text:
Learning and learning about learning in Wikiversity

This is a paper which was presented at Wikimania 2007. Comments are welcome on the talk page. Cormaggio talk 08:17, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

 * Cormac Lawler
 * University of Manchester
 * cormaggio (at) gmail (dot) com

Abstract
This paper reflects on the work of Wikiversity, and the way in which its educational goals are mediated by virtue of wiki culture, or “the wiki way”. It examines problems that its participants have negotiated, and discusses their implications with regard to the project’s identity and definition. Issues discussed include structuring of content, granularity of resources, participation, exclusion, and academic freedom versus Wikipedia’s notion of ‘NPOV’. It concludes with a look at whether Wikiversity might constitute a new paradigm in education.

Keywords
Wikis, Wikiversity, learning, education, community

Introduction
This paper is a reflection on the first eight months or so of activity on Wikiversity, and a look at how to build on this activity. It is fundamentally about the process of learning, specifically collaborative, active learning, and what it means to learn in this way - the “wiki way”. I will focus on key aspects of the culture and practice of wikis, and how these relate to and even mediate the educational process. I intend here to raise useful questions about Wikiversity’s practice and identity, rather than to state definitively what it is and how it works; however, I hope that through this paper, some of its aspects will be brought to (new) light, and it can be better understood and situated in context.

But before I do anything else, and because this paper is so centrally concerned with learning, I feel it appropriate to sketch briefly my own understanding of learning which frames this paper. I believe that learning is a process of participation in a particular social - and, hence, cultural - context (Vygotsky 1978; Cole 1990) – and it is the quality of this participation that defines the learning experience. Furthermore, learning is about becoming – a negotiation between one’s identity and one’s surroundings – and involves as much the learning about this context as it does that of a given subject (Wenger 1998). Finally, I believe that learning is not the simple and unproblematic acquisition of knowledge, but its active construction (Dewey 1897/1966), and that it is in this process of “critical and developmental engagement” that knowledge is formed and validated (Winter 1991: 479).

Context: Wikiversity and wikis in education
Wikiversity is the youngest of the Wikimedia Foundation projects, and was officially set up in August 2006 (though having been in incubation and discussion between Wikibooks and Meta for at least two years before this). Its focus is around three main activities:

 * creating and hosting free-content educational materials,
 * developing communities and activities around these materials, and
 * facilitating and hosting research projects and products.

In this respect, Wikiversity exists alongside a number of projects that are currently attempting to make educational resources not simply available to the public but free for use and reuse – a group of projects which Atkins, Seely Brown and Hammond (2007) now recognise as having “nascent movement status” (p. 6). However, Wikiversity is not simply producing and/or collating freely licensed educational content – it is engaged in exploring through practice how a wiki can be used to construct an open, participatory system of learning. (Atkins, Seely Brown, Hammond 2007)

A wiki is an editable website which works through the communal activity of its participants around its shared goal (Lamb 2005), and they are increasingly being used in a wide variety of fields and tasks, including education (Bruns & Humphreys 2005; Honegger 2005). Unsurprisingly (in general, but particularly in education), they are used as a tool to promote collaboration and, to a large extent, for collaborative knowledge management (Wagner 2004; Raman, Ryan, Olfman 2005) – in which participants can build repositories of materials that are relevant to their needs, and to use these materials to prompt further work and discussion. Another strong trend in their educational use is to promote the explicit building of a community of practice (Da Lio, Fraboni, Leo, 2005) - though this development of a community of practice is also something that happens as an inevitable upshot of participating on a wiki (Bryant, Forte, Bruckman 2005; Lawler 2005) – a recognition that learning is an inevitable (though not always positive) feature of participation in a shared practice (Lave & Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998). This collaboration involves working with people of different worldviews and nationalities, i.e. across different cultures (Buffa, Sander, Grattarola 2004).

The “wiki way” is a specific culture, with its own practice, or way of doing things. These include “being bold”, dealing with vandalism, writing collaboratively, discussing (through various pages, even media), tracking changes. Clearly, there is quite an amount of learning involved in coming to terms with wikis, not only in getting to grips with the syntax, but also in understanding community norms etc. (Wenger 1998). Culture, of course, is not something predefined - even though it can be inherited to some extent, it is always in the process of being interpreted and reinterpreted by individual people, in their understandings of the context and their relationships within that context.

So, what implications does this “wiki way” have for learning? How is learning mediated by the wiki environment or culture? What even is the viability of the wiki model in education? I think to understand and address these questions, we need to look at the actual activity of people’s participation (or non-participation) in Wikiversity - I feel that this can be most vividly pictured through an exploration of individual problems, issues raised, and the discussions these have generated.

