Help:Lecture

This is a help page.
However it may contain statements which the community may wish to discuss in order to achieve a higher level of consensus.

Many Wikiversity contributors from universities and similar tertiary institutions have chosen to structure their contributions as "courses" consisting of "lectures", "assignments" and some other components. A write-up of a lecture may look like an article and is distinguished by its context. Context means: it is linked into a course as a lecture belonging to that course. The distinction is important, because not all articles are acceptable on Wikiversity (normally they belong on Wikipedia). A lecture, unlike an article, is an educational resource which can remain on Wikiversity regardless of its topic.

Distinguished from related resource types

Articles: the term article is used on Wikiversity in the sense of "encyclopedia article". The "academic article" is known as a paper (or academic paper) on Wikiversity. An article must adhere to the neutral point of view and is a collaborative effort, just as Wikipedia articles are. In general, Wikipedia is the right place to put articles.

Papers: a paper is an academic article or academic paper (or draft thereof) which has been published or is being drafted on Wikiversity. A paper typically reflects the work and views of a single individual or of a closed group of authors. A paper may be commented on and discussed by any Wikiversity contributor.

Essays: an essay, like a paper, reflects the work and views of a single individual or of a closed group of authors and may be commented on and discussed by any Wikiversity contributor. It may be one of the following:
- an opinion piece of writing which is not on a sufficiently "academic" topic to be considered an "academic paper", or where the degree of formality is lower than a paper, or where the author simply prefers the designation "essay";
- a piece of writing set as an assignment in a course.

Lessons: the Moodle help system memorably tells us that a lesson "delivers content in an interesting and flexible way". The function of a lesson may be similar to that of a lecture, but a lesson does the thing in a different way. A lecture is typical for tertiary education resources. A lesson is typical for learning content in other education sectors.

Collections that may include lectures

Courses: a course is generally an organizational page which collects together other resources, such as lectures, assignments, lessons, quizzes, reading lists and handouts. Courses are frequently associated with real world classes, but occasionally their intended audience will be new visitors to Wikiversity.

Video and audio lectures

It has become increasingly popular in academia to make (real world) lectures available as podcasts. Information about such options at Wikiversity will be added here. Because of bandwidth and uploading issues, you may need to post your podcast elsewhere on the web and link to it from your Wikiversity course page.

How to avoid your lecture being deleted as an article

The danger: most articles belong on Wikipedia, not Wikiversity, so they may get deleted from Wikiversity (see What Wikiversity is not under the heading "a duplication of other Wikimedia projects").

How to avoid this:

Call your lecture a "lecture".
Tag your lecture as a lecture by inserting {{lecture}} at the top or bottom (with the curly brackets).
Use a subpage for your lecture - i.e. entitle your lecture "name of course/name of lecture" or "name of course/lecture 1" (with a slash in the middle).
Link your lecture clearly to your course - e.g. by using subpages, a breadcrumbs trail back to your course will be automatically created at the top of the page.
Avoid the temptation to copy-and-paste from Wikipedia, unless you heavily edit the Wikipedia article to suit your lecture.

Lectures which are one-off events

Academia also knows the use of the word "lecture" as a single presentational event, rather than as part of a course. As such, a (formal write-up of a) lecture is similar to a "paper". It is suggested that such one-off lectures (i.e. lectures with no context of other pages belonging to the same course) should be termed "papers" (see papers).

The lifecycle of a lecture

You should feel welcome to upgrade lecture notes (your own, or those of others) to lessons by (as Moodle tells us) delivering the content in a more interesting and flexible way. See lessons for advice.