission is required prior to submittal. Personal notes with short quotes compliant with fair use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, short quotes and citations, created to study the course material are very welcome. It is exactly what we wish to edit mercilessly and improve to leave behind published under the FDL for others to encounter along the learning trails.), lesson plans, topical essays, or reference works for others to review, modify or fork.
• Come discuss how to improve Wikiversity at our current mailing list.

Please ask a question

Ask a question or state a desire for a learning resource by inserting a paragraph here: I Want to Know. If you feel like lending a hand after inserting your request, please peruse the other participants requests and add information, comments or clarifying questions boldly.