Getting to grips with Wikiversity
Wikiversity is a complex project – as proven to me by the many confused messages that I have witnessed from people trying to understand what Wikiversity is and what they can do in it, for it, or with it. (Of course, this number represents a mere fraction of the number of people who have felt this way but who haven’t posted a comment.) Even the process of defining what Wikiversity should be has been difficult and peppered with conflict (Lawler 2006), with deep questions about the nature of its educational model still left unanswered at the time of its creation. This definition of Wikiversity has continued as a collaborative and diverse imagining - as shown probably most concisely by the contest to find a logo Wikiversity/logo and a motto and slogan Motto_contest for the project, both of which were many months in discussion.

A large part of my research is to do what most people who track wikis do – in that I have been keeping track of and participating in discussions and recent changes on the wiki, mailing lists, blogs, as well as on IRC, the ‘chat-room’ service used by Wikimedia project members. The problems that I’ve observed people experiencing are widely distributed, from lack of familiarity with wikis, to confusion about how Wikiversity works; what follows is a brief thematic overview of some of these problems, with an attempt to give some flavour of the discussions they have generated, as well as their theoretical and practical implications.

Structuring content
Much of the discussion in the first few months of Wikiversity has been around the structuring of content. Take, for example, this comment from one contributor, Mystictim’s, Wikiversity blog:

 * "I've been struggling with this project for quite some time now. I seem to be just rearranging existing content, moving deckchairs around on the proverbial ship. Or to mix some metaphores I can imagine that it's like climbing a mountain. From a distance its clear where the peak is but up close its just a shear cliff with no obvious route to follow."

There is an obvious lack of structure in Wikiversity embedded in this comment – not just of content but of activity. Content has been organised in Wikiversity around the creation of distinct structures, known as “namespaces” (eg. “School”, “Topic”, “Portal” and “Category”) Namespaces. I have observed (and experienced myself) the confusion of simply ‘where to put something’ that Mystictim alludes to in this comment. Presumably with this in mind, Mystictim then outlined an initiative for dealing with this problem in the following discussion from roughly one month later:

 * Hi I've started a project to categorise the pages that have learning activities for participants at Wikiversity. This will help identify the range of learning activities available at Wikiversity point learners in the direction of learning activities and give learning facilitators ideas for the learning activities they are creating. I've started working through this Alpahabetical list and got up to Daoism. If you think this is a useful endevour please help out. Mystictim 13:47, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

 * “Yelling into a dark and empty cave?”
 * “Learning activities” must have certain elements otherwise they are no better than “yelling into a dark and empty cave”. There must be specific goals and someone must be listening.
 * Therefore, to be a learning activity, a page must:
 * 1. Ask the participant to do something. (Just reading and thinking about something is not enough.)
 * 2. There must be someway to reach someone who will actually listen and reply. This can be:
 * A. A teacher or moderator who will reply.
 * or
 * B. A clear procedure for posting the answer for other participants to read and reply.
 * So far, none of the classes you have identified do this. Robert Elliott 16:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

 * I would add: C. Click the edit button and participate. --JWSchmidt 16:26, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

 * Rather than an empty cave Wikiversity is more a slab of marble which is just beginning to be carved into the most beautiful monument to human achievement. Your right of course effective learning requires much more than just learning activities. However as our slab of marble hasn't taken shape yet I suggest that it isn't that useful to say what is and what isn't a learning activity. What would be useful is to identify the range of learning activities that people have already created. These will give other people ideas about creating and improving learning activities on Wikiverstiy. In a few years time we will be able to look at the Wikiversity and say yes these are the effective learning materials and this is how they can be created but for the time being we are all just chipping away at a huge block. Mystictim 00:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes, but in the meantime, how do we direct potential students to actual lessons (and not just to stubs or blank pages which say "Click the edit button to participate.") Robert Elliott 02:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC), archived at Colloquium/archives/January_2007

This conversation, with its rich array of metaphors and questions, moved from being a proposal about structure to a broader discussion about what learning materials are, and how learning is provided for in Wikiversity. Just as there is a lacking of structure in Wikiversity’s learning materials, there is also a lack of definition as to how they can be produced – and this is down, as far as I can see, to differences in people’s understandings of Wikiversity, learning, and most of all, pedagogy. Is pedagogy about helping other teachers teach, getting learners to interact with materials, or facilitating participation in the production of the materials themselves? Or is it even productive to be prescribing a particular pedagogy – or type of learning material, as Mystictim raises? I simply include this extract of a discussion to highlight that these issues have been at the core of Wikiversity’s development - and I intend to relate them to further questions I will raise later.

