Ross Woods, Feb, 2006
Wikiversity is a proposed project of the Wiki Media group, which also includes Wikipedia and Wikibooks.
It exists mainly as a plan and a discussion topic on a rather small number of very long web pages. It has little in the way of functioning courses, although the mostly empty templates are on-line in the Wikibooks website.
A wiki is a webpage that any user can edit. Members of an online community can draft an article or book, edit it as a group, discuss it, and place it in a repository of publications. The wiki format allows peer review and is subject to the decisions of a moderator.
This is an edited version of the discussion. (The GNU, which is an open license of copyright, covers all sources.)
Its purpose is to herd useful educational ideas and insights into a structure for concrete application. Some of the ideas have unusual merit and innovation.
The final work was to emphasize useful educational ideas and insights and use them to meet its purpose. In a few cases, the editing was quite heavy to comply with the purpose and bring excerpts together in a unified document.
The following were deleted:
Greater consistency of the meaning of "research" was possible through editing.
Wikiversity currently means different things to different people. This page is meant to compare different visions of what Wikiversity should be. It could be no more that a repository or a resource for other institutions. But the weight of opinion seems to be that it should be a real teaching- learning community in its own right.
Considering the arguments for being no more than a repository, this is rather unexpected.
Universities are communities of learners and teachers. University communities are devoted to exploring existing cultures, facilitating the advancement of human endeavors and creating knew knowledge and other cultural elements. Wikiversity will apply wiki technology as a new medium within which to construct a university.
(See the Wikiversity Core Courses Initiative)
In forming constructive links to other Wikimedia projects, many Wikiversity webpages will initially be devoted to research projects aimed at supporting the creation of authoritative wikipedia articles, textbooks, and other teaching resources. These research-oriented pages could be organized into Wikiversity "courses" devoted to particular topic areas, roughly corresponding to traditional academic disciplines.
As Wikiversity becomes established and matures beyond its initial dependencies on other Wikimedia projects, there are a number of services and projects that Wikiversity could come to manage. Below is an outline of these mid- and long-term possibilities, including what each service requires in terms of human and other resources.
The purpose of the Wikiversity project is to build an electronic institution of learning that will be used to test the limits of the wiki model both for developing electronic learning resources as well as for teaching and for conducting research and publishing results (within a policy framework developed by the community).
The goals can be described as follows:
It should not be:
A few points:
Wikiversity could become much more than "yet another university" - it has the potential for rethinking the mode of education itself, or, at least, for furthering the model of collaborative education that is taking hold of the progressive educative community.
Fundamentally though, the scope of a Wikiversity course, whether it is purely research-led or about practical training, or what the age group and/or level of the course should be, should be up to the course teacher/facilitator, and be allowed to grow naturally according to its own need.
We are already attaching preconceptions to what Wikiversity might be when we talk about libraries, bookstores, instructors, lectures, seminars and so many other concepts related to the typical modern university.
I believe as much now in the principle of open and de-institutionalized education as I did during the campus activist times of the 1960s, but perhaps age makes me more cautious. If we are going to grow a Wikiversity, we're going to have to give a serious look at the nature and purpose of education. Today's technological communications resources simply represent one more major factor to take into consideration. These tools permit us to question even more seriously and more effectively what we questioned 40 years ago.
I see the modern university as approaching a new era of identity crisis. What are they for? There is a fundamental conflict between the idea of a university as the source of original thought which doesn't pay much money, and as a training centre for elites that put a priority on their ability to earn a high salary in the future.
But teachers at accredited institutions can use material here to make their instruction better. And people who want to learn for the sake of learning can gather some insight here as well. It is entirely possible, that eLearning materials land here that are so advanced, that working through them would bring credit - and in many schools, there is an "Independent Study" course to give credit for exactly that. We are currently working at my institution (in Germany) on this - we have provisional accreditation (some administrative trivia and, of course, financing still need sorted out) for a Master's program that demands 6 units of 5 credits apiece of Independent Study.
The student and teacher decide together which units will be completed, and how the grading will be worked out.
There's a major point to resolve: Is Wikiversity to be a school (non-accredited, of course) where people come to go through courses as well as write and edit them, or is it a resource for teachers in accredited (and non-accredited) places of learning to draw upon in their own classes? This distinction is what will define the logical setup of the site. Are we targeting independent students who want a good, free education in some area, or teachers who want help with materials/lesson plans/resources for their courses?
Well, you don't need to make it a full school, but it does sound like a good idea to provide the resources for "teachers" to help "students", and for students to ask questions to people who know about the stuff they're learning about. Nothing like mandatory subjects, dedicated teachers, etc., but more like a place where people can come to learn stuff they're interested in and where people can use their knowledge to help and educate others.
It is quite thoroughly related to the instruction of people through the use of Wikibooks, with references to the Wikipedia for specific terminology.
Maybe people from real world institutions of learning could interact. Could Wikiversity have some sort of outreach program for making educators in the real world aware of the educational uses of wiki?
I see it as a "bank of resources" where for example teachers can upload and share items like PowerPoint lectures.
You might check out various learning object repositories.
Am I wrong in thinking that the dominant assumption here is that the wikiversity would function either as (1) a wikified version of a traditional school or (2) a tool to augment or supplement such schools? Because it might also be worth considering forwarding a decentralized teaching model wherein the production and distribution of knowledge is not assumed to be dependent on the one-to-many relationship of traditional pedagogy, but a more wikilike many-to-many relationship. (Hmm. I need to go re-read my en:Philosophy of education#Freire .)
Of course, the whole reason one might desire a Wikiversity is that people want to acquire sophisticated knowledge they don't have yet, and need to acquire it from those who have it, but this role could be played by whole communities of those who are in the know, including, increasingly, the "students" as they learn. This would comprise a sort of journeyman's rebellion, with everybody getting together to boostrap themselves and each other along...
Plan for WikiU to be like a real university, in as much as you could use it to learn almost as much as you could in a RealU.
In many ways we have to offer basics and part of that might involve a structure and curriculum based on a branching or self educating model. Part of this might involve some or all of the following ideas:
The social role of learning was generally agreed upon. Not too many agued for it, but most seemed to assume it, and the themes comes up elsewhere in interactivity. (q.v.)
The wiki community is presently a completely democratic on-line learning community using only a wiki format. That is, learning is the goal and people share and pool ideas in a forum. If they learn that's good. If people don't, they drop out. No big deal-its up to them. I don't know how sustainable it would be as a college, but it seems to be what some commentators would prefer.
The idea of a legitimate nearly "free" online university would be remarkable. I have just completed my research for my doctorate. Some of the factors that came glaring out to me on my research on web-based learning was the following:
An community-based unaccredited approach would work well as a community education or Professional Development, for which accreditation is often unnecessary.
Students could do projects/assignments/homework and then have a wiki peer review of the work. This actually depends on have a group of peers in the same class interested in the same topic. Not to difficult to do if you have to electronically list for a class, and then it goes ahead only when you have enough students.
As an adult learner, I am extremely grateful for the feedback that a learning community offers. This could be codified in the software by having quees of assignments that community members could anonymously "grade." As I post my work, I might get 2-3 feedback comments. This would allow different rates of learning, and would open the courses up to other content. It would be easy in a wiki format, the equivalent to reading a tutorial paper in a classroom and leading a student discussion. It's also quite easy to do by email.
Its a good idea for those who don't mind putting their work out there for fear of feeling insulted, although there should be rules against abusive comments. We could have a page of links to assignments uploaded, and you can put the comments on the wiki. It could even be iterative- you upload, we advise, you fix, we reinspect, and so on. That can be a lot more helpful than just "#1,2, and 5 are wrong".At least for certain subjects, we might find a whole new community of users for this type of system. In fact, as an educational model, teaching is the best way of learning and this philosophy could be applied within the e-college by senior students making assignments to grade other participants work. So English II students grade English I, etc.
Collaborative learning (or, variously, "cohort learning", "constructivist learning", or as part of a learning community) is increasingly seen as a key factor in increasing participation and motivation in courses, both off and online.
In this model, teachers are facilitators; they set up key elements of activities, courses and programs, but the content and process of these activities etc. is largely dictated by the students themselves; for example, collaboratively writing and researching a business proposal, or producing a poster of the pros and cons of GM technology.
We can see collaborative work in any Wikimedia project, particularly the Wikipedias. If this is worked well (and it is all down to groupwork dynamics and constant monitoring by the facilitator), the students will take charge of the activity and it will usually have more meaning for them than something which is learned through the simple description of the field/subject/theory. This touches on the experiential element to education, requiring a reflective element on the behalf of students and teachers, which can be done through keeping a personal diary and sharing this selectively with the teacher or group, or even of writing this openly, for example in the form of a blog (or wiki-blog).
How do we establish a community of wiki editors that will develop such learning modules? What has prevented the development of such "course material" so far?
Wikiversity should create an organized system for helping educate Wikipedia editors in how to find good sources, evaluate sources and references, and make sure that everything in Wikipedia is supported by verified references. I do not edit Wikipedia much, but an index of sources would help me write verfiable Wikibooks. This idea might be worth starting a new wiki, which might be called "Wikiversity" or some other name.It might be that auditors (non-credit students) are the core business. Wikiversity is a place to learn a subject by participating in on-line offerings for very low cost, without paying for tuition or assessment. Meaning most likely we have motivated students, avoiding one huge problem of online courses. For those students our only job is to try to put out the best learning material possible, and to improve on that material.
