Jimmy Wales Comments at Wikimania 2006
"..... the idea here is to also host learning communities, so people who are actually trying to learn, actually have a place to come and interact and help each other figure out how to learn things. We're also going to be hosting and fostering research into how these kinds of things can be used more effectively."
(source)
Wikiversity is the place for research into "all things wiki" and the Wikimedia Foundation wiki projects, in particular. This portal is a directory for Wikimedia Studies at Wikiversity.