Wikiversity:Year of Science 2016

As part of the Wikimedia-wide Year of Science, we are planning Wikiversity Year of Science 2016.

The Year of Science is an initiative to improve Wikiversity’s potential for science learning and teaching. By connecting higher education classrooms to the publishing openness of Wikiversity, we are helping future scientists learn about science communication, while improving Wikiversity’s science coverage for participants worldwide. The kickoff date is January 15, 2016.

Please share your thoughts and ideas on science related initiatives.

Tasks

 * Improve the content that is linked from Portal:Science.
 * Identify well developed science resources and revive the Featured project to give them prominence.
 * Expand The periodic table subpages.
 * Create a project about the May 9, 2016 Transit of Mercury

Bringing scholars into Wikiversity

 * Wikiversity has defined a new Curator user group that streamlines the process by which an editor can protect their lectures and course materials while a class is in progress.
 * Wikiversity encourages parallel efforts, student efforts, and even original research.

Recruiting teachers

 * Wikiversity as a place for students to write
 * An application to install the Education extension is pending, and EduV is alternative course management system under construction that is designed to tell student's exactly where to contribute.
 * Instead of asking students to write lab reports, assign to them the task of improving one already written on Wikiversity. This addresses the plagiarism problem in an unusual way.
 * Wikiversity permalinks can be used create a "drop box" whereby students can submit essays and other required submissions by submitting just the url. For example, a Work Study student was asked to write something specifically for this discussion. It was saved somewhere on Wikiversity and the oldid was noted to be 1477142. If that student submits that number to the instructor in a dropbox or email message, the instructor can easily call it with: Special:Permalink/1477142.  That essay (about the student's impressions of Wikipedia can never be edited.
 * By submitting svg files, students can contribute images in a way that permits further improvement in a way that permits attribution to the original idea. These editable svg files were created by photocopying a student's idea about how to explain how light behaves when it strikes a polarizing filter in this effort to understand Bell's theorem. If another student improves the quality of one of these sketches, the instructor can upload a photocopy of the new figure and the username of both students are preserved in the attribution record.


 * Wikiversity as an editable platform for delivering lectures.
 * Resource pages can be formatted for presentation on classroom screen projectors.
 * Power point presentations can be saved in pdf form and stored and uploaded as files.
 * Both formats can be upgraded (by editing resource pages and uploading new files)

Recruiting authors

 * Wikiversity encourages parallel pages on the same subject, permitting similar articles that differ only in style or perspective.
 * Articles written on Wikiversity are ideal for publication in the First Journal of Science, which is a new online journal that credits principle authors and major editors with bylines (containing usernames, not the real names)