If you use mainly wikis open to the public, some of the odder classes will start up, like "Introduction to Yu-gi-oh card play", or "Learn Klingon". Odd-ball classes that wouldn't be taught anywhere, but for some reason flourish here. Probably would have more people sign up for them than any "History of the French Revolution" class. If you try to charge anything for these courses, they will never get off the ground. Try targeting students who are fearing taking a course next semester and want to take a wikiclass on it the semester before for practice, teachers who are grad students out looking to prove that they can be professors, and classes that people want.
This topic is central to the hearts of discussion participants, and is a key plank upon which much later discussion rests. I get the impression that they have far from fully explored the topic
Even so, one of the most profitable ideas in the discussion was the exploration of what can be done with wikis for collaboration, materials development, and discussion.
A "learning project" means a set of wiki pages where a community of students come together to learn about a topic collaboratively following an agreed format.
There is an interesting phenomenon by which new wikis are created. Often, an existing wiki serves as an incubator for new wikis. It has never been clear to me why there are people who are in a rush to narrow the focus of existing wikis and sterilize them to remove everything that does not fit a narrow definition of the purpose of the wiki. Maybe a sociologist can explain why it is that people feel the need to specialize and exclude anyone/anything that does not fit a narrow definition of a wiki’s mission.
One problem is, that there has never been a wiki devoted to the construction of interactive wiki-format learning modules. Most of the effort at wikibooks centers on making wiki-format copies of conventional textbooks. These efforts have not built upon the realities of the existing Wikimedia community and the reality of the type of intellectual activity that is involved in producing "course material". Creation of a Wikiversity namespace is the first step in liberating Wikiversity from the problems imposed on Wikiversity by the approach to textbook construction that dominates Wikibooks.
Wikiversity would be wise to start with the needs and strengths of the existing Wikimedia community. In particular, Wikiversity should start its growth by making use of Wikipedia editors as its first "students". What are the critical learning needs of Wikipedia editors? Wikipedia is in the process of trying to produce more authoritative articles. To do this, Wikipedia editors need to participate in community efforts to research topics and distill their research into well-referenced Wikipedia articles. Wikiversity's first priority should be to establish links between Wikipedia articles and Wikiversity pages that will be the sites of community-driven research projects. Every Wikipedia article can be supported by Wikiversity pages that list sources of information and critically evaluate that information. Wikiversity can produce interactive "learning modules" that teach Wikipedia editors how to find information sources for particular types of topics, critically evaluate sources, and produce Wikipedia articles that cite the sources of all information.
Wikipedia has many medical/health-related articles where the contents of the articles need to be based on the best available information from the biomedical literature. Wikiversity should have a "core service course" where Wikipedia editors can learn how to access the biomedical literature, evaluate that literature and produce well-reference articles. Wikipedia medical/health-related articles should be linked to Wikiversity pages that are devoted to researching medical topics. When disputes exist (for example, how should Wikipedia best present claims that AIDS is not caused by HIV?) these disputes can be taken into the research space of Wikiversity for detailed analysis of the relevant biomedical literature.
Wikipedia has many articles related to current events and political disputes. Wikiversity should have a "core service course" where Wikipedia editors can compile lists of sources of information about current events and through community effort evaluate the relative merits of the sources. Wikipedia articles that involve politically-motivate disputes should be linked to pages within Wikiversity departments that specialize in political science and other relevant disciplines. These Wikiversity pages should stress the importance of constructing Wikipedia articles that cite all sources of information and present all sides of disputes.
Similarly, many Wikipedia articles are concerned with controversial historical events. Such Wikipedia articles should be linked to the Wikiversity history school which would provide research space for a community effort to evaluate relevant sources of information about the disputed historical events. The Wikiversity school of history could have a "core service course" that teaches Wikipedia editors how to find sources of historical information, how to critically evaluate that information and how to construct Wikipedia articles that cite all sources of information and present all sides of disputed historical events.
I think that such "core service course" should be the first priority of Wikiversity because they would provide a needed service for the Wikimedia flagship project (Wikipedia) and have the best chance of attracting "students". The Wikipedia editors with the most experience in researching history, politics, medical (and other major topic areas) would serve as Wikiversity "teachers", showing other editors how to produce good Wikipedia articles in various topic areas. Wikiversity would provide an organized way of dealing with the existing need of Wikipedia to produce better articles.
I think that the "core service course" phase of initial Wikiversity development will establish a key reality of Wikiversity: Wikiversity students must be wiki editors. Wikiversity MUST build upon the power of the wiki interface. Wikiversity learning communities should not adopt a sterile model in which "teachers" produce static course material that "students" passively consume. Wikiversity learners and teachers must interact with each other through the wiki interface. Students must edit Wikiversity pages in order to express their learning goals and provide feedback on the learning process. Also, the boundary between learners and teachers is fluid. As soon as someone learns something they can become a teacher. It is best if this happens immediately so that the people who have just used a learning module can act to improve that module, fixing problems and rough spots that give the learner difficulty.
Once Wikiversity learns how to build wiki-based communities that satisfy the kinds of Wikimedia project-oriented "service functions" described above, there will be a natural process of developing further Wikiversity "course materials" that go beyond the basic needs of existing Wikimedia projects. Some of the people who come into Wikiversity by way of Wikipedia and other existing Wikimedia projects will want to go more deeply into Wikiversity topics. Wikiversity should have a system by which potential Wikiversity students can announce to the community, "I wish I knew more about X." I would define Wikiversity students as members of the Wikiversity community who actively edit Wikiversity pages. Particularly during initial development of Wikiversity learning modules, there needs to be active cooperation and feedback between the members of the Wikiversity community who will function as learners and teachers. One way of starting this process will be for Wikiversity to include "ask a question" pages similar to those that exist at Wikipedia. One of the problems of Wikiversity while it has existed at Wikibooks is that it has been built upon instructors starting courses and hoping that students will materialize. What Wikiversity needs is a system for identifying the needs of potential Wikiversity students and creating new learning modules (Wikiversity pages) that will address those needs.
Eventually, and with time, Wikiversity can be expected to include a full range of learning modules and "wiki-format textbooks" that will fully cover traditional academic disciplines
I have been trying to formulate some "rules of thumb" for thinking about how to grow new Wikimedia projects. Two closely related rules have taken over my thinking, and a third keeps lurking nearby.
The first rule is that "wikis have minds of their own." I have spent 20 years studying how minds are produced by distributed networks of neurons. Similarly, unexpected emergent behavior is seen in the swirling "group intelligence" of a wiki. I have suggest elsewhere that that humans are members of a kingdom, the Semantotes, creatures with the mental capacity to exist as producers and consumers of information that has rich semantic content. I previously suggested that it may be constructive to view wikis as "semantic prosthetics" that can function to aid human learning. If we accept the idea that "wikis have minds of their own" then we can look upon wikis as being members of a new genus of Semantotes, a new type of "beast" that exists symbiotically with humans. The "group mind" of a wiki can facilitate learning by humans and humans can facilitate the growth of wikis as they become increasingly useful learning aids.
Wikis can function as thought magnifiers. Wiki technology allows for a torrent of human thought from a distributed group of users to be directed at any topic. If we hope to predict wiki behavior we need to become naturalists and study wiki behavior in the wild, we need to study the social forces by which the wiki lens is focused and aimed on particular topics. It is a cliché, but when dealing with wikis we have to expect the unexpected and we might as well plan for it. In my view, that means having the courage to let wikis go wild and find their own destiny without trying to artificially impose conventional expectations. If our goal is to make wikis more useful as tools for facilitating human learning, we work towards that end by respecting the realities of the wiki "beast".
The second rule, closely related to the first, is that "you can't make a wiki jump through hoops". I naturally have habits of thought and expectations for how wikis will grow, but my expectations are largely built upon the non-wiki world I grew up in and the non-wiki systems I have grown to be familiar with. I have to force myself to stop trying to apply my non-wiki expectations to the behavior of wikis. It seems to me that the way to move past my old habits of thought is to look carefully at what wiki editors are doing today and think realistically about what they are likely to do tomorrow. The default path for wiki editors is to do "more of the same" but there are ways to push editors in certain directions and towards new patterns of editing. Wiki editors are technophages. Wiki editors prowl the wiki landscape looking for new tricks, tools and technology that will improve their online experience. One powerful way to deflect editors away from what they were doing yesterday is to give them a link to a new page that holds content that the editors easily understand as being about something that will improve their wiki experience. A wiki editor sees lots of wiki webpages and most of them offer nothing new and useful. If Wikiversity wants to attract editors, Wikiversity must constantly feed the wiki editor (technophage). Pie-in-the-sky dreams of "what Wikiversity might be someday" do not satisfy the hunger that drives the wiki-editing technophage. Setting forth a glorious goal such as "create a university" does not feed the needs of wiki editors and they just move right on past. It is useless to say to wiki editors, "Hey, build a university!" Even if they would like to do so, by simply holding up the hoop and saying "Jump!" you have not created the means for them to do so.
The third rule for how to build a wiki is "just say no". Conventional institutions prosper and persist by finding systems that function (they need not even function very well), harnessing those systems, and exploiting them until they die a whimpering death, usually decades after they have become a liability and hinder new progress. Everything in wiki space is accelerated. We cannot afford institutional ossification. When wiki editors find a wiki webpage that emits the stink of institutional ossification, liberation is just a click away. Of course, it is the easiest thing in the world for a wiki editor to add toxic content to a wiki. Above, I tried to describe the natural process by which we fall into the habit of applying conventional thinking to wikis. As soon as that process starts the wiki is infected and additional editors will join in, reflexively endorsing familiar non-wiki conventions. You can quickly end up with a wiki webpage that gives comfort to those who are happy with convention, but this is death for a wiki. Dwelling on conventional, non-wiki thought systems sucks the life out of wiki editors who might otherwise create a new path into the wiki future. In order to keep wiki users engaged in the process of growing a wiki, wiki users have to be empowered to just say no to "conventional wisdom". Wikiversity should institutionalize systems that allow wiki users to take control when they see something that is not helpful and not going to benefit the wiki: taking control starts with just saying no to conventional thought that is damaging to the growth of Wikiversity.
