Wikiversity

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Wikiversity
Website logo
German: "Learning and teaching", English: "Set learning free"
Wikiprojekt : teaching, learning and scientific exchange platform with free content
languages Arabic, Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish
founder Jimmy Wales , Wikiversity Community
operator Wikimedia Foundation
On-line August 15, 2006
de.wikiversity.org

beta.wikiversity.org

The Wikiversity (in German also Wikiversity ) is an online platform in the form of a wiki for collaborative learning, teaching and research. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation and started on August 15, 2006. Free learning materials ( Open Educational Resources ) are created and collected on Wikiversity . In addition, courses can be held or accompanied there ( e-learning ).

history

Wikiversity started in 2003 as a separate department in the English version of the Wikimedia project Wikibooks . Later other such departments were added in other language versions of Wikibooks.

In August 2005 a German-language wiki was set up under the domain de.wikiversity.org; on August 16, 2005, the first user logged on there. A month later, a month-long open opinion poll began on the Wikimedia Foundation's meta-wiki , in which a vote was taken to set up Wikiversity as a separate project. Initially, however, the German-language Wikiversity was the only language version under its own domain. Up to August 24, 2006 a total of 93 users were registered there. Up to this point it was not possible to put the German-language project on a sustainable basis; Recently, the activities in the German-speaking Wikiversity had almost completely ceased.

Almost exactly one year after the start of the German language version, the Wikiversity project entered a new phase. Jimbo Wales , co-founder of Wikipedia and at that time chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation, officially announced the project in his welcoming speech at the second Wikimania on August 4, 2006 in Boston . Based on a decision by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, an official six-month beta phase was started on August 15, 2006. On the same day, the English-language domain en.wikiversity.org went online.

Only a short time later, on August 25, 2006, the relaunch of the German-language Wikiversity project began. After a fundamental redesign of the structures and the definition of goals, just under 300 more users registered in the first two months after the relaunch. The third language version followed on October 16, 2006 with the Spanish-language Wikiversity and the fourth language version on December 1, 2006 with the French-language Wikiversity under its own domain. The Italian language version was added on May 18, 2007 and the Greek language version on January 12, 2008. In May 2008, three more were added: the Japanese, Portuguese and Czech Wikiversity.

On October 21, 2007, the German-speaking community decided in a multi-stage process for “learning and teaching” as a new slogan that will be used in the future. The English Wikiversity had previously chosen Set learning free as its slogan.

In 2008, the German-language Wikiversity was divided into 25 departments, with most of the courses covering the fields of physics and computer science. The low number of users and, in contrast to the learning platforms, the wiki software that was not specifically adapted to different learning scenarios were criticized.

Wikiversity is currently (2013) in Arabic, Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish. New projects are being prepared for Wikiversity beta.

aims

Since the start of the beta phase, a multilingual discussion has been taking place on the international coordination website beta.wikiversity.org on fundamental issues relating to the setting of priorities and the project guidelines. The first differences between the first two language versions involved in the beta phase, English and German, are already becoming apparent.

While the English-language Wikiversity focuses on the creation of online learning materials and is also increasingly adopting materials from the sister project Wikibooks , the German-language Wikiversity aims to offer a tripartite offering of teaching, research and academic exchange. The German-language description of the Wikiversity project states: “Wikiversity is a platform for collaborative work on scientific projects, for exchanging ideas on technical issues and for creating free course materials ... Wikiversity enables scientists who are spatially separated to work cooperatively without one having to build up your own technical infrastructure. "

Licensing

In the English-language Wikiversity, the contributions are published under the Creative Commons license "Attribution, distribution under the same conditions" (cc-by-sa) and the GNU license for free documentation (GFDL), like all Wikimedia contributions after the license update. In the German-language Wikiversity, the contributions were published beforehand exclusively under the CC-by-sa license.

criticism

Debora Weber-Wulff , herself a former Wikiversity employee, complained about the project's lack of standards: Anyone could "claim to understand something about computer science and want to teach". She also saw fear of theft of ideas as an obstacle to the free collaboration of Wikiversity users.

literature

Web links

Wikiversity: Main Page  - Course Materials
Wikiversity: Wikiversity: About Wikiversity  - course materials

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Creation of the project on Wikibooks .
  2. ^ Wikiversity Vote on the Meta-Wiki of the Wikimedia Foundation.
  3. ↑ Full text of the welcome speech by Jimbo Wales, given at Wikimania 2006 (alternatively available as an audio file ).
  4. ↑ http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12587
  5. ^ Wikiversity: slogan . Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  6. ↑ Winning slogan: "Set learning free" . In: Wikiversity: Motto contest on en.wikiversity.org. Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  7. ↑ Sabine Zauchner, Peter Baumgartner, Edith Blaschitz: Open Education Space University: Freedoms and Necessities. P. 155 f. On-line
  8. ^ Wikiversity: About Wikiversity . Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  9. ↑ Results of the license update
  10. ↑ Tina Rohowski: College for all. In: Zeit Online , August 19, 2009. Retrieved November 5, 2009.