However, it is useful, I think, to reflect here on structure in a wiki as a general issue before moving on. Regardless of whether we think of Wikiversity as a repository of material or as a space for wiki-based learning, people need to know where to find specific pages that they are interested in. A wiki creates a new page based on a new page name, and even the most minor difference in an internal link (like a capitalised letter, or a different punctuation mark) is enough to indicate that this page that doesn’t yet exist – an experience that will be familiar to many wiki users. In other words, the internal ‘logic’ of the structuring of content is almost entirely flat and open, which makes it necessary for structure to be imagined and imposed by some sort of intervention (Krötzsch, Vrandecic, Völkel 2005). At present, though there are other initiatives and tools for extending Mediawiki’s functionality, the semantic structure of the Mediawiki core is based on the assigning of categories, which acts as a form of social tagging – and it is through these categories and other “namespace” organiser pages that the finding of resources is enabled. However, it is an open question as to whether a system that involves a more structured, semantic system (such as metadata) should be implemented, or whether there needs to be better semantic links between categories themselves (Chernov et al. 2006).

There is a question here, when we think of how material will be found, about what people will want to access in Wikiversity in the first place. I think it is inevitable that there will be a wide range of contexts of use of Wikiversity content – from a whole course to an activity to a single worksheet (to give just some examples). The question is then one of granularity – i.e. to what extent material which is appropriate to one course structure can be reused or even ‘remixed’ in the context of another course, curriculum, or learner level, and how big or small these ‘grain sizes’ can be to be broken up in this way (Duncan 2003). For example, there are some Wikiversity materials that are structured in a weekly sequence of lectures and activities – an intuitive fit for some educational contexts, but not so appropriate for the learner or educator who wants to find one specific resource, or set of resources, targeted at their current needs. Another example of structuring is the creation of a hierarchy of pages and ‘subpages’ (eg. History of Spain/20th Century Spain/Spanish civil war/Rise of Franco), which outlines a logical sequence of information, but which doesn’t tell us whether it is aimed towards the academic level of Ph.D or that of mid-secondary school cycle. Here we can see that the structuring, or even the naming of material is non-trivial and inherently problematic, regarding its general utility.

For maximum utility, Wikiversity needs to enable the searching and retrieval of specific resources, which is enabled through tagging, and ultimately technology. But of course concerns with machine-readability need to be set in relief against the subjective needs and values of humans, which, as far as education is concerned, is a complex field. As Wiley (2003) advocates: “we must be extremely careful that our learning environments based on reusable resources contain opportunities for meaningful discourse” (p. 78) - and Wiley et al (2004) point out the “paradox” between on the one hand creating decontextualised learning resources for maximal reusability, and on the other hand the recognition within activity-or-community-based theories of learning of the fundamental role of context in the learning process (Mwanza & Engeström 2005).

I raise all this to highlight what I think are the salient points that permeate the problem that was originally posed. However, it doesn’t bring us to an understanding of the definition of Wikiversity (and the learning therein) that the above discussion addressed, and to which I will now turn.

Defining Wikiversity
There have long been many different viewpoints on what Wikiversity is and what it should do (Lawler 2006), and it would be impossible to go into them in detail here. I will, however, include a comment and response that I picked up between two users’ pages:

 * External recognition
 * I've been actively involved in university life from undergraduate to post-graduate student, to researcher, lecturer and Prof. since 1975 (both in Europe and the Americas, in addition to industry-baseed R&D on both sides of the Atlantic). For the past couple of years I've been an active and enthusiastic contributor to Wikipedia etc. I had great hopes for Wikipedia, but it has, in many ways, exceeded my expectations.
 * I feel that the versity suffix throws us into a whole new, and very much more exigent and critical arena. (And rightly so. -I expect that the people who'll come here won't be seeking general knowledge but rather, expecting something much more advanced). I fully support the initiative, but feel duty-bound to express my concerns that contributors MUST adopt a very much more conscientious, rigorously self-critical and professional attitude than in other wiki-projects (be they formally "qualified" or not) when preparing their submissions, edits, suggestions etc. etc.
 * Versity-level respect and recognition can only be won by long, hard work, but can be lost in the blink of an eye ! WIKI does, potentially, deserve this level of respect, but will have to earn it.
 * Have no doubt, numerous representatives (probably the majority) of the traditional academic community will be very vocal in denouncing any error or misconduct, no matter how insignificant or short-lived. It would be an enormous pity to see such a noble project flounder under such criticism. wikityke 22:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