All wikis are relatively new. It is very hard for me to accept that anything connected to wikis has been optimized. Some people put a lot of work into a wiki and then start to defend that work against alterations. Some people just fall in love with an existing wiki idea or system and stop looking for a new and better idea and ways to make a better wiki. Many of us are just too lazy to do the work that must be done to tear down and rebuild a wiki or even a small part of it. Such natural human tendencies towards ossification of wikis must be resisted. Revolution and growth must be institutionalized, not entrenchment. As a good wiki motto, "just say no" is a way to escape from dead ends. When we see something that does not work we have to speak up and just say no, this is not working.
We must do better. In the wiki economy of ideas, we must kill bad ideas quickly so that the good ideas can grow. I hope Wikiversity can embody an ethic of being open to new ways of doing things because we have to believe that wonderful new things are going to come from Wikiversity and we have to find ways of allowing them to come, as Garrett said above, they will come either unknowingly or deliberately. I think we have to build a Wikiversity community that will unleash the power of a collective wisdom that will grow Wikiversity regardless of our own individual limitations. In that spirit, I am going on record as just saying no to suggestions that Wikiversity cannot go forward without a master plan for how to create an accredited university.
No. That is not the way to grow Wikiversity. Let's make Wikiversity in a new way, the wiki way, even if we do not entirely know what that means. All we need is an algorithm: look at where Wikimedia editors are today and figure out how to keep them clicking the hyperlinks towards Wikiversity webpages that support research, collaboration, and exploration of the ideas that are of interest to each individual Wikimedia editor. At the start of Wikiversity the way to do this is to feed the learning needs of existing Wikimedia editors. Once we figure out how to do that, we will have found the basic system for growing wiki learning communities and that meme will spread beyond the existing needs of Wikimedia projects.
Whatever else Wikiversity could be, there seems to be clear agreement that it should at least have a resource repository. The main reasons seem to be that it is a feasible short-term goal with disproportionately high value.
The goal is to develop a body of first class learning materials of various kinds. It would be possible and very useful to the wider world, and shed Wikipedia in a good light. It would be a resource for anybody to use, including accredited institutions.
It would take lots of hard work, but it's a known procedure. I'd only be concerned if cranks and nuts used it to soapbox irresponsible ideas. It's a symptom of the Internet that people will give valuable digital material away for free. Even so, it might be little more than a hierarchical series of textbooks in the form of course outlines.
I’ve been to a couple conferences that were attended by librarians and teachers. Each time I mentioned the possibility of Wikiversity being a school unto itself I got a lot of negative feedback. I mean, who is going to teach for free? Teaching is a multi-month effort that requires a lot of daily time. But I got very positive responses when I described it as a common resource for teachers and students at existing schools to develop and use class material. There is a HUGE amount of needless duplicated effort in creating things like lesson plans, quizzes, and other course material. Wikiversity could help reduce a lot of wasted effort.
So, pitching Wikiversity as a common resource is a non-threatening and neutral way to go about this In short: We should launch Wikiversity as a neutral resource. The courses would be developed to the point where a self learner could use them to learn entire courses for free. That’s fine. Others will use the same courses while being guided by a teacher from a school that is not affiliated with Wikimedia. That student will get credit from that school – not from us. If and when there is ever a big push to start an actual school, then those people would be more than welcome to start their own school that uses Wikiversity as a resource. But the school should not be part of Wikimedia (we may decide to help set it up; but after that, they would be on their own). We should remain neutral.
Use a current version of a completed wikibook, appoint an editor to error-check it, give it an edition name, and then publish it in PDF format so that edition is fixed. The wiki of it will be the current draft-in-progress.
It would need a catalogue of resources for lecturers/students. The catalogue would provide references to a variety of resources to be used in the context of lectures (links to pictures, audio-video material, references of papers to be provided as readings, lecture notes, Powerpoint presentations, textbooks published on-line or off-line, quizzes, tutorial activities). This project should offer the possibility to encode these resources in a shared database so it can easily be shared with fellow colleagues around the world.
To begin, Wikiversity might be a repository of:
It could be completed by a set of "technical documents":
There will be a need to dedicate a certain amount of time to decide of the best way to encode these different types of information. Inspiration may be found in the following product: Catalyzer and Mercat, recently developed by Axiope company (see http://www.axiope.com ). Catalyzer is a catalogue creation software which lets the user take control of the structure and content, with predefinition of field types for a large variety of electronic documents. The information stored in this catalogue can be shared with fellow colleagues via internet, thanks to Mercat.
A huge number of educational resources are currently available on the net or elsewhere. If we consider access to images to illustrates the lecture, some textbooks begin to adjoin a CD with the illustrations contained in the book, as for instance the textbook of Fundamental Neuroscience (2002, 2d ED), edited by Larry R. Squire and colleagues, but you need to know about their existence and such textbooks are quite expensive. Loads of illustrations can be found by using Google's option to look for images but there is a total absence of organization and a very important noise to signal ratio; for instance, the Google-image search gives 1.360 hits for a specific term as cochlea, and 60.600 for hearing. Some very good quality illustrations can be found by looking for companion websites to lectures in neurosciences and related fields; for instance, the companion website to the lecture "Neuroscience 524: An Introduction to Brain and Behavior", by professor Tom Yin at University of Wisconsin ( http://www.physiology.wisc.edu/neuro524/index_2002.html ) contains about 100 very high quality illustrations scanned from popular textbooks; similarly, wonderful illustrations exist in textbooks, but it takes time to look for them and scan them and then, there is there is the problem of copyright, in case a lecturer wants to use the illustration in some material published on-line. The pictures that are found on other lecturers’ websites have often been scanned from textbooks but scarcely duplicate the copyright notice. If you diligently comply to the copyright laws, you should avoid to copy such resources as long as it is not explicitly stated that they are in the public domain or that you are welcome to copy them. Similarly, references to audio-video material to be used in the context of lectures, references of classic papers as well as papers to serve as readings accompanying lectures, propositions of tutorial activities that are known to work well, are all listed in Instructor's Resource Manuals as for "Behavioral Neuroscience, Instructor's Resource Manual" ( http://cwx.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/kassin2/chapter2/custom3/deluxe-content.html ); textbooks can be found on the net, either freely (for instance: http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0070914028/81181/SantrockChap03.pdf ), or thanks to a subscription from Edinburgh University (Gazzaniga, M.S., 2000, The New Cognitive Neurosciences. MIT Press, at " http://cognet.mit.edu/library/erefs/gazzaniga/" ); some on-line lectures in the public domain are centralized in websites as the one of Lecture Hall ( http://www.utexas.edu/world/lecture/ ); Powerpoint presentations can be found on fellow lecturers’ websites; some lectures’ syllabi are available on-line; they are sometimes accompanied by quizzes to let students test their own understanding about the field.
Any lecturer tempted to improve the quality of their presentation or educational material rapidly discovers that finding these resources is currently extremely time-consuming. The resources evoked above are spread all over the net and there is no quick way to locate them. Some websites publish repository of resources that are research oriented but to my knowledge, there is no repository oriented to the needs of (University) lecturers. There is no website where links to illustrations for lectures are found along with example of lectures (at least, I could not find one, despite hours of browsing). There is a crucial lack of central repository, a central database listing these resources. As a result, although there are loads of resources available, lecturers are not really in a position to exploit them; the lecturers have to renounce to the idea of improving their lecture if they are not ready to spend some of their evenings on that task. More importantly, the time lost by lecturers who decide to search for better illustrations for their lectures is lost again and again by lecturers looking for the same resources.
Access to such resources greatly contributed to the quality of the lectures. I started as a University lecturer a year and a half ago. I had to give lectures prepared by somebody else but, for most of the lectures, I found the illustrations inadequate (the lectures had been created one year before I arrived). During the first year, I had the initiative to take some evenings and week-end to set up a repository of resources, with both me and my colleagues in mind. As illustrations, Powerpoint presentations, and lecture notes began to cluster my hard disk, I began to organize these. I separated text from pictures to re-organize the material in several categories: (still) pictures, audio-video material, lecture notes, relevant references (scientific papers or textbooks), glossaries, quizzes (along with exam questions and assignments), tutorial activities, websites with list of links, etc. Easy access to these resources greatly contributed to the quality of my lectures. They were rated as rather poor last year and the year before (I took up lectures given by somebody else), they were rated as excellent this year (of course, it was not just about adding pictures, I completely reorganized the content too; see next point).
The contribution of such a repository of resource is not necessarily limited to the "look" of the presentation. Again, if I rely on my own experience, browsing the net for illustrations, Powerpoint presentations or lecture notes from fellow colleagues gives the opportunity to get an idea of the different ways to organize a lecture on a given topic. Browsing the net can contribute to rapidly familiarize a lecturer with some new lecture's contents as well as to improve his/her understanding of some specific topics. As I discovered, reading lecture notes prepared by other lecturers can help refresh a lecturer's memory in minutes, when it would have taken him/her hours to skim books to get the same results.
Does MIT OpenCourse exist in every language of the world, or even two? Or only in English?
