Wikiversity talk:Online courses

I find myself making a distinction between 1) "conventional" courses and 2) what I imagine Wikiversity will evolve as non-traditional courses in wiki format.

The main distinction is that conventional courses have a specific start date and a specific group of people participating from start to finish. This format is a good fit for bricks-and-mortar institutions, but is in conflict with the power of wiki to allow a diverse community to participate, each participant working on their own terms. I think it would be a huge error for Wikiversity to adopt the primary goal of producing conventional courses in wiki format. As an alternative, we need to find new ways for learning communities to function efficiently in a wiki environment. Only time will tell exactly what works best for learning in a wiki environment. We need to construct a flexible framework (the Board called for a wiki-specific model for e-learning) for allowing the Wikiversity community to evolve learning projects and discover the best way to do things. We have to keep in mind how best to do this within the existing family of WikiMedia projects. My hunch is that if we do this right, the non-traditional courses that develop within Wikiversity will provide the world with an important alternative to conventional online courses. --JWSurf 23:37, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. I have trouble with restricting the Wikiversity to just courses. The materials that are not, on their own courses, can still be valuable if offered in the Wikiversity for *teachers* to use (i.e. in a repository, much like pictures on commons). It is rather like we need to have a quarry for nice bits of marble, an atlier where everone can chip in, and a museum where the gorgeous finished statues can be displayed along with a book for people to make comments on them. --84.189.59.199 21:04, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh yes, I don't think anyone is saying that everything on Wikiversity must be contained within a course - this whole discussion is largely an attempt to address the board's uncertainty about Wikiversity and courses, and also the desire amongst many in the community to create their own courses. Of course, we will have stand-alone materials - that's a fundamental part of the way it will probably grow. Does that ease your mind? Nice analogy, by the way :-) Cormaggio @ 11:50, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I should also add that much of these sub-pages on Wikiversity are far from comprehensive or being complete - please edit as you see fit. Cormaggio @ 11:57, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * By what authority can the definition of a course state that Wikiversity will NEVER be an accredited institution? Best anyone can say with any credibility is that there are no current plans to seek accreditation and such a process is long, expensive and rigorous/arduous.  Jimbo and the rest of the trustees are not immortal and our wiki participants plans have always envisioned a long and useful future to humanity of our knowledge products.  Not even the God King, Jimbo, can state with authority that the Wikiversity upon WMF servers will NEVER have accreditation. 68.238.143.172 07:05, 3 August 2006 (UTC) lazyquasar

I like the "never say never" attitude. I'd be interested in reading a description of a hypothetical series of events that could lead to accreditation of Wikiversity. --JWSurf 06:07, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

New way of doing courses
At the moment many wikiversity 'courses' tend to be based around university courses - a series of 10-15 topics with a reading list and questions for assignments and a 'lecture.'

Would it not be better to make 'courses' into something much smaller, something that you can do in 1-2 hours. Obviously you would have to do a lot more courses to gain a degree, but I think there are many advantages.

Advantages of shorter courses

 * Flexibility - you can create a programme suited exactly to your needs
 * Increased sense of achievement
 * Ability to fit courses more easily into a busy lifestyle
 * Easier to create a course - if courses are shorter, then more people can work on courses that are of interest to them. It also means the amount of reading required to create a course is much less

What does everyone think?

Davymast 12:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, it would be useful to have clearly defined modules with some estimate of the time required for each. However, sometimes I suggest a fairly open-ended assignment such as "look up something on topic X and then add it to this page". I'd hate to have to put a time on things like that. Really, in a wiki, people just work at their own pace anyhow. Rather than thinking in terms of "course = a page" we can think in terms of pages for "learning materials" and "learning activities" that can be small and modular chunks. In splitting courses into pieces, we can even use subpages in the main namespace at Wikiversity. --JWSchmidt 00:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)