 * "the versity suffix throws us into a whole new, and very much more exigent and critical arena" <-- Adopting the name "wikiversity" was one of the most contentious issues faced when this project was being planned. Wikiversity is not an attempt to replicate a conventional university as it exists at bricks-and-mortar institutions today. Wikiversity aims to provide learning resources for people of all ages. When I think about the ultimate goal of Wikiversity, I think about the historical origins of universities, collaborative efforts to facilitate learning that brought together learners and teachers. In a sense, we are starting over from that fundamental starting point but doing it in a new medium, a virtual world that is not constrained by the need to work in a restrictive physical space. We are able to explore what can be done in this new virtual space.
 * "the people who'll come here won't be seeking general knowledge but rather, expecting something much more advanced" <-- In some cases. Wikipedia takes a one-size-fits-all approach to topics. I've noticed that some people go to the discussion pages of the more technical Wikipedia articles and leave comments such as, "Can anyone explain this in English?" Wikiversity can complement Wikipedia by providing introductions to technical topics. But in some cases people will come to Wikiversity because they want to go beyond what is possible at Wikipedia.
 * "contributors MUST adopt a very much more conscientious, rigorously self-critical and professional attitude than in other wiki-projects (be they formally "qualified" or not) when preparing their submissions, edits, suggestions etc. etc." <-- As a wiki, Wikiversity is open to contributions of all types. I expect that many people will come to Wikiversity and have to learn what it means to function as a scholarly contributor. They will learn by making inept contributions at first and then slowly figuring out how do better. It will be important to have other participants who already have expertise and experience. I am interested in the idea that Wikiversity can establish a system by which the community calls upon its experts to take leadership roles in "more conscientious, rigorously self-critical and professional attitude than in other wiki-projects". See Wikiversity:Review board.
 * "denouncing any error or misconduct" <-- Wikiversity is an experiment in how to apply new technologies to support learning. I hope we can plan ahead so as to avoid many problems. When problems arise, I hope we can learn from them and become stronger. Wikiversity aims to offer for free what many people sell. Sadly, we will receive some harsh comments from people who do not wish us well in our altruistic endeavor. --JWSchmidt 00:26, 24 February 2007 (UTC) and

This extract doesn’t itself reveal a problem per se, but it raises some interesting issues around the identity of the project and how this relates to the identity of its contributors. The different visions that people have of (and for) Wikiversity are mediated by their visions of education and sites of education - particularly universities (because of the “versity” in Wikiversity’s name). Universities are a particular paradigm for the creation, production, construction, transmission, preservation, critiquing, and/or communication of knowledge (Tiffin & Rajasingham 2003) – and even these words indicate differing worldviews on how knowledge and education work (or should work). As alluded to above, Wikipedia is part of a phenomenon, a movement which is changing the mode of production of global knowledge - and Wikiversity is also part of that movement. But Wikipedia has been subject to substantial resistance from proponents of a model of knowledge production based around “experts” (McHenry 2004) – even if a selection of its content has been deemed by other experts to be on a par with if not better than Britannica’s (Giles 2005). I raise this these points merely to indicate that Wikiversity will inevitably be seen in the light of both educational tradition, as well as the ambivalent reception in academia of its sister project, Wikipedia.

However, it’s not just Wikipedia’s influence that Wikiversity must negotiate – there have been long-standing uncertainties regarding its relationship with another sister project, Wikibooks. Wikiversity was, in fact, originated and incubated in Wikibooks before its final creation as an independent project, but some of the material still being produced on Wikiversity resembles content more appropriate for Wikibooks, which has caused some criticism from within both communities. It is probably the single-most asked question that I have seen about Wikiversity’s overall identity over the last eight months or so, and it is one that Wikiversity’s participants as a whole need to address. There is a clear, if complex, vision of Wikiversity expressed above, but I wonder whether everyone else who is contributing to the project has such a clearly defined view, and whether and to what extent these visions complement and contradict each other.

Participation and exclusion
A slightly later comment in the ‘structuring of resources’ thread above, stated:

 * "I always mentally pictured Wikiversity as a sort of global student union where discussions would result in draft material, questions and answers which could be massaged wiki style into lesson plans, texts, and question sets for groups or individuals to work with at their own pace. For some reason the site is not sticky enough to attract large enough participation to create such groups or crowds around areas of interest to wikify. Perhaps we should be thinking about how to attract existing groups to serve as a nucleus of activity rather than depending on individuals of similar interests running into each other on the site." Mirwin 06:19, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

From my own observations (and others’, including Mirwin’s), there are a great many people who have participated on Wikiversity for a brief period, and who have never returned after that period of activity, whether it was for a day, a few days or a few weeks. I wonder: is this due to their own lack of time? Is it because of the perceived lack of structure, discussed above? Or is it more connected with a perceived sense of exclusion, or means of participating?