I love MIT OpenCourseware. Don't get me wrong. But it has multiple, significant, failings [which are presumably strengths of wikis]:
I don't see us as being made obsolete by OCW. I also don't see OCW as making us unnecessary. We have different goals and strengths. If anything we can compliment one another's efforts, as a student now has multiple resources to choose from. This is always a plus- the more available ways to learn material, the higher the chance one of the ways will make sense to the student.
As for Wikibooks, I see even more of an opportunity for the two of us to build off one another there. Classes require books. Wikibooks will be the repository for our class books. In producing a class, you need to assure the book is high quality. One can even think of Wikiversity as a set of annotations and extra non-book materials for a wikibook, increasing the chance it will be understood by the readers.
Aim for something similar to OCW , a standard format for "lecture" notes would be useful. Lecture notes could also extend lecture notes of previous years and only modify the parts that have changed in content. That is, there would be multiple editions, with older edition in an on-line archive.
Establishing a repository of resources is not without potential difficulties.
Legislation
Local legislation may restrict some lecturers from openly circulating lecture notes.
Some competitive forces make sharing recourses very difficult, especially when resources are extremely valuable in terms of man-hours and expertise.
In some cases, ownership may rest with the lecturer's employer, preventing the lecturer from contributing to a repository.
To prevent a possible request to withdraw the resource following the discovery of a breach of copyright, authorization to publish a reference to a given resources should be obtained for every entry of the (public) database by the person who adds this resource to the database. For resources other than pictures, link to the original resource will be provided, no local copy will be made (still, authorization to publish an entry referring to that link should be obtained). For pictures, it is, I believe, more desirable to offer a preview of the picture, so that the user can immediately make a decision about whether to download it.
In order to minimize the risk of a copyright fraud when doing so, the following line of action is proposed: (a) display a preview of the picture when copyright authorization has been received; (b) display a preview of the picture in black and white or with a stamp over the picture if the copyright holder has agreed to a copy in that format; (c) display a picture containing only a stamp "copyright not obtained" for any other resource of picture type.
There will be a need to cross-reference the resources stored in a database, such that a person can define a search based both on the type of resource (video, quiz, etc.) and on the field of study. This could be quite time-consuming. And there may be a need to define the level of study (school level, 1st year undergraduate, post-graduate; for instance for quiz questions) and therefore to decide of equivalence between different educational systems.
As many others, I am ready to contribute to this catalogue for the fields I cover in my lectures. I am more than willing to share my knowledge, experience, and resources that could be useful to this project. In the past, I published a museum website used for tutorials ( http://www.ulb.ac.be/psycho/museum.html ), I published a paper on how to increase the intereractivity of web-based educational materials, and I recently submitted a project to an e-learning grant for some kind of similar project. I have a large number of resources ready to share.
But I am afraid that I can only dedicate evenings and week-ends to this (that is the ones I am not working on my own stuff). But that's the point, what is missing is a system by which lecturers could share their resources with a limited cost in terms of time.
What else is missing is a system by which lecturers and find resources do this in a better way than the current one, which consists to produce a multitude of largely overlapping and largely redundant resources spread all over the web. What is needed is a structure which allows the easy sharing of resources and that's exactly what Wiki projects are about!
The main problem is not in the writing, but in the finding. Libraries are concerned with this, as they have been spending hundreds of years finding ways to make books accessible to researchers. We need to duplicate (and enhance!) ways of finding information, otherwise this will be just One More Big Linklist.
I see this as a central issue to be resolved, so I placed it fairly early in the order of contents. It introduces the idea of a university as a marketplace.
The role of the college is to accredit the professors. All the professors in a specialty pool together to form a department, and select a Dean from amongst themselves. The Dean in turn checks on the credibility of the professors and certifies them as staff of his department. Like the individual professors, individual departments have to protect their own credibility by watching out for fraud or abuse and judging each other in disputes. Departments should rise or fall on their merits, but departments with serious problems might need to be disbanded.
Professors voluntarily self-organize into departments and specialties, and there can be multiple departments of the same specialty, like different "schools of thought", each of which has its own collective reputation.
Degrees aside, I would hope that this school, which has being both online and informal working against it, could at least arrange courses into some sort of hierarchy mimicking a real university. The ultimate goal of the program, recognized or not, must be to share the same content that real professors teach and students in those brick-and-mortars are credited for learning.
Having said that, one of the great opportunities is that instructors will be free to abandon traditional categorizations of human knowledge and offer alternative ways of learning about the world. In effect, this is a kind of research in itself, because it restructures knowledge by looking at interdisciplinary dynamics. In fact, many brick and mortar universities are already doing this.
The true power might be in the construction of "Portals" that are similar in character to the topic portals of wikipedia. In constructing a portal, an instructor (or, hopefully, a cooperating group of instructors and students) would provide students with a coherent strategy for making sense of the world, a launch platform that will appeal to certain students and allow them to explore the world from a certain perspective using certain organizing principles. Such portals will probably be the "schools of thought" that will attract students, particularly if they build on the best information available.
Clusters of departments can associate into mega-departments or institutes, again based on their mutual reputations. Finally, the college's central administration validates all the departments and institutes under its tent.
There would need to be ground rules for regulating professors. For example:
"Ranking" in the sense of "Brown is good, Smith is bad" might not be so good; someone is either in or out. But it also makes sense to differentiate between Professor, Associate Professor, Senior Lecturer, Lecturer, Tutor, Graduate Teaching Assistant.
Similarly to scholarship, peer review could be presented as a mapping between theses or research papers and scholars who claim expertise in an area. The mapping would reveal who discloses to have read what publication and, if given, what his opinion on the publication was (or if reading of the paper was aborted for lack of quality). Peer Review could also be applied to courses and even homework essays, if they were published on wikiversity.
A peer review system for journals is already being experimented upon, see The Academic Publishing Wiki for a fully functional wiki-based peer review system. And of course people will be able to critique our courses.
In the spirit of the user-operated self-organizing nature of Wiki, one commentator proposed a more distributed, school of thought model of e-professorship. As in the days of the ancient Greeks, a tutor puts up his shingle and waits for customers. The e-shingle advertises your accreditation and credibility, publications, academic record, fees, etc. It can be called a model of e-professorship.
If a student wants a degree, they seek out a reputable professor in the appropriate Wiki-department of their specialty, and register, paying whatever tuition the individual professor charges. This is a very powerful aspect of this scheme, because it is self-funding. Professors with greater reputations [or perhaps better connections to major universities] can charge higher fees, and free competition with other professors insures against price-gouging. In any case. the fee paying is done completely independently of the school, as a private transaction between the student and the professor.
Before each course opens for applications, the professor validates his or her course preparation by peer review.
When a student signs up for a course, the professor adds a student page to his "students" list. It might work best for formative assessment. The individual professors design all tests and exams and responsible for check on the identities and integrity of their students. The professor watches out for cheats, and he stakes his reputation on the merit-worthiness of his assessments.
When the professor makes final assessments, they are posted on the student's page, which is moved to the graduates' list on the professor's page, free for all to verify. The assessment result basically states that Professor So-and-so testifies to the fact that in his judgment this has met a specified standard. It is up to the prof. how he reaches this judgment.
There must be accountability built into the system for students too. Simply having students sign up for a course and finish when they feel creates too much of a student drop out rate and often creates the "mystery student."
Who are Wikiversity participants and what roles do they play? Every Wikiversity participant must evolve their own role at Wikiversity and take personal responsibility for its effective pursuit and implementation.
Here are some standard prototypes. Allegedly well tested, tried, true, and available from previous learning environments. Hopefully elements or characteristics may be productively copied and pasted into personal role definition and playing efforts.
Board members - Take responsibility, including legislation compliance, and strategic decision making
Management - Implementing board decisions, suggesting new strategies to board members, getting things done.
Admin staff - Keep systems operating (finances, reporting etc.)
Technical staff - Keep systems operating (hardware, software)
Students - Primarily here to learn. Willing to allow efforts to be assimilated by community and modified for benefit of others worldwide.
Instructors - Primarily there to teach, coach, mentor, evaluate or otherwise assist students in learning. Takes satisfaction that each Socratic pearl and resulting discussing may be polished and grow through the ages and eons as ocasionally a new oyster adds a layer to creating a larger pearl.
Researchers - Gathering, analyzing, and presenting new information regarding some subject to some selected segment of the rest of humanity. If the data collected and results are reported locally then the FDL implies the selected segment is all future sentients with access to the Terran Educational Grid or Wikiversity. Perhaps a template can be devised whereby any data and results collected on individual participants must be FDL released within a decade. Other templates could guarantee non tracking (true privacy), financial benefits accruing to the Wikiversity endowment fund, or immediate access to all resulting data ... sort of an inverse of double blind experiments ... full disclosure on demand by interested lab rats.
Editors - Modifying and improving the content, presentation, precision, sourcing, etc. of others work. Obviously any effective feedback to originator shifts this role towards embracing aspects of the instructor ... interestly enough. This is true without further specific participation of the editor should the originator of the material learn anything from a diff comparison of the original to the edited version.
Facilitators - Help things happen, especially in helping students learn.
Mediators - Help damp out damaging (to who? combatants, wikiversity, mediator, one of the combatants, U.S. interests abroad, black lady Moslems, alleged Martians at Grokster, ...) consequences of conflict and instruct/coach/mentor combatants in more social methods of civilized discourse.
Typesetters - Works for publisher
Publishers - Provides internet infrastructure necessary to deliver content to consumers.
Inspectors - Looks for ways to improve; compliance with applicable policies and regulations; performance evaluations of processes and participants for various purposes (parental, employers, personal, private, public, etc.)
