Talk:Wikimedia Research Network/Meetings/2005-11-06

I *really* think we need to pitch Wikiversity as a resource for students, teachers, and existing schools instead of as something that wants to be an accredited school itself. Each time I mention the possibility of Wikiversity being a school unto itself to current teachers and librarians I get a great deal of negative responses while the same people are generally very exicited by the prospect of having a shared resource they could all work on with their students and patrons.

We should also hire at least one PHP/MySQL programmer who would be responsible for supporting any software needs Wikibooks/Wikiversity require.

Of utmost importance is to give Wikibooks/Wikiversity real book support that would allow searching within particular books and the easy creation of per book indexes, per book TOCs, chapter support, and other navigational aides. Also, each page of a textbook really needs to keep print page sizes in mind and adjust accordingly.

Having the ability to easily publish vetted snapshots of textbooks from Wikibooks to static copies on Wikiversity would also be a killer feature to have, IMO. In this scenario, textbook development would be on Wikibooks and textbook use by students would be from the Wikiversity website, a mirrored copy thereof, or via a printed copy of a version published on Wikiversity.

Students would also be encouraged to find mistakes and fix them in the development version on Wikibooks; teachers would be encouraged to check those fixes and publish the fixed Wikibooks page to the Wikiversity version (only certain trusted users would have the ability to publish pages/books and only via a specified process ; policy/feature tie-ins with a reader validation feature would be neat as well). Wikiversity will also need a WikiQuiz feature and classroom forum/discussion support among other things.

In short: A lack of good software support is the major reason why I think Wikibooks has grown as slowly as it has (slowly in comparison to Wikipedia's growth). Wikiversity will also follow the same mediocre path as Wikibooks has w/o custom software features (all these features would be optional modules in MediaWiki that some projects would use and others would not use).

-- Daniel Mayer 17:26, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Incrementalism

I agree that it makes little sense to start with grand plans about making wikiversity an accredited university that would replicate the features of conventional universities in wiki format. What should be provided to the board is a realistic plan for how to start wikiversity from the reality of the strengths and weaknesses of existing Wikimedia projects. We need a description of how a new born wikiversity could be configured so that it builds on existing Wikimedia strengths and provides new wiki services that will be useful for fixing some of the existing problems of wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

One of the first things that wikiversity will be able to do is link its pages to wikipedia pages and wikibooks modules. Wikiversity can become a research center (actually, a constellation of research centers) where the research is done that is needed to improve wikipedia articles. One of the first teaching jobs that wikiversity should tackle is teaching wikipedia editors how to research topics and apply that research to making great wikipedia articles. The first generation of wikiversity students can be drawn from the pool of wikipedia editors who need access to research tools and training in order to become better editors. Good textbooks will also grow out of wikiversity research projects and the experiences of learning communities that grow up around the real-world problems of building an accurate conceptual map of the world into wikipedia. Good textbooks are the product of people who have experience in the learning environments of universities.

As soon as wikiversity makes itself useful to wikipedia, it will become useful to existing schools and universities. Eventually, wikiversity may grow into something like a conventional university, but that will take time....many years. The wiki user interface may allow wikiversity to radically re-invent the meaning of learning communities. Ten years from now, people will probably wonder why anyone would want to regress wikiversity back to anything as primitive as a conventional university.

I'm not sure that the growth of wikiversity is seriously constrained by software problems like the limited search features of the mediawiki software. All we need do is mark each page of a "book" with a code marker and use a search engine like Google to restrict a search to wiki pages that contain the book's code. Book indexes are the ancient technology of paper books. A modern internet search engine can do the job of an index as long as we correctly configure out wikis. If we manage our wiki books correctly we will never have to bother with "static copies". We just need to learn how to deal with living books.

Wikiversity should start a core group of "service courses" that will be research centers and research resources for improving wikipedia articles about history, current events, medicine, science, culture, people (biography), society, technology. If we put good research tools into an open wiki format, wikipedia editors will use those tools. This will launch wikiversity as a useful project within the wikimedia family and then wikiversity can grow from that start towards support for all other types of learning communities.

--JWSurf 21:46, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

griffe

Lorsque les paléontologues parlent de griffe , il s'agit en réalité de la derniére phalange du doigtsur laquelle venait s'emboîter, quand le Baryonyxétait vivant, une griffe en corne (c'est la même chose chez les chiens et les chats).La véritable griffe en corne et donc bien plus importante que la phalange qu'elle recouvre

griffe

Lorsque les paléontologues parlent de griffe , il s'agit en réalité de la derniére phalange du doigtsur laquelle venait s'emboîter, quand le Baryonyxétait vivant, une griffe en corne (c'est la même chose chez les chiens et les chats).La véritable griffe en corne et donc bien plus importante que la phalange qu'elle recouvre