‘Exclusion’ in the context of the internet usually refers to a physical barrier, like, for example, lack of internet access or a particular physical disability. However, in a collaborative environment, I think our notions of exclusion need to also take into account more social questions about participation and why people don't participate - even if participation is technically possible. Even though wikis were designed to enable the editing of a website without knowledge of html, they can still be intimidating to newcomers, as this extract from an email conversation I had with a wiki “newbie” shows:

 * "In 1989 I brought home my first ever company car, a Toyota Camry with fuel injection and electronic ignition and all fuel and servicing provided, free. Up until that day I had usually done my own engine tune-ups because I liked fiddling with points and carburettors. After six months I decided to open the bonnet 'to see if it had an engine'.  I noted the sealed systems and need for special diagnostic equipment and closed the bonnet on that area of interest.  In a strange way wiki is like re-opening that bonnet." (Personal correspondence)

Perhaps, from reading this, it is inevitable that there will be some level of exclusion – however, this does not mean that Wikiversity participants shouldn’t do their utmost to minimise this where possible. Quite obviously, and to return to the ‘structuring of resources’ discussion, the opportunity for participation is seen as an opportunity for learning, and setting up a course is creating a mechanism for participation – but clearly, some people do not feel empowered to take the first steps in wiki-editing. The intention that people will participate by ‘clicking and editing’ needs to be offset by the recognition that exclusion is a very real aspect of a wiki, regardless of how user-friendly it is often held to be. As another Wikiversity colleague, Executivezen, commented on my blog: “We’re a long way from these technologies becoming invisible”.

A further, different kind of exclusion (or, at least, potential for exclusion) that I have observed happens when a pre-formed class (face-to-face or virtual) uses Wikiversity as a space for uploading learning material for that class. Such materials are often devoid of any context, and it is usually unclear to someone who is not in that group as to what to do with such materials, or whether anyone can participate. This will, of course, depend on the group, but not all groups are accessible – editing anonymously (i.e. without logging in), which can render communication problematic. This raises for me the issue of what degree of autonomy various groups have over this material (i.e. to what extent it is ‘theirs’), and to what extent groups can hold leverage over the use of these materials. Or, if the nature of Wikiversity is to enable participation, should these materials themselves be excluded? Clearly, the business of ensuring that content is as accessible to as many people as possible is itself an educational activity – engaging in discourse, widening and/or clarifying participation, and raising awareness of the context of individuals’ or groups’ activity in Wikiversity. This socio-cultural context is so central to the thrust of this paper that I will devote the next section to examining what it means for Wikiversity, and the mediation of its activity.

Social context and organisational models
All content on Wikimedia projects is created by volunteers – the non-profit organisation supporting these projects is also largely run by volunteers (with a small, but growing staff-base), and the financing of it all is exclusively through donations and grants. This model contrasts sharply with, for example, M.I.T.’s Open CourseWare, which makes use of a pre-existing and centralised structure of professors, lecturers, technical staff, administrators, etc., who have compiled material for specific courses, and who are now making them available online. The open model has been shown to work well for certain activities, beginning with open source software (Raymond 1998) and continuing to the writing of a collaborative encyclopedia in Wikipedia - but is the open wiki model appropriate for developing educational materials? It is this question which Wikiversity is implicitly engaged in answering.

Wikiversity, like Wikipedia, conforms closely to the principles of a “collectivist-democratic organisation” (Rothschild & Whitt 1986: 62-3), in which, briefly stated, practice is largely ad-hoc, rules are minimised, and decision-making is distributed and based in consensus. In a wiki, this culture and organising principle are one and the same thing (Bryant 2006), which I would describe simply as the “wiki way”. It also moves towards the “ideal speech situation” envisaged by Habermas (1987), in which everyone who has a stake in a decision or utterance has the right to contribute to the discourse around that decision, and obviously contest the decision itself.

However, human relations, being what they are, are mediated through a more complex set of practices than the above ideals, and even Wikipedia could be said to have bureaucratic features (Viegas et al. 2007). As we have already seen, some people will not participate in the wiki – of course, openness is itself offputting to some (Da Lio, Fraboni, Leo 2005) - and we can be sure that of the people who are comfortable with editing in a wiki not all will participate in a policy discussion, for whatever reason. Similarly, it is possible for the organising principle of complete openness to become a slogan without relating directly to practice. I am not suggesting here that Wikiversity is not completely open, but neither am I affirming that it is so – in fact, it is an open question embedded in my research to explore how culture and knowledge gets embedded into practice – even, perhaps unknowingly – and to what extent Wikiversity’s participants can remain critical of the practice that they evolve and in which they participate (Carr & Kemmis 1986).