Philanthropists - Contributes something of perceived value to the rest of civilized humanity either now or in the future without a quid pro quo or immediately apparent personal gain.
This was also a point upon which there could easily be a high level of consensus, although there remains the tension between being an open community and requiring demonstrable expertise. In any case, Wikiversity really needs people with legitimate expertise.
I think a major differential from wikipedias could be the inclusion of 'Specialists' i.e. users who actively specialize in one area, and are marked as such. In any 'Discuss This Article' they would have highlighting, and their response would carry more weight in 'I Don't Get It' options (calls for help).
Generally speaking, to teach something you have to know a whole lot more about the subject than what you're teaching. To design a course, you'd have to have on top of that experience teaching the material. That's not something built up at the community level; it's insight each individual needs. The outlines and short pieces I looked at clearly had knowledgable creators who wanted to share with others, but an academic presentation was highly lacking.
The approach is that of a tutor rather than a teacher. Now I don't have an advanced degree myself, but if that's true about this rudimentary 101-class material, then I'd have to conclude this project doesn't have a leg to stand on. Even if the error can be fixed in these early cases, who's going to be able to judge whether more advanced material is properly organized and focused? There's a reason professors teach university courses rather than folks off the street.
You have to have the same in-depth knowledge to teach a lesson as to write an encyclopedia entry. However, to design a course, objectives and all, you have to already have experience teaching the material in order to know how to approach the subject and break it down. That's what teachers learn to do in their profession. It would be experienced teachers who put together courses rather than just those knowledgable on the topic. Certainly there are contributors able to do this, though fewer, especially as you go up in level.
The real problem is that professorship isn't so wiki because it's not aggregate. In retrospect, any early start would have to be driven by individuals, so my assessment of the current courses is not fair. More constructively, I was trying to suggest ways in which a course would be a collection of contributions rather than a one-man show, yet without reading like a book.
It might make good sense to open a course decription to public comment. Find 50 contributors, and our strengths and weaknesses will overlap and give us pretty good general coverage for low level courses, and some coverage for high level.
Rather than allowing single users to carve out corners of this supposedly wiki collaboration, I would suggest that the focus be turned to something that the common person could contribute his or her jewel of knowledge to. And rather than using Wikiversity as an excuse to write at length stuff that would otherwise be hacked out of Wikibooks and Wikipedia, I would suggest that the format be turned away from explanations and made interactive. A viable quiz format that provides users with feedback doesn't have to be boring and static so long as it can be altered in a wiki style. If that can't somehow be done with existing wikimedia software then maybe there's no point in starting.
But assuming some ingenious application, the test case for this project, as I see it, is language. That's something you can't write explanations for at length since the target user wouldn't understand anyways. Thus it would prove that Wikiversity is teaching something and not just writing about it. It's also something everyone knows something about, or at least thinks they do, or something for which the success would be measurable, at least. Through conversation or essays, any native speaker, not just the professor him/herself, would have a very clear idea of how much was learned, and to what extent Wikiversity was accomplishing its goals. This is in contrast to some of these sciences and more academic topics where a professor would be happy enough to find that students have learned whatever material that professor thinks to be relevant. These make poor test cases since no one would really know how well the system worked.
A wikiversity calls for experts who can create educational wiki pages. Generally, the people who are qualified to do this are busy earning a living and have little time or motivation to "give away" the expertise that they normally get paid for. Given these facts, wikiversity has been slowly developing as a few dedicated individuals spend their "spare time" to work on the project.This not only reflected a learning community, but also the need for more than a strictly wiki environment. In that sense, it is a step more sophisticated than the repository.
We need to do more that just building a repository of books, writing up a few questions, and getting students to go figure. It is necessary to provide some forum of debate wherein learners can exchange ideas/problems? Does this not obviate a project where users have pages and there is some sort of communal meeting ground, i.e. Water Cooler, Helpdesk, etc.? This is a fundamental aspect of learning and motivating people to participate - one of the holy grails of e-learning.
An online (virtual) school employing a wiki engine and other resources. We'd need a lot more than just a regular wiki. You need synchronous communication tools too (chat), and a lot more, like grading, etc....basically, a learning management system .
Not simply creating material, Wikiversity could move on to using wikis in an educational way, creating learning communities for activities like brainstorming and creating research designs/proposals/business plans or creating collaborative media content, like wikimentaries.
There is a list of desired software modifications . My top priority would be some type of PHP-based form that could be used for quizzes or exams, with the results sent directly to instructors. I'm not a big fan of testing, but students and instructors need some kind of feedback in order to tell if learning is happening. I've been wondering if there could be some way to do RSS feeds for each course. A student should not have to go hunting for new material and assignments and other documents for courses.
Suggestion: to open new wikis to welcome test version of potential new projects, an incubator wiki.
I guess my thinking when one moves into Open Source Learning is that the market drives the demand just like for any other product. If the visitors of our site really want something it will occur whether specifically written into the project or not. I also see the benefit of this venue being that the market drives the advancement of the technology. Let's see how the current technology works and build from there. In this case it may be a lot easier to add than to take away down the road.
I envision the core content being very non-wiki, for example, Powerpoint slides, visualisation applets, IRC meetups, etc. We can treat this stuff like image or sound files and use the rapid collaboration of wiki to build organisational structure: set up hierarchies (Calculus is a Math), keep links in good working order, schedule IRC meetups and so forth. See what I'm saying? Non-wiki for content, Wiki for structure.
I think that it is reasonable to expect that the Wikiversity community will eventually be able to produce wiki-format "textbooks". My guess is that "wiki-format textbooks" will greatly differ from conventional printed textbooks; they will be "living books". I think that the Wikiversity textbooks will be modular collections of teaching aids that facilitate online learning. The "wikiversity textbooks" will evolve towards linked sets of interactive "lesson modules" that can be explored by self-motivated students. If so, then "Wikiversity as a common resource" will be a wiki where such learning modules can be developed and made available to the world.
It would be useful to have a standard for annotations, so that students could attach individual explanations or references to courses or lecture notes without editing the material itself. It wold need to expose links to individual paragraphs and it requires that the user makes use of the button without knowing that there are annotations. At least the presence of annotations, and possibly a categorization, should be immediately visible in the margin.
What WikiU needs is some kind of capability (simple, nothing too complicated) for conducting online teaching. Perhaps instead of Discuss this page, there can be Questions about the material? And we could have some kind of Lecture theatre section, for textbook material split up and taught in the Lecture method style?
If you want something like that, take a look at a few e-learning enviroments, like whiteboard.sf.net and see the wikipedia entry for E-learning for more info - stuff like that ought to do the trick. --Dawa, 02/02 6:42 GMT+1I think IRC chatrooms would be well-suited for a lecture, as well as just for a student and teacher to have a tutor-like session.
I think WikiU need interactive learning, distance learning, computer based instruction, and programmed learning.
Wikibooks would be the library and bookstore of WikiU?
But I don't know how the actual teaching would go on at the main wikiversity.org. Would it be automated? We could have extensions to the wikitext format to make javascript quizzes. Teaching could go on by talk-style (except in the main article namespace, in this case).
Wikiversity can be a full educational institution. It seems that only text and images can be provided now, but we can have lectures (by video file, or if you want interactive lectures (the ones in universities) video conferencing can be done) without much problem. for making schools, you just need lecturer facilities and textbooks.
What about simple HTML-forms where you click on check boxes or select something from a drop down box. At the end of each quiz page you would have a "send" button which returns a page with your results. On "edit" you can define in wikisyntax the questions and answers.
There is an open-source learning CMS (content management system), which already has a fairly good quiz engine written in PHP. It's all open source and freely reusable. It's a pretty good system. You can enter questions into a quiz just as easily as taking the quiz. I've written a script myself that does the same thing.
Re. quizzing, TOIA? Tools for Online Interactive Assessment http://www.toia.ac.uk/ George
Special about language exercises: Ultimate_wiktionary_and_language_exercises
Basically, the quiz is a template page that students will copy/paste into another page. Submitting the quiz is simple; at the bottom of every page, add a link to a new page, and in that new page, have the quiz copy/pasted with all the answers in it. From there, teachers and TAs can move the links from "submitted" and "graded" on the quiz page, and write comments and so forth on the quiz.
For the most part, students should grade themselves. Basic problems should be made into some sort of a quiz system. As for the implementation of this system, a Java Applet would do nicely to save the server bandwith. The Java Applet would be the same applet across the entire site, but would read in the quiz data and create a quiz . But until then, there should be no problem in printing the page out and having the student grade it old school; red pencil with the answers on another page.
Several other useful ideas came up. The first in the list is, as much as anything, an argument that a repository is inadequate as a final goal.
Not just books. Our goal is not just to provide a few questions and answers for books. There's a big difference between a course and a book.
A course combines multiple methods of learning to increase the chance of a student learning. These methods can include forums, lectures, homework, collaborative projects, discussions, student journals, etc. A book can be one part of a course, but it isn't a course by itself. There is a sense of social interaction and that somebody (even peers) are teaching.
At some point, students can start learning from sources such as textbooks. Such a person has learned how to learn, has become self-motivated, and can take responsibility for their own learning. At that point, online written resources are more effective. Some high-school students reach this developmental stage, but not many.
Below that point, students are not very capable of self-learning and reading matter is not very helpful. It is not enough to provide materials even if they are very good. Most students need someone to teach them.
