Reading groups/Organization Brainstorming IRC Session 30 Dec 2007 18:00 CET draft agenda

This IRC MEETING CANCELED. It will need to be reschedued when an IRC moderator is available. Other technologies are under consideration. See below. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please continue brainstorming below. Mirwin 18:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Note: We will probably run out of time at this IRC session so participants planning attendence please prioritize discussion topics most critical or important first at the top of the list. Use typical wiki discussion page etiquitte. Edit boldly, avoid edit wars via discussion. Thank you!

Current intent is to establish a #Wikiversity-GFDLmeeting channel and post link in the #Wikiversity-en channel periodically for meeting participants to follow. Necessary that all who attend agree a log may be captured and posted as GFDL material to extract minutes, recommendations, actions items, etc. from by other participants and people who could not attend. Those who do not agree will be ejected from channel by the moderator to preserve ability to FDL the meeting log.

IRC Knowledgable Moderator needed to setup channel prior to meeting time, eject disruptive people, lead discussion of agenda, capture and post meeting log, and close channel after activities complete. Potential moderators please add Wikiversity user handle below:

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Proposed Discussion Topics
Methods of coordinating larger groups.
 * Annoucements at Community Bulletin Board
 * Type of wiki pages that may be useful
 * View of Daan: small groups can deal with issues ad hoc. Large groups can be coordinated by setting time schedules, tasks, determining a chairman and someone who keeps record of what has been said during a meeting (Dutch word for someone like that is secretaris), perhaps even a code of law is needed, though it should not be standardized for every group in my view.--Daanschr 11:58, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Types of groups encouraged/possible at en.wikiversity
 * Source checking while learning via reading. Example at Wikipediaw:Wikipedia:WikiProject_critical_source_examination
 * Ongoing research efforts
 * engineering version control management Lunar Boom Town
 * Synchronous reading groups
 * Asychronous interaction

Types of Data products, location and effective linking

Note for Mike from Daan: Much of the points you state above are unclear to me. I don't know what kind of opinion i can have on them. I am afraid that Erkan and Sunny will have a hard time forming opinions on them as well. Below, i will state some of the ideas that has come by during the meeting last saturday, which can be analysed more specifically:


 * Daan came with the idea to choose topics for the reading groups that can be appealing to a wider public.
 * Has this meeting been placed on the announcement board in order to get more participants next time?
 * The meeting had a hard time to start up last time. Eventually, a good discussion emerged in which all main partipants enthusiastically took part of. It would be nice to keep this spirit of enthusiasm by having a clear agenda with not too many points to discuss.
 * A point which is of main importance for success according to Daan is pursuing structure. Arranging meetings on certain times. Doing certain tasks before a meeting or on a wiki within a certain time schedule. Since this is about making reading groups, the most obvious task would be to read texts and discuss them collectively.
 * A tricky point: what to do when structure becomes impossible. Like when someone didn't read a certain text or doesn't show up at a meeting. The other participants will have invested time in reading their text and in showing up. A solution is to have a group with enough participants so that it doesn't matter wether someone has not done what was supposed. Another problem is when someone shows up, but didn't do his homework. This person shouldn't be excluded, but it would be wise to ask in advance if everyone has done their tasks. The trickiness of this point comes apparent in its appliance. How can we apply structure in our actual meetings and tasks?
 * Erkan came with the idea to use audio. Audio can be a source which can be watched as a task before a discussion takes place. It isn't reading, but it can be part of a reading group. Another element in using audio is to talk with eachother and see eachother via internet by using cams and skype for instance during a meeting.
 * A reading group could choose a topic from the Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive of Wikipedia, to stimulate Wikipedians to read books and discuss those books before they edit and to try to gain new interested users for Wikiversity. Daan will present himself as the founder of WikiProject critical source examination on Wikipedia in order to attract people for this purpose. A reading group on Wikiversity could cooperate with WikiProject critical source examination in order to do the things which can´t be done on Wikipedia. Wikiversity could be partly a temporary location for users of other projects who will be here for a specific purpose, like discussing a book without the need to write an article for instance. WikiProject critical source examination on Wikipedia will have the sole aim to improve the encyclopedia Wikipedia, just like the other institutions of Wikipedia. A main interest of Wikiversity and more specifically of the Reading Groups on Wikiversity could be to expand our group of participants.

Previous possibly applicable proposals/discusion.

 * Proposed Hierarchical Structure - "applicable" to what?
 * I thought he had some good ideas to have a preexisting mediation process built into self selecting self organizing groups. I thought it might help small forming groups to coalesce into effective patterns if they had some proven templates available to copy/tailor.  Mirwin 06:29, 24 December 2007 (UTC)