There are limits to the ideal speech situation - it is a centre of gravity or one end of a continuum – so, for example, if we are discussing how learners of all ages can be catered for in Wikiversity, will younger learners (ie children) really be able to participate fully (bearing in mind what I have said about exclusion)? If not, then how are their needs taken into consideration, and how are they represented? As indicated previously, education is a contested and political space (Cervero & Wilson 1998), and these questions of participation and exclusion attain a primacy with respect to the creation of a broadly defined educational space within a wiki environment. A central dynamic in this arena is the incidence and impact of conflict – an inevitable feature of such spaces (Matei & Dobrescu 2006), but which I am interested in building on previous work to see whether and how these conflicts can become productive or learning experiences (Shah 2005; Lawler 2005). In fact, it is interesting that the notion of consensus itself played a considerable role in the major - and, I would say, only - conflict on Wikiversity so far.

Culturally speaking, while Wikiversity is in many ways similar to Wikipedia, there are also substantive differences that I think are worth pointing out in this context. A technical example is the additional ‘namespaces’, but of a more cultural nature is the adoption of a different name and model for creating ‘admins’ (or ‘sysops’), which Wikiversity has renamed ‘custodians’, and which works on a more casual system of apprenticeship. Another indicative example that I found interesting in this regard was the following note at the top of a page to would-be educators:

 * Be personal, you are a teacher now, not an encyclopedian. A nice warm welcome might be in order too.

However, there is one difference that is perhaps more profound than any other and that is around the notion of NPOV (Neutral Point of View), which is one of the central policies in Wikipedia, and which states that articles should be written fairly and without bias w:Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view. Wikiversity has adopted a stance towards NPOV that it will be a major goal within the community, but that it would be possible for people to develop learning materials that break the boundaries of NPOV for particular educational ends, and that when this boundary is breached, it is necessary to ‘disclose’ the assumptions or biases inherent within the material Disclosures. This is in itself a significant departure from Wikipedia culture (and it caused some debate around the time of Wikiversity’s creation), but the following comment from Rayc throws this departure even further into relief:

 * I would like to voice my pigenhole-ing theory. Most wiki projects there is one page on one topic and people who want to work on that topic have to work together, thus NPOV and dispute resolution. Here you don't get that effect, meaning that projects rely more on advertising and less on the notability of the topic.

This feeling of isolation, and perhaps even the reducing of the incentive to collaborate is a problematic dynamic in Wikiversity, if Wikiversity is to be about collaborative learning. The ‘disclosures’ policy is supposed to allow for academic or educational freedom, and there is clearly a tension somewhere between this freedom and NPOV, so this tension is one of the things that the Wikiversity community must deal with – both internally, and also within the context of the Wikimedia family. Wikiversity is going beyond what is possible on Wikipedia (as JWSchmidt points out) – but what are the implications of this, and is it even going too far?

Implications and further questions
Continuing the above thought, whereas in Wikipedia there is a continuity of style between pages, in Wikiversity, with differing pedagogies (and hence assumptions and biases) being utilised in different pages, hyperlinking between pages becomes problematic, bringing the user to not just a different subject matter, but different learner levels, and potentially a different epistemology of knowledge. This requires a much more advanced system of ‘disambiguation’ than is already in place in Wikipedia w:Wikipedia:Disambiguation (where, for example, “Reflection” needs to be refined as the optical, the mathematical, or the mental processes), so that materials are distinguished by more criteria of “difference” than simply referring to a different thing.

Continuing this thought, Wikiversity still needs to disambiguate itself from other Wikimedia projects, in particular Wikibooks, and also from other education-based projects, for example Wikieducator. How exactly do they differ, or should they be separate? When we are able to identify differences, we will be better able to answer the question of how they can better work together, using the strengths of one system to support another. This is a large and fascinating project that is as yet in its early stages.

Defining Wikiversity and its practice is an ongoing process, involving multiple considerations and stakeholders. One of the questions raised has been around how to encourage researchers to upload the results of their data collection. This then begets the question: should everything on Wikiversity should be editable, or might it permit selective locking of articles, or some other way of allowing people to point to a version of their work that they themselves approve of? Will stable versions be able to help in this regard? The flipside of this aspect of ‘ownership’ or control of materials (and connected to the discussion above about extra-Wikiversity classes uploading material) is whether this then creates a culture of nervousness around reviewing or editing materials in Wikiversity which are seen to ‘belong’ to a particular person or group.