On top of that there could be learning trails that put material that should be learned in any easily understandable order with transitional passages, forks and cross references to similar material in lecture notes or other courses. A learning trail would also allow to permute the content of a book so that lecture notes could be written to follow a course schema strictly and the actual ordering used by the lecturer could be provided as a trail on top of that. A learning trail could also verify preconditions in knowledge and redirect the reader to previous courses when knowledge is missing.
A trail would be a customized learning experience, possibly connecting pieces of different courses to reach a well defined educational goal. As a trail would be more a selection of existing bits and pieces authors of trails would not have to follow schemas. There will most certainly be clear learning objectives for each course (again, templates help here) as well as each "day" of the course, hopefully much like a well- laid-out correspondence course.
Like a cookbook, I have alternate recipes for some things for which there are already recipes. A different recipe would produce a somewhat different result, preferable or not according to a person's taste. So, for matters in Wikibooks other than recipes, it seems that different approaches could reach the same result, equally valid but irreconcilable to a single article. In other words, you can have two different textbooks for the same subject.
Differing didactic methods can cater for all kinds of more complex subjects. A Great Books approach might start you off reading only selections of a major historical work then more contemporary expansions upon it, whereas a more conventional progression of vocabulary and concepts would simply make a reference to the great historical work, a sideline blurb. It would be confusing to have these two approaches take up the same space, and advocates of the Great Books approach might be unwilling to relegate links to their great books to footnotes appended to the conventional material.
And within what's considered conventional there are plenty of divisions besides -- fundamentally different pedagogical tacks. In what progression should the topics be introduced? Should the density of the language be adjusted in favour of possibly difficult, concise explanations, or more drawn out ones that risk boring those who get it already? In physics, better to rely more on verbalized theoretical examples, or on mathematics? et cetera. You just can't always have it both ways.
So, what about forking? For instance, in physics, some people need a lot more in the way of analogies and thought explorations at the earlier levels. I guess it would be the same at the higher levels, except these people might be disinclined to go that far, but, anyway by the time one gets there it seems (though I'm certainly no expert) that the level of discourse establishes a more-or-less (yes, frequently less, but still) universal pace.
So you have a long road and a short road to get there. It can be a very delicate balance to do both within a single document, and even then you would end up in triage quite a bit. Why not just have two separate ones with a good explanation as to the likely beneficiaries of each?
Research was one of the more controversial and (sometimes) misunderstood topics. Nobody advocated doing original research in the immediate future, although some were adamant that it should be in the plan and saw it as essential to the university.
The arguments against it in the long-term were nearly non-existent. In fact, original research could easily be implemented in the very short term if there were some way to apply admission requirements.
However, many discussion participants did not have much idea of how to do it in the current wiki environment. The matter was not helped by having a variety of muddled interpretations of what research actually is.
The word "research" was applied to four different kinds of activity:
To put it in context, I don't think that a university should be strictly "centred" on research, but rather that research has to have a place, especially in some fields. I take your point on being practical and "real world-focused", but essentially, I think it should be down to the person/people facilitating each course to decide what are the appropriate learning outcomes and teaching methods for their course.
There would be advantages in having a centralized place to specialize in research and training people how to do research, a protected environment where the research ethic could dominate. I'm talking about things like an institutional memory. It would be a mistake for sources to be brought in, pulled out, lost, ignored, and rediscovered in an endless swirl. The archive would be a place where ALL sources relevant are kept to be compared and studied.
Research can be funded in exactly the same self-organizing manner. Proposals for interesting research is posted on an electronic mailboard, describing the objective and methods of the proposed research, a brief background statement, the principal investigators and their credentials, existing resources, and a tentative budget that includes funding needs. There would need to be some rules or a template, if only to prevent legal action for hosting misleading or dishonest advertising.
Interested funding agencies or even private individuals can pick and choose the research they find most interesting, verify any required credentials of the proponent and then send funds direct to the researchers themselves.
A university community must be engaged in peer-reviewed publication, so if you're writing a paper, it ought to get peer reviewed either through a normal journal or through existing wikis. If its already gone through peer review and been generally accepted, its acceptable.
It an also can make use of conventional informal wiki "peer review" of wiki webpage content and formal peer-reviewed wiki publication. Some forms of modern research can be very expensive and will probably require innovative cooperative interactions between the e.collage and bricks-and-mortar research institutes. Some of the better research institutions are already developing online "community outreach" programs that allow for open access to the research infrastructure. Wikiversity could tap into this growing opportunity for access to research facilities and expertise.
It was commented that a wikiversity educational model would eventually infect and transform some segments of existing traditional universities. But the exiting university ideal of a community of scholars working together and teaching is really what the wikiversity discussion is replicating, only online and with less hierarchicalism.
One of the great problems with a pure wiki format for research is the danger of hosting crank theories and unverifiable materials that are viewable by the general public. This is actually a publishing problem and should be dealt with as such.
Here's my problem with research and wikiversity. Its not that research is a bad thing. It isn't. And it's not that people using wikiversity shouldn't do research. It's a matter of scope and difficulty.
Scope There's a fundamental limit on what you can do on a project. There's limiting factors- money, time, man-hours, etc. On wikiversity, the main roadblocks are man-hours and expertise. Man-hours are simple- we only hve so many contributors, and so many admins. The more data coming in, the harder it is to handle it all, organize it all, proofread it all, etc.
The wider your scope is, the harder it is to do this, because everyone has their specialty. Wikiversity is already incredibly broad, for upper level material it will be difficult to find people to do this. There's a reason we don't have one giant web page called wikifacts with an encyclopedia, dictionary, books, courses, etc. Its too difficult to do. By paring it down, you enable the amount of work to be reasonable. You also increase the amount of work done in a single area rather than one person in each of their pet research projects, creating a more comprehensive program of study. This gives the illusion of completeness, and will draw additional contributors because there is something concrete to contribute to. Then when we have more contributors, we can broaden the scope or crete a new project, depending on what we think is best.
Secondly, expertise. First off, writing a textbook is not research. Its scholarly, its valuable, but not research. Research is investigation to uncover new facts. If you're doing original research, you have a major expertise issue. If, for example, you're doing research on string theory- you can count the number of people in the world who understand the theory to the detail needed on your hands. It's not possible for us to peer review it, because we just aren't qualified. The chance we have of two or three others capable of following it are abysmally low. In addition it just doesn't give itself well to being wiki-ized (it gives itself well to being openly available, but not to being wide sored collaborated on). Joe Schmoe shouldn't be commenting on it, because he isn't capable of it. Those half dozen people who are qualified to help all know each other, they don't need a wiki to collaborate.
I just don't see us having the manpower or the expertise to do original research well. I think another project down the line for it would probably be more in line. I don't have a lot of hope for that either, but I think its more likely to work. It's always better to underpromise and overdeliver than the other way around. If we have too wide a scope, we will not be able to focus sufficiently to succeed. Doing original research separately gives both the courses of wikiversity and any eventual wikiresearch a better chance of success.
Wikiresearch is meant to be scientific research with Wikis and inside of Wikimedia. Several ideas and aspects have been proposed under several names. Wikiresearch is also the title of a Wikibooks project that started at the Oekonux Wiki.
Since "research" is quite a fuzzy term it should clearly be stated which actions we want on an open research wiki:
Some examples of original research:
Free electronic access to the results of research (for example, see the U.S. National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central may become standard practice for all disciplines involved in research activity. Inter-disciplinary researchers might be among the first to experiment with Wikiresearch
Some meta-wiki articles such as those in the Wiki Science project are already in the wiki format and are at the fuzzy interface between research and education. There should be a Research Division in Wikiversity to promote the idea of "publishing" research in the wiki format, both for the sciences and for disciplines outside of science. This could interface with the academic publishing wiki on wikicities.
The potential for such a program to be accredited came up. Depending on the final form of delivery, it could quite easily be accredited, and several models are available. However, it was generally seen to be at least premature and perhaps unattainable for a wiki site that is open to the public.
Accreditation needs some thought thought and preparation. Full accreditation will come in time, but is clearly a long-term rather than a short term goal.
After all, the most important function of a university is a system of recognition, for students (earning degrees), for professors (whose teaching credentials are assured by the institution), and for researchers (whose research is also recognized by the institution).
It would much simpler to split off the assessment process altogether to avoid the issues of qualifications, accreditation, and recognition. Let other bodies do that. There are already have protocols for recognizing prior learning.
In an open system, accreditation could be provided simply by linking to accredited testing institutions as soon as one wants. The accreditation is there and available now, just not owned by Wikiversity.
To mention a few, there are the GDE examinations, SAT tests, Thomas Edison College, SUNY, University of London, and the University of South Africa. In Australia, accreditors require all training sector institutions to be able to offer it.
It would be easy to have a notice board that informs students how they can be assessed for credit and the contact details for the various institutions and their official accreditation. This covers the issues of testing and assessment, manpower, vigilance against cheats, and standards, and puts it away from an open system.
I'd strongly prefer that unaccredited colleges be disallowed, even if they were legal. That's better than being a clearing house for diploma mills and unrecognized degrees.
The higher levels require more expertise and accountability, and the services offered are actually worth money, even when no money changes hands. In some cases, they could only work when money changes hands, even on a not-for-profit basis.
No accredited college can provide those services for free and it would be a marketing disaster anyway; people usually equate free with worthless. So money would change hands, but people would get something good.
The implied parallel to a university is a bothering aspect, with the implications of faculty, classes, assessment, degrees, institutional stability, and recognition. It would be sensible and more honest not to pretend to be that. There is the suggestion of a degree mill producing worthless qualifications, making Wikiversity an unreputable body that good people will avoid. Consequence: the standard of everything goes down.
