Wikiversity

Wikiversity:History of Wikiversity

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Wikiversity traces its roots back to the earliest collaborations between learners.

The History of Wikiversity began with initial development of the Wikiversity community within the Wikibooks project. The fundamental goal for Wikiversity was to broaden the scope of activities within the Wikimedia community to include additional types of learning resources in addition to textbooks. Wikiversity has existed as an independent Wikimedia Foundation project since August 2006. This page describes the history of the Wikiversity project including the very first project proposal that was not approved (2005) and the second proposal that was approved (2006).

Introductions edit

Origin of Wikiversity edit

Wikiversity started developing on Wikibooks several years ago. The Wikibooks' Wikiversity section was proposed for deletion from Wikibooks in August 2005. Soon after that, there was a proposal to make Wikiversity an independent Wikimedia project. In addition to the information on the proposed projects page, information about the original proposal was described in a mailing list post and on the Wikiversity page of the WikiMedia meta-wiki.

Background and proposals edit

In November 2005 the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees rejected the first Wikiversity project proposal and instructed the Wikiversity community to modify the proposal to "exclude credentials, exclude online-courses". The Board requested that the Wikiversity community "clarify [the] concept of e-learning" that will guide Wikiversity. The modified Wikiversity project proposal that was approved by the Board calls for two major components of Wikiversity:

  1. learning resources and
  2. learning activities.

The Wikiversity model for e-learning is discussed at the Wikiversity Education Portal and related pages.

Wikimedia Foundation approval edit

The Special projects committee (SPC) reviewed the modified Wikiversity proposal and adopted (July 31, 2006) resolution 2006-39A:

"The SPC recommend the creation of a beta Wikiversity project, to be hosted at the domain wikiversity.org, as per its scope, starting in August. The project will be dedicated to collecting free multilingual educational resources, and to supporting communities using those resources to teach and learn together. The beta stage of the project will run for six months, during which guidelines for further potential uses of the site, including collaborative research, will be developed on the beta wiki. These guidelines will be reviewed by the SPC at the end of the beta period."

"New languages can contribute content to beta.wikiversity.org; those with at least 10 active participants can request a separate domain for their language."

The SPC sent resolution 2006-39A to the Board of Trustees.

Next steps edit

The launch of Wikiversity was announced 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)

The English language Wikiversity website opened on August 15, 2006.

In the early stages of development, Wikiversity had discussion relating to policies, technical issues, and establishing an initial content infrastructure and general layout. The main forum for discussions became the Colloquium - take a look there and feel free to drop a reply to anything which interests you. Your viewpoint on longer term organizational issues is also welcome at Wikiversity:Organizing Wikiversity.

Reports edit

See also edit

Historical resources edit

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