To address the uncertainty that exists about various aspects of Wikiversity’s work, better guidance is obviously needed – from the basics of wikis, to how people can contribute their materials, and even learn in this wiki-based model. On the latter point – how learning by doing works in Wikiversity - I am still quite unclear, and I suspect many others are too. And even on the second point, there is much work to do in the helping people structure resources to clarify their goals, the context of their use, or how they can be aggregated into new paths of learning – echoing the previous discussion of granularity and semantic tagging. But of course guidance can only be given when the phenomenon itself is understood, and it is clear that more discussion and research is needed on the main questions of Wikiversity’s identity – like how it is different from other projects, how to encourage collaboration as well as academic freedom, and how learning is to be achieved in this model. The much-expressed “experimental” nature of Wikiversity has not been carried through in the true methodology of a running experiment – however, I don’t mean to suggest here that this necessarily involves all features of experimental research like control groups etc., but that all aspects of Wikiversity participants’ experiences need to be fed back into the development of the space, in order to ‘close the loops’ in its learning cycle. (Atkins, Seely Brown, Hammond 2007)

Complementing - or perhaps interfacing with - experimental research designs, other examples of methodologies to understand Wikiversity could include traditional (and not so traditional) ethnographic methods (Wittel 2000; Jankowski, van Selm 2004), social network analysis which focuses on the frequency and quality of students’ interactions (eg. Haythornthwaite 2003), discourse analysis which looks at how participants actively construct and shape the way that discussions evolve (eg. Mautner 2005). My own research is based in action research (Somekh 2006; Elliott 1991), which I see to be a particularly congruent methodology for doing research not just about the wiki way, but which corresponds quite closely to the wiki way in its collaborative, discursive process. However, I will not detail this here, but instead I look forward to continuing these discussions, and raising further questions.

Conclusion: a new paradigm?
I hope I have shown in this paper some specific and perhaps unique aspects of Wikiversity’s identity as a project, informed by the socio-cultural dimension of a wiki devoted to education. Wikiversity is undoubtedly a radical project – even though it exits alongside an array of other educational wikis, collaborative learning spaces, and open educational resource repositories. But is Wikiversity a new paradigm of education? Or, at least, does the wiki model herald a paradigmatic shift from the rest of computer-mediated education in the same way that computers themselves have cause such a shift? (Harasim 2000)

John Dewey (1938/1997), writing about the “progressive” educational movement (of his time), argued:

 * “..those who are looking ahead to a new movement in education, adapted to the existing need for a new social order, should think in terms of Education itself rather than in terms of some ‘ism about education, even such an ‘ism as “progressivism”. For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems and possibilities.” (p. 6)

I think this is pertinent advice, and not limited to the time in which Dewey was writing. I think that regardless of how novel or radical Wikiversity might be (or appear to be), it is always worth considering what parts of the tradition in which it sits (i.e. the practice of education) are appropriate to its ends, what parts need to be rethought, and what parts need to be abandoned – and that this process should be framed rigorously, openly and honestly in relation to the central question of how education is provided.

I think Wikiversity is certainly a new paradigm (or at least part of one) in the definition of a “university” – if this is indeed what it purports to achieve. Wikiversity is well-positioned and well-defined enough to act as part of the movement towards not just an “open participatory learning infrastructure” (Atkins, Seely Brown, Hammond) but also a global “meta-university” (Vest 2006) - and to discuss afresh the meaning of the word “university” in both its ancient (i.e. Greek) and modern context. However, I do not believe that Wikiversity represents a new paradigm in learning, or that if it is, it needs to recognise the closeness with which it sits with the well-developed corpus of work on collaborative, online learning.

It is difficult for me to conclude with any tangible conception of how learning is to be provided for in Wikiversity. Even what I have learned myself is difficult to sum up - and it is so deeply embedded in the context that it is difficult to distill into an isolated experience. I have been learning about learning - and about what Wikiversity is - through the practice of getting involved, making suggestions, observations, and, of course, mistakes. Some of this learning is reflexive, incidental, or ‘embedded’ learning - about the Mediawiki software itself, about fellow participants and the nature of collaboration, and even about myself and how/where I fit into this practice. What I am here to do, and what this paper is about, is to continue to feed the lived-experiences of Wikiversity participants, of whom I am one, back into the development of the project’s scope and identity. Through this fundamentally discursive, and potentially empowering medium (Ebersbach 2004), I hope that Wikiversity participants will continue to define the local practice of education in a way that relates to both “Education” (in Dewey’s sense), and also to the culture or organising principle of the “wiki way”. I furthermore believe that whatever validity this definition has will be based on the quality of the discourse that it generates (Lather 1993), which will in turn mediate the practice, and therefore opportunities for participation and learning, that Wikiversity will open.