It would be quite possible to prevent such problems (any reputable institution works hard to do so) but it could only come with someone having authority. It could be quite democratic, but could not at all be anarchic, and one writer has not clearly made that distinction. ("self-organizing")
Some non-US universities are self-accrediting in that they are established by Act of Parliament that gives them both the rights to act as accreditors and as degree providers. But very few are "self-accreditizing" (sic). That kind of thinking is usually associated with unaccredited schools trying to establish credibility without a formal, independent quality assurance process.
Having Wikiverstiy accredited in its own right is more difficult, but leaving it aside for now, setting some parameters of legitimacy may be more beneficial.
We open ourselves up to the lunatics running the asylum. However, isn't that a gamble we all take with open source concepts? Do we limit ourselves for the sake of the few quacks or do we deal with those issues independently, preserving the freedom of academia? I am very excited to see what evolves out of my site. Using this venue, to me anyway, is very applicable when one is approaching curriculum development from a Constructivist view. I am approaching mine though from an Instructional Systems Design model which will be groundbreaking if it works.
Teaching is the easiest part, although access to qualified, responsible instructors is a bigger challenge than it looks. Wikis are so far best for providing written explanatory materials (tertiary sources) and not so good for secondary and primary materials. The very dubious assumption is that people will earn all they need to know by reading.
The biggest questions are:
Under what accreditation agency and regime? European, North America, other? The answer is more political than educational.
What model of learning will it use? There is a great deal of innovative energy in wikiversity, wikibooks, wikipedia, etc. We still need a model to follow and the interactive learning environment seems most effective.
How would you ensure authenticity, that any work submitted for credit is really the students own work?
Risk analysis. Running an accredited university this way is not really too hard. Some of the technology has been around for many years. But living is such a high-risk environment could be more difficult.
What level of qualification? The easy options are the lower certificates. Next hardest is the research graduate school, which really depends on having excellent staff.
The four-year bachelor degree consumes most resources and is the hardest possible place to start, although that is where most North Americans expect to begin. Some higher diplomas are nearly as difficult. The graduate school of professional practice is also a realistic option, but working with professional associations would be very difficult.
How can the the extremely democratic (almost anarchic) wiki system be made compatible with the accountability and quality assurance systems need for any kind of accreditation? In particular, what do you do with someone who really wants to learn something but just doesn't have the background. You don't want to exclude people, but you can't admit anyone who wants to log on. So there can be value in foundational courses that are separate from advanced courses. And someone will have to be authorized to make the hard decisions, even if they are sometimes unpopular.
Could you have a system where a subject matter expert simply says, this book is ready and produce it as a non-wiki and use it as the textbook. Let the wiki become the draft next edition that people can still change.
How can we better coordinate different kinds of wiki resources? For example, could teaching materials use links to wikipedia articles?
How can it build credibility? Any plan for an accredited (or accreditable) institution must have some means for building credibility and reputation. No matter how good it is, it helps nobody if it is seen to be a diploma mill.
How will money flow? The ideal of completely free accredited education is not at all realistic at present. Some money has to flow just to pay the bills. How much do you charge? Do you charge some people more than others? How else do you pay the bills?
What software will it need? A learning environment system would be better than wikis for some things, and wikis alone can't yet do everything. A videoconference would be helpful, and a teleconfernce would be a good start. Enrolled students could speak, and others would be welcome to listen. The internet would be a good support for that kind of community.
At least some answers are simple:
Don't accept students into courses for which you don't have staff and suitable teaching and assessment materials. It's not only unethical and unaccreditable, but usually contravenes honesty in advertising laws.
Have a system of admission standards. They must be flexible and creative, but they must also be there and be enforced.
Prepare people for assessments. In many cases they would comprise a portfolio of work (e.g. verifiable third-party references, testing results from trusted third parties, etc.) and a viva voce. At graduate school, it would be either original research or professional projects. Nothing difficult there.
The emergent themes followed a distinct pattern, and categorizing discussion into chapters and sections was not difficult.
The tone of discussion was generally that they were establishing something totally new and different, even when they replicated the processes of Brick U and existing on-line colleges.
In fact, the idealist discussion so far follows closely Harold Wilson's idea of a University of the Air in the early 1960s in Britain. The discussion resulted in the Open University, which is Britain's largest university as well as a very credible institution.
Participants tended to prefer a voluntary non-authoritarian structure, sometime almost to the point that the board could not exercise its legal responsibilities. Staff and student structures were generally seen as mutual and peer-driven, which seems to reflect the existing wiki community structure.
How democratic can it be? How much will all e-community participants be able to vote on major decisions? Would it put lunatics in charge of the asylum? At least for legal compliance purposes, the Board must have final say on decisions. It might be more to the point that students must have an avenue for systematically providing input into major decisions. This tension is similar to BrickU.
Participants gravitated toward the ideal, no doubt unrealistic, of providing education at no cost to students funded by donations, again reflecting the Wiki Media community.
Nevertheless, discussion was not unanimous, the most prominent debate being whether Wikiversity should be a repository of materials and a web-central of links, or whether it would provide an interactive instructional environment with defined courses. These two options are, of course, not mutually exclusive. Related to this was the discussion about what could be done now, and what might be done sometime in the future.
They considered providing education at predominantly upper high school and junior college levels. There is no educational reason why it might not suit higher and lower levels, although the existing Wiki constituency were often not agreeable. However, it would require enforcing a system of pre-requisites or admission criteria, which is inconsistent with the predominating open access philosophy.
The trend was to agree that it should start as a repository of materials. One contributor made the sensible comment that it would need a course up and running with real live students if it wanted to get further.
Some, perhaps a significant number, expected that it would eventually become a learning body of some kind. The main differentiator seems to be between those who see what it is now, and those who imagine what it could become.
There was little understanding of the marketing and constituency building process. For that reason, I appreciate the the word of warning not to initiate it without adequate thought and preparation, because that could be a marketing disaster. But there was generally not enough on the essential topic of marketing to report it separately.
I've presented this e-book as an outline of a general order of implementation in four stages:
It may be simply a repository of learning resources (including curricula etc.) at the beginning.
At the same time, it could offer high school level and low college level courses. That's fine; we need that material, and it's what people will need to start learning a subject anyway.
Over time, more high level content will be written as we gain people capable of writing it. It would also evolve into a full learning platform. Courses are naturally interactive in that there is always feedback provided on how much is being absorbed, so it would seem that this interaction must be captured in its essence in some joint, communal effort.
But it has been suggested that certainly the professor knows if the students learn what is taught, which would hopefully be pertinent and comprehensive. But that wouldn't prove anything to the masses. On the other hand, for example, if a department takes up the task of teaching English, say, as a second language, any English speaker would be able to judge for themselves the degree of accomplishment.
I'm dubious about this logic on two counts:
Advertising something prominently before it is ready for prime time causes permanent damage to the project in the public image. It appears to be badly managed, and would lose its fledgling constituency.
As they are currently manifest, the Schools are reading guides to both Wikibooks and the Wikipedia. In order to properly instruct students in various disciplines, we will have to expand our paper definition of a "textbook". Besides, we cannot use some of the unpolished dense textbook material, which are not more that instructional guides to the self-taught and self-motivated.
Start with something easy yet useful and prove to everyone that the project concept works. If that much can't be done, then any certificates granted, let alone degrees, aren't going to mean squat.
Q: How long will any/all of this take?
A: Consider Wikipedia as a prototype. As a prototyping project, it took a few years to simultaneously co-evolve an effective community while developing the Wikimedia software and Foundation. It started in 2000-2001. Some allege it has not even yet proven itself or matched pre-existing encyclopedias standards of quality.
It is interesting to note that once the Wikipedia community started self consciously attempting to grow itself and its learning and self maintenance capabilities, growth quickly became limited by available internet infrastructure. Independent sources now report that wikipedia.org is among the top 50 visited web sites on the Internet.
Nobody mentioned that the US style four-year Bachelor degree is extremely resource-intensive, and is perhaps one of the most difficult places to start. A graduate research qualification is easier if you have the staff.
One of the best ideas was to think of a university as a marketplace rather than an organization. The persons in charge would act more like a licensing authority for a free market. Professors would be independent free traders selling services in a marketplace.
The licensing role would at least involve:
In other words, the provision of an educational environment (with peer students) can be separated from tuition by a subject matter expert. It is no stretch to spread this idea further.
For example, add this idea to summative assessment and accreditation. That is, different accredited organizations could set up their own stalls in the marketplace offering summative assessment and formal recognition. This lightens the management and procedural compliance load on the Wikiversity management.
As a result, students could have the levels listed below. Note that they have equivalents in traditional Brick University.
| Level of service | Fee level | Equivalent at Brick University | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Environment access only, basically full access to website services | Very low fee or no fee | Library card for non-students |
| 2 | Tuition, non-credit track | Probably lower fee that for credit | Auditing students |
| 3 | Tuition and formative assessment | Higher fees than for non-credit | Regular students |
| 4 | Summative assessment for credit in an accredited institution. | Separate fee determined by the accredited institution | Examination and examination fee. |
After reflection, it would make sense to combine levels 2 and 3, because tuition should aim at the assessment standards for both auditing and for-credit students. Either way, the authenticity of submitted work is not a requirement.
Authenticity of evidence is a critical distinction between 3 an 4. In practice, however, the tutor may in some cases be able to vouch for the authenticity of assessed materials. This is more likely when he/she works closely with the student to develop ideas and practice. That is, evidence gathered at stage three may by useable at stage four.
Most of the discussion focused on only one medium, the wiki, which is generally another way to do things that have been done before in BrickU and through email.
