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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	22,832 (April 2013[update])[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 [edit]

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

The idea of Wikiversity began with the initial development of the Wikiversity community within the Wikibooks project, however when it was nominated for deletion from Wikibooks, soon there was a proposal to make Wikiversity an independent Wikimedia project,^[3] with the fundamental goal to broaden the scope of activities within the Wikimedia community to include additional types of learning resources in addition to textbooks.

Two proposals were made. The first project proposal was not approved (2005) and the second, modified proposal, was approved (2006).^[4]

The launch of Wikiversity was announced at Wikimania 2006 as:

.... the idea here is to also host learning communities, so people who are actually trying to learn, actually have a place to come and interact and help each other figure out how to learn things. We're also going to be hosting and fostering research into how these kinds of things can be used more effectively.^[5]

— Wikimania, 2006

Project details [edit]

Wikiversity is a center for the creation of and use of free learning materials, and the provision of learning activities. Wikiversity is one of many wikis used in educational contexts,^[6] 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.^[7]

The Wikiversity e-Learning model places emphasis on "learning groups" and "learning by doing". Wikiversity's motto and slogan is "set learning free",^[8][9] 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.^[10] 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,^[11][12] 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.^[13] 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.^[14] 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 and a Creative Commons license (like Wikipedia).

Languages [edit]

There are currently fourteen language Wikiversities – Arabic, Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish; 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.^[15][16]

See also [edit]

Internet portal

• OpenLearn
• WikiEducator

References [edit]

External links [edit]

Wikinews has related news: Wikimedia Netherlands 2007 conference held on wikis and education

• The Wikiversity multilingual portal – with links to all Wikiversity sites, with exception of the Arabic edition for the time being.
• The English language Wikiversity (in beta phase)
• "Resources for Professional Development"^{[dead link]} 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.
• Marieke Guy (October 2006). "Wiki or Won't He? A Tale of Public Sector Wikis". Ariadne (49). 
• "New-Media Art Education and Its Discontents" by Trebor Scholz.
• "Wikiversity; or education meets the free culture movement: An ethnographic investigation" by Norm Friesen, Janet Hopkins.