Acknowledgements
I would like to express my profound thanks to my PhD supervisors, Drew Whitworth and Andy Howes, as well as the many members of the Wikiversity community (and other on-and-off-line acquaintances) for provoking, discussing, and refining many of the ideas in this paper.


text:
BCP/Aruncus dioicus

Aruncus dioicus

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: BCP/Aruncus dioicus


text:
BCP/Commelina communis

Commelina communis

title: BCP/Commelina communis


text:
Category:BCP/SEPA/IP

This category is for Invasive Plants found in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

title: Category:BCP/SEPA/IP


text:
Category:Bloom Clock/Southeastern Pennsylvania Categories

These are the categories for regional data from Southeastern Pennsylvania. These categories should be added to the Bloom Clock Plant pages for both month and flora type.

 * BCP/SEPA/GP: For garden (cultivated) plants
 * BCP/SEPA/IP: For exotic invasive plants (referenced using The Plants of Pennsylvania)
 * BCP/SEPA/NP: For plants native to Pennsylvania (referenced using The Plants of Pennsylvania)


text: Category:Bloom Clock regional data

title: Category:Bloom Clock regional data


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BCP/Calycanthus floridus

Calycanthus floridus

title: BCP/Calycanthus floridus


text:
Category:BCP/SEPA/6

This category is for plants recorded blooming in June in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

title: Category:BCP/SEPA/6


text:
Category:BCP/SEPA/NP

This category is for Native Plants found in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

title: Category:BCP/SEPA/NP


text:
Category:BCP/SEPA/8

This category is for plants recorded blooming in August in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

title: Category:BCP/SEPA/8


text:
Category:BCP/SEPA/5

This category is for plants recorded blooming in May in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

title: Category:BCP/SEPA/5


text:
Category:BCP/SEPA/GP

This category is for garden plants found in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

title: Category:BCP/SEPA/GP


text:
BCP/Hydrangea quercifolia

Hydrangea quercifolia

title: BCP/Hydrangea quercifolia


text:
BCP/Hydrangea macrophylla

Hydrangea macrophylla

title: BCP/Hydrangea macrophylla


text:
User talk:Greudin

Hello Greudin, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. When leaving comments for others to read, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone keep track of who is writing messages. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. To help you get started:
 * Take a guided tour and learn how to edit;
 * Explore our learning projects;
 * Browse our portals, schools, and research pages; and
 * Read and help develop our community policies.

Also, don't forget to experiment with the links to your left. Be bold, and see you around Wikiversity! --Cormaggio talk 10:00, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Shell stuff
Sandbox server is the precise use we have in mind for this. Please drop me a note on my Talk page so we can chat about it. Thanks, and welcome! Historybuff 16:08, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Greudin


text:
BCP/Ilex crenata

Ilex crenata

title: BCP/Ilex crenata


text:
Category:BCP/LONDON/4

This category is for plants recorded blooming in April in London, England.

title: Category:BCP/LONDON/4


text: Category:Bloom Clock/London Categories

title: Category:Bloom Clock/London Categories


text:
BCP/Salix discolor

Salix discolor

title: BCP/Salix discolor


text:
Category:BCP/SEPA/3

This category is for plants recorded blooming in March in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

title: Category:BCP/SEPA/3


text:
BCP/Sassafras albidum

Sassafras albidum

title: BCP/Sassafras albidum


text:
Category:BCP/SEPA/4

This category is for plants recorded blooming in April in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

title: Category:BCP/SEPA/4


text:
BCP/Veratrum viride

Veratrum viride

title: BCP/Veratrum viride


text:
BCP/Rorippa sylvestris

Rorippa sylvestris

title: BCP/Rorippa sylvestris


text:
Template:Bcp3sepac

Usage Notes: This template is used to fix pages created using older versions of the bcp3 template.

To use this template:

 * 1) add the following to the top of the page:
 * (images are no longer added by this template!)
 * (replacing all cap type... note that you do not include the prefix "Image:" in the image name). If there is no image available on commons, just leave the last two fields blank and the template will automatically categorize the page as lacking an image.
 * 1) move data from the old templates to the new ones. It is not required to move data from the categories to the bottom (though please do remove the version template). Please make sure noninclusion is working if you do that

title: Template:Bcp3sepac


text:
BCP/Magnolia virginiana

Magnolia virginiana

title: BCP/Magnolia virginiana


text:
BCP/Magnolia tripetala

Magnolia tripetala

title: BCP/Magnolia tripetala


text:
BCP/Lavandula angustifolia

Lavandula angustifolia

title: BCP/Lavandula angustifolia


text:
Bloom Clock/Organization

Theory
Bloom clocks work by keeping track, over several seasons, of what plants are found blooming at a particular time of year.

The early results are simply the order in which plants bloom.

Later results can be interpreted to yield a system which can match up bloom cycles to periods in the calendar year in different regions.

Project Discussion
Cf. Bloom Clock/Project Discussion

Templates
The bloom clock makes extensive use of templates.

Entry creation templates

 * bcp
 * bcp2