Moreover, with only one medium, it’s the problem of "If you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Few respondents demonstrated marketing expertise. This was particularly visible in the belief that democracy and market bulk would solve problems, and the different ideas for the order of implementation steps.
Performance standards for students were not discussed, perhaps because they appear constrictive and perhaps because they are identified with accreditation.
A very clever discussion between Cormaggio & JWSchmidt on the idea of Wikis and learning communities, especially their relation to starting Wikiversity. (Dated 4 Nov., 2005)
J.W.Schmidt: Back in the 1990s I got excited about HTML and conventional websites and their use in education. I soon realized that they were limited in terms of providing a two-way conversation I hate passive learningcormaggio: i figured that!
J.W.Schmidt: Students need to be doing things, not just reading a website. The first wiki I ever saw was wikipedia
cormaggio: when was that?
J.W.Schmidt: Early 2003? I'd have to check {JWS: my first wikipedia edit may have been 26 February 2003}
J.W.Schmidt: I soon became frustrated with the limits on content at Wikipedia
cormaggio: so what did you do about that?
J.W.Schmidt: Some of my contributions did not fit into the wikipedia narrow mission, so I got interested in wikibooks
cormaggio: right - wikibooks - and this introduced you to wikiversity?
J.W.Schmidt: And wikiversity goes naturally with the idea of wiki format textbooks. I think the best textbooks are inspired by working with students
cormaggio: but wikibooks and wikiversity are different, right?
J.W.Schmidt: Again, just as for wikipedia, wikibooks was given a narrow range of content. In my view, textbooks arise from what is learned in a learning environment
cormaggio was that narrow range limited by its mission scope or what?
J.W.Schmidt: I do not think that a real textbook can be constructed on the wikipedia model of collaborative editing
cormaggio ah - i see what you're saying now
J.W.Schmidt: a textbook should not just be a bunch of facts
cormaggio: so wikibooks, wikipedia are like products of collaboration
cormaggio: but wikiversity..?
J.W.Schmidt: a textbook should be informed by knowing a complete story, a way of thinking about a large topic
J.W.Schmidt: In my view, if you have a wikiversity then textbooks will be produced by the members of the wikiversity
cormaggio: yes, I quite like that view
J.W.Schmidt: You need a community devoted to exploring a subject, the textbook describes the journey of that community
cormaggio: do you not see those environments (WP etc) as inherently learning environments anyway?
J.W.Schmidt: If done well, such a textbook sucks new people into the community. Wikiversity and online textbooks can be used for learning, but... a learning community is something else
cormaggio: aha - how do you see a learning community?
J.W.Schmidt: Learning communities, I like to think of "schools of thought", exist in the bricks-and-mortar world It is not clear how to put a learning community into wiki space. In my view, this is a problem of virtual reality
cormaggio: I think learning communities are central to wikipedia - each page is a potential LC. do you see LCs as more specific/solid?
J.W.Schmidt: It is exciting when a group of editors assembles around a wikipedia page or a wikibooks module and takes on the task of explaining the topic. such mini-collaborations are great
J.W.Schmidt: I think we need to find a way of making them more robust
cormaggio: so how do you foster that? or is that possible?
J.W.Schmidt: I have a hunch that it is possible; if something happens by chance we can study it and figure out how to make it happen by design
cormaggio: ah - so it's a case of finding good case studies?
J.W.Schmidt: Well, I'm not sure if these sorts of thing arise from careful analysis. some things just happen. distributed intelligence is at work
cormaggio: so, where do we start?
J.W.Schmidt: If you have a hunch that something can be done, you just start doing it and let the pieces fall into place
cormaggio: in building a good learning community?
J.W.Schmidt: This is the way it worked in getting a man on the moon. It was decided to go to the Moon, but nobody knew how to do it
cormaggio: motivation was there to put a man on the moon though
J.W.Schmidt: a bunch of people put their heads together and figured out how to do it. Motivation comes first
cormaggio: and motivation is a key component to failure in e-learning
J.W.Schmidt: what do you mean by "failure in e-learning"?
cormaggio: but obviously, you have to be somewhat motivated to start a course online in the first place
J.W.Schmidt: some people love learning and exploring.. that is the motivation. Well, for some people the motivation is $$$
cormaggio: ah - i mean that people tend to drift away in distance education - it's a product of not having to go to class, talk with teacher..
cormaggio: but online, that can be addressed somewhat
J.W.Schmidt: I am not interested in reproducing conventional education in a wiki format
cormaggio: having realtime discussions - getting quality feedback - watching your communal work grow. right - i think we need to be thinking broader
J.W.Schmidt: wiki is a tool that allows a community of learners to share and interact. I do not think we yet realize what is possible in wiki format
cormaggio: there isn't much i can find written on this either
J.W.Schmidt: nobody can predict the impact of new technologies
cormaggio: until they're applied, yes.
J.W.Schmidt: I see wiki as a facilitator of learning, a tool for learners. we need to find ways of making the technology work for learners, of allowing learners to go where they want to go
cormaggio: and have you used it in this regard at all yourself?
J.W.Schmidt: well, I have a problem. the things I want to learn about are not real popular
cormaggio: what are they?
J.W.Schmidt: this makes it hard to assemble a community
cormaggio: oh - you mean biology, pharmacology..?
J.W.Schmidt: Here is one example: I am interested in the idea that we can make intelligent devices, autonomous robots that will have human-like intelligence, but the way to do this is to study the human brain, and then apply what is learned about brains to robots. this is hard work, interdisciplinary
cormaggio: absolutely!
J.W.Schmidt: biology, math, computers, engineering
cormaggio: but room for real collaboration..
J.W.Schmidt: Very few people care to do this sort of exploration. it is part of conventional academia to specialize. anyhow, it has been rare for me to find interesting collaborations within the wiki world but I think it can be done. we probably need to start with simple things that are of interest to many people
cormaggio: wikicities strikes me as being somewhere people can focus in on something specialised regardless of their background but do you think wikiversity could become such a place?
J.W.Schmidt: I hope wikiversity becomes a place where learning communities can form and grow
cormaggio: and to take you up on that example - I think the media is such a hot topic, that's a real opportunity to create community. i'm writing a course on media literacy, but it's still very half-baked. i can see potential though
J.W.Schmidt: yes, media literacy is a good example, a core skill for learners
cormaggio: and alongside that, EFL, and computer literacy too
J.W.Schmidt: maybe a wikversity course on using media for learning recursion there
cormaggio: using media for learning? could you be a little more specific? or is that my job? :-)
J.W.Schmidt: everyone interested in using wiki technology for learning could participate in exploration of how to make it work and I think the future of wiki is to merge seamlessly with other communications technologies
cormaggio: aha - though that's beyond my understanding for now
J.W.Schmidt: an example: the way some wikis link to IRC or blogs or email discussion groups eventually such links should be transparent to the wiki user
cormaggio: ah yes, i get you now. i was thinking about having a few courses as kind of flagship courses - maybe we need to think about popular areas where creating a community won't be a problem..
J.W.Schmidt: or test taking. we have not been able to get a simple question/answer system into wiki format
cormaggio: so is this something we need to work on - the software?
J.W.Schmidt: yes, I like the idea of flagship courses. .... well, I hate the example of test/quiz software. I would not delay wikiversity for test/quiz software but eventually it will come
cormaggio: but do you think the wiki format needs extension in some areas?
J.W.Schmidt: it will happen
cormaggio: yes, sorry - got that. but we're ok to go in your opinion?
J.W.Schmidt: I wish wikiversity had started 2 years ago
cormaggio: well, some people don't want it to start for another two years.. but i agree with you, that is
...
J.W.Schmidt: I suspect that it just expresses the Type A mentality
cormaggio: what's that?
J.W.Schmidt: of wanting to know the outcome before starting
cormaggio: ah yes - I'm fully with you there
cormaggio: this is a wiki - we don't know what will happen
J.W.Schmidt: we need to play we need to experiment build me a sandbox
....
J.W.Schmidt: anyhow, we have to work the positive side of community building
cormaggio: yes, absolutely
J.W.Schmidt: I doubt if wikiversity will ever really compete with conventional universities
cormaggio: and look for good examples, best practice..?
J.W.Schmidt: maybe try all practices and see which ones work. play and experiment
cormaggio: hah - the man wants his sandbox and he shall have his sandbox, soon methinks
...
cormaggio: and i've written up a learning community on meta which you may want to take a look at
J.W.Schmidt: wikiversity needs a portal for students that is more than a conventional list of academic disciplines
Here are some specific starter page ideas for when we find a space to get started. Maybe we should just go ahead and start back over on the wikibooks wiki, and delete this page:
This is hard and easy at the same time. There are tons of materials out there - but very few people are willing to be the first ones out. It is easy to make a bad course and a lot of work to produce a good one - so many people prefer to try and sell the good ones (of course, many bad ones are sold as well....).
Create a standard infobox that each course should fill out - with fields such as: course title, "prerequisites", estimated time, languages, topics covered.
It needs additional software support for eLearning -- both authoring and testing. We have to take a look at Moodle and similar eLearning platforms and determine the feature set we need before launching this officially.
If a part of what we are trying to accomplish is "courses", which are the equivalent of hundreds of encyclopedia articles, how do we attract people willing and competent to write them? How do we reconcile the problem of scholars fundamentally disagreeing about things with wiki ideas of collective, anonymous authorship? These are some of the problems I'm thinking about. When school finishes for me (July) I'll start posting some concrete ideas here.
The only practical deficiency is an active participation by university students and professors.
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