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Open content and learning on Wikiversity
Cormac LawlerCETIS ECSiG, 27th May 2008
“Openness and inclusiveness are … our radical means to our radical ends.”
Jimmy Wales
Wikiversity
• Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia, Commons, Wikibooks, …) - all dedicated to open content
• Launched August 2006• Lengthy setting-up discussion - what should
it do?
Wikiversity is for..
• Learning materials• Learning activities• Learning communities• (i.e. both a repository of and a space for
learning)• All languages – and levels• All “open” / “free” / “libre”
Open content
• Essential freedoms:• Access (and Use!)• Share (redistribute)• Modify (editing original / copying and
“forking”)• Similar to Stallman/GNU’s open source
freedoms (see freedomdefined.org)
Free culture
• Driven by licensing• Sharing / collaboration / ‘remix’ etc• Culture shift (“anyone can edit my work?”)• Alternative models of production /
consumption (eg. wiki peer review)
Open learning
• Open Educational Resources (OER)• What about open educational spaces?• ‘Architecture for participation’, and an ‘Open
Participatory Learning Infrastructure’ (Atkins, Brown, Hammond)
• Wikiversity explicitly set up to address the question - how does learning work in a wiki? (Wikipedagogy?)
Learning, and the ‘wiki way’
• Collaborative writing• Discussing / debating (sometimes conflict)• Passion-based learning• Transparency of process - info/media-
literacy• Eg. Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia “like a sausage:
you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made”
(I argue the exact opposite!)
Examples from Wikiversity
• Instructor-led materials (Filmmaking)• Reading groups (Ivan Illich)• Collaborative workspaces / writings• Collaborative research (Bloom Clock)
Implications of ‘wiki way’
• Expertise problematic (though not anti-expert)
• Disclosures - what paradigm are you coming from?
• Multiple avenues for learning• Can a resource be “finished”?
Wikiversity’s role
• One of a growing no. of OER repositories• Peer-to-peer university / school (part of
‘meta-university’?)• Personal Learning Environment
Challenges [1]
…for Wikiversity:• ‘My’ content• PLE - is editability always good?• Forking in tension with collaboration• Mediawiki - limited technology?• How permissive are we? (eg. Nazism,
racism?)
Challenges [2]
…in general:• Licence proliferation• Silo effect• Metadata / tagging (searchability)• Open ideology (?)
[email protected]://cormaggio.org
http://en.wikiversity.orghttp://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Cormaggio
