Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/July 2013

Universal Language Selector will be enabled on 2013-07-09

On July 9, 2013, Universal Language Selector (ULS) will be enabled on this wiki. The ULS provides a flexible way to configure and deliver language settings like interface language, fonts, and input methods (keyboard mappings). Making it available here is the last phase of making ULS available on all Wikimedia wikis.

Please read the announcement on Meta-Wiki for more information. Siebrand 12:21, 4 July 2013 (UTC) (via Global message delivery).

MOOCs

Does Wikimedia have any initiatives in the MOOC space? E.g. Open source software for hosting MOOCs or even just a listing/rating of available MOOCs.

--Samw (discuss • contribs) 21:29, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Take a look at Massive open online course using Wikipedia. Coursera seems to have pulled away from the others in the closed source, institutionally supported space. I would recommend CourseSites by Blackboard if you want to host your own MOOC. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:44, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

You can also use the Wikiversity project to create a MOOC; on the Dutch wikiversity (still in beta) we are experimenting with virtual communities (see https://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Overzicht_gilden), Timboliu (discuss • contribs) 11:04, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

This Month in Education: July 2013

This Month in Education – Volume 2, Issue 7, July 2013 Headlines> Students' articles nominated for Featured Article Articles of Interest in other publications To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription · Distributed via Global message delivery, 22:48, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Adding Courses Category Tree to Main Page

I would like to propose adding the Courses category tree to the main page in the upper right Explore Wikiversity box, either between Portals and Resources or between Learning Projects and Help. The template that needs to be modified is Template:Portal_Nav_0.5. The line to add is <categorytree mode="all" depth="0">Courses</categorytree>.

The current interest in open educational resources appears to be based on courses. This is indicated by the high interest within the educational community in MOOCs in general, and in Coursera in particular. Adding Courses to the Wikiversity main page would help to show that there are over 200 free courses already available on Wikiversity.

If there is support for this proposal, can someone with editing rights on that page make the change?

-- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:30, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support I like it! Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:12, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
• Comment - can't every article be considered a course? The line is blurry between what constitutes a course. Could including courses possibly make things less organized? Otherwise, the principle of adding courses sounds good. - - Sidelight12 ^Talk 20:11, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

By itself, each article wouldn't be a course. According to Help:Course, a course is an organized collection of other resources. Wikiversity:Content_development also describes courses as groupings of existing resources. Beyond that, my personal perspective is that a course designation should be based on the amount of content and the time it takes to cover or learn that content. A lesson is typically something that can be covered in one sitting. A class may be multiple lessons, but I've never taken a class that that was more than four to eight lessons. A course is multiple classes, typically in the 40 to 50 hour range (one week or one semester). These descriptions may vary in other locales, but they seem consistent with historical usage here on Wikiversity. I think it's also significant that there are thousands of articles on Wikiversity, but only 255 that are currently indicated as courses. Most of those seem to follow the organized collection approach with multiple pages/subpages of content and some type of organized navigation between those pages.

Where I have trouble with this idea isn't with articles, but in trying to define the separation between a course and a learning project. But when comparing Category:Courses and Category:Learning projects, there's (almost?) no overlap between the two categories. Clearly, there is a perceptual difference among those who create content that a learning project is different from a course. I see learning projects as more collaborative, and developed with or by the students as the learning takes place. Courses tend to be developed in advance by a subject matter expert before the students arrive.

I'd like to hear more from the community. Are courses different from learning projects? Or should we designate courses as learning projects if we want them to appear on the front page?

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:50, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

If I may, here's some differences between say principles of radiation astronomy and the Astronomy Project which is a learning project. The former is being designed similar to an advanced undergraduate level college/university course that hopefully will rank with any of the best world-wide. The learning project "offers learning activities that allow Wikiversity participants to learn astronomy "on the job" by participating in analysis of astronomical observations," specifically, and more generally by studying lectures/articles, activities/lessons, and taking quizzes, hourlies and other participatory resources to learn as much on their own as they feel like, for whatever their reasons or purposes. Having written this: I see courses as different than learning projects. A course is a path one can follow to reach a level of expertise, in the instance mentioned, to be able to conduct hopefully for grant-type funding, state-of-the science, original research. A learning project may be this or far less. My gut response is to keep them separate, but I will go along with consensus. The former may be hopefully a path to becoming a professional, the latter is open. A key point to mention for learning projects on the Main page may be that they are casual learning for any purpose. I believe both are in line with Wikiversity's learning by doing. I hope this helps and I hope I'm not being too serious about courses. Both should be fun. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 22:19, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

There should be a way to make resources more accessible from the main page. I agree with that part. - Sidelight12 ^Talk 10:46, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Pywikipedia is migrating to git

Hello, Sorry for English but It's very important for bot operators so I hope someone translates this. Pywikipedia is migrating to Git so after July 26, SVN checkouts won't be updated If you're using Pywikipedia you have to switch to git, otherwise you will use out-dated framework and your bot might not work properly. There is a manual for doing that and a blog post explaining about this change in non-technical language. If you have question feel free to ask in mw:Manual talk:Pywikipediabot/Gerrit, mailing list, or in the IRC channel. Best Amir (via Global message delivery). 13:07, 23 July 2013 (UTC)