Wikiversity:Featured/Archive

This page lists the proposal discussions of successful featured content.

Topic: Breton
- possibly one of the best language resources --McCormack 16:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Economic Classroom Experiments
- a rare example of a succeeding collaborative resource. --McCormack 09:55, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Media literacy

 * Contains 7 main sections; very well developed - probably complete and not really being used or visited any more. --McCormack 09:41, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Correction: it is related to a possibly annual real-world course, and possibly undergoes revision phases on an annual basis. --McCormack 08:34, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Topic:Instructional Design

 * I'd like someone to review this and report what they think. --McCormack 09:45, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
 * More info: this set of materials was created by Dr. Peter Honebein of Indiana University as a part of a real world course. There seem to have been 7 other participants apart from himself - graduate course? --McCormack 16:51, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Today I've set about cleaning up this project in advance of featuring. The project is much larger than I thought at first. Initially it seemed to have about 36 pages, but as I bug deeper into it, I reckon it actually has about 130+ pages. Many of these were uncategorised or poorly/idiosyncratically linked into the main project, so it took a lot of cleaning up. --McCormack 12:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Nonlinear finite elements

 * There is quite a bit there. It may or may not be ready. Please do check it out. --Remi 06:46, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, it has a good quantity of material. Seems to be mainly by User:Banerjee. Has attracted quite a lot of vandalism, which is a sign of potential quality. I reckon the main page of the project needs some work on aesthetics. --McCormack 06:55, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've worked over this now. The project has almost 100 pages and is about 95% complete (a few pages are marked for creating but haven't been done yet). It's beyond my comprehension, but is undoubtedly worth featuring. --McCormack 07:55, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Digging a little deeper, User:Banerjee's projects on Category:Continuum mechanics, Category:Finite element analysis and Category:Nonlinear finite elements are quite closely associated. He's working on related courses which have quite substantial areas of overlap, but the Nonlinear finite elements course is currently the best developed, including a full set of homework tasks and solutions. There is substantial use of mathematical notation, so the course is intimidating for the non-specialist. On the other hand, the materials are well-structured and the main page gives a good idea of how a massive wikiversity course can be structured. I'd say that in all, there are about 150-200 pages here. User:Banerjee's second best developed course is Introduction to Elasticity (about 100 pages or so), and I'd suggest that rather than separately featuring elasticity, it should be linked to from the feature description of the finite elements course. --McCormack 14:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: should also link to Waves in composites and metamaterials (25-page lecture series). --McCormack 14:29, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Electric Circuit Analysis

 * User:Thuvack did some very attractive work here, but currently about half-finished. Again: keep an eye on this. --McCormack 07:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * User:Thuvack has now told me that this is pretty well ready now. I think we should move this into the featured rotation very soon. --McCormack 18:15, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Note about this course: 12 pages; nice, consistent design; useful navigation box which makes it clear where you are all the time; reminiscent of the User:Robert Elliott style. --McCormack 14:51, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Trade Finance

 * 240-page project; pretty well a mini-coursebook; very complete, including assignments and activities. Prepared within a project at Michigan State University in 2007. Transferred to Wikiversity from another wiki project - hence appeared here rather fast and already completely wikified. --McCormack 16:12, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Assistant teacher course

 * User:Fasten has worked hard over a considerable period of time to develop what is becoming a comprehensive and valuable research for assistant teachers. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:34, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm beginning to work through this. What I immediately notice is a lack of categorisation of pages. --McCormack 15:25, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think I've categorised them all now. --McCormack 16:02, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
 * General points about this resource: about 50 pages so far; very consistent polished style and layout - even has its own manual of style; very good use of subpages; when you dig deeper, the incomplete sections are visible - but this is noted carefully at the top level - it's work in progress, but with a lot of material already there. --McCormack 16:02, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Introduction to Swedish

 * I'm not sure this is ready yet, but an eye should be kept on it. Promising and active. --McCormack 08:32, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * This resource is developing well now. User:Mats is doing a great job with it. I think this is ready for featuring, although I'm sure more is going to be added. --McCormack 12:09, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Teaching and Learning Online
The following three projects were subsumed under Teaching and Learning Online. --McCormack 15:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

One Laptop Per Teacher

 * this is a research paper, possibly complete, very long, on a topic of central interest. May need some tidying. --McCormack 09:37, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
 * It is a bit too utopical to my taste. It would be better to focus on a whole range of socio-economic aspects. Is there enough electricity to get a laptop running? Do children have enough food? Do all children go to school, or are many forced to work all day or live on the street? What is the job perspective of graduates?  [Comment added by User:Daanschr] 
 * I'm pulling this and similar resources together into a collection called Teaching and Learning Online, with a view on featuring the collection rather than individual items. --McCormack 05:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Flexible learning

 * Simple, clear lesson introducing and explaining Flexible learning; main contributions by User:Leighblackall. -- Jtneill - Talk 10:03, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm pulling this and similar resources together into a collection called Teaching and Learning Online, with a view on featuring the collection rather than individual items. --McCormack 05:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Composing free and open online educational resources

 * This unit has recently been completed by a sizable number of students with moderately good success -- Jtneill - Talk 07:10, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * support, Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) PS: Tag a learning project with completion status !! 10:09, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I havent participate, but the model looks good.--Juan 21:48, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm against this, on the grounds that it is "insider" material. It will, of course, appeal to experienced Wikiversitarians and would therefore be guaranteed a majority in any democratic vote where experienced users react on gut instinct, but this does not mean that it is suitable content for first-time visitors to Wikiversity. On the contrary, it could be incomprehensible and off-putting to outsiders. --McCormack 07:32, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Could you explain more what you mean with insider material ? The course was initiated as self-studyable - all info is available on the internet. There is now also the blogs available with the results for each week, which first-time visitors also could read. The course can be archived later so new people can gather and decide for the next cycle of it, see here. Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) PS: Tag a learning project with completion status !! 09:01, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I disagree with you McCormack. There are know internall materials on wv. I have e.g. copied the structure of the porject to some other courses because it is not a mess. On the other hand it was probably sucessfull as many people participated and it was in progress.--Juan 08:56, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Another point: the current featured content already has a bias towards information technology. We really need to focus on other subjects. --McCormack 08:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with McCormack that the topic would not be appealing to a large audience. However, it is good that such a large amount of people have participated to this course. Categorization can make an end to the problem of too much focus on information technology. The number of featured content in information technology can be conceiled. This way there will not be a problem for the people participating in information technology to grow.--Daanschr 21:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I keep thinking about this one. One could replace one of the existing IT features (e.g. networked learning). Another improvement would be to simplify the title of this course (e.g. "Composing online educational resources" - or shorter), which is also necessary for creating a flyer. Perhaps an introduction could be added which makes the course more accessible to non-specialists who want to have a look at what's featured? --McCormack 09:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There are only a few resources featured. That is far too little to really matter at the moment. When there are far more featured resources, an easy categorization can do the trick to solve the problem of over-concentration on a certain subject. Also, it is better to create and participate in resources and learning instead of debating on wether a certain resource is featured or not. I like the idea of a twilight zone, where resources can be put which are not featured and not non-featured and thereby are undecided for.--Daanschr 17:15, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Anyway, I thought as people are equal, that also resources are equal. Not it sounds like this resource is something different, thats why it can´t be placed to Featured. But Daanschr is right. Me too, I prefer to do something instead to sort and talk about doing.:-)--Juan 18:03, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm pulling this and similar resources together into a collection called Teaching and Learning Online, with a view on featuring the collection rather than individual items. --McCormack 05:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Spanish 1

 * At last we have quality developments in the Spanish department. Courtesy of User:Allioshida who often forgets to log in. The current project probably needs dividing into subpages. --McCormack 07:11, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Divided into subpages shortly after posting the above; the contributors have kept with the subpages now - it makes things a lot easier. Currently has 19 "chapters" and 21 lessons in all, with substantial content. --McCormack 05:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Introduction to Computers

 * A non-technical introduction to computers, with clear structure and lessons on different; not sure whether specific lessons might be featured or the whole course? -- Jtneill - Talk 10:11, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The entry page is a little empty at the moment - just a list. Perhaps some further development needed? --McCormack 08:26, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Coming back to this a few months later. Developed by User:Areil123. Complete, with 12 lessons, nicely divided into subpages. Plenty of content. The lessons are rather large and lack somewhat in educational subtlety. Some exercises, quizzes, and interesting layout wouldn't hurt. Aimed at the general user rather than the IT specialist. I've started spicing up the entry page. --McCormack 05:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * In the same breath, one should mention Introduction to Computer Science by User:DarkFighter, which could be a useful course, but much of which is currently incomplete or messy. --McCormack 05:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Introduction to Computers was largely coordinated by User:Areil123 but most of the content seems to originate from a (large) class run by him. Students worked on individual sections, and the sections were later rearranged and further edited by the coordinator and by at least a second session of the same class. --McCormack 13:09, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've done a lot of work on this today, but it needs more work. Subpage creation (many pages too large), correction of layout, correction of student podcast links, wikification.... --McCormack 15:03, 13 August 2008 (UTC)