Wikiversity talk:Supporting Wikiversity participants

New user experiences
In order to answer this question at the page I encourage people to write about their experiences and start with my own. (Even if this might be not conform to some of the many policies)

I came here from a link of wikipedia, just after following the link to wikibooks. Bevor coming here, I did not have an account at Wikipedia and did not dare to edit articles. So I did neither plan to edit Wikiversity pages. Instead I wanted to find out what Wikiversity is and try learning resourcdes about Microbiology. So I followed the first links on the welcome page (Learning_projects and then Learning models, …). Soon, I was easily distracted by controversial and sometimes redundant discussions about what wikiversity is and what it is not, different views on learning, and policies. I did not really understand these topics at this point. I took me a while to come back to the welcome page and the Introduction guide, which ended again with rather specific pages (Colloquium,Portal:Education). Eventually, I followed links to Welcome,_newcomers, which answered better what Wikiversity is about.

I argue that we do not need to encourage users to make edits when welcoming them. I suggest to guide them to specific learning activities and aid them in starting editing at the point when they encounter this task in the learning activity. Starting with a specific activity is a wiki-way and much easier than explaining participation at welcome. As you see this written by me, I got excited about wikiversity and I got involved. This happend with following a course (School:WikiService), and with starting contribute to authoring a learning activity while learning the topic (Activity creation,Wikipedia_service-learning_courses). All three articles were just stubs, however, I could learn about wikiversity by starting creating. --tomaschwutz 22:10, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * "I suggest to guide them to specific learning activities" <-- At one time the main page did this, then learning activities were hidden away under several levels of portals designed by participants who rejected the idea that Wikiversity is for learn-by-doing projects. "we do not need to encourage users to make edits when welcoming them" <-- I do not agree. 99.99999% of Wikiversity content does not yet exist. It should be clear to new Wikiversity participants that Wikiversity is a place where learners are invited to edit and help create content, not just participate in existing learning projects. --JWSchmidt 14:45, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd take the comments above about why the main page looks as it does with a grain of salt :-). It's true however that the best way to participate in WV is to jump in and edit... in some ways the learning process is greatly enhanced by adding your notes and/or viewpoint on the topic you're interested in, because that's how other participants will learn about your interests and in the best case you'll find people who share them and can study with you. Personally I find one of the best ways to see what's really happening is to look at the recent changes, where you'll be able to see what other people have been working on today. If something interests you, you can either watch the progress for a while or just jump right in. --SB_Johnny talk 15:41, 22 November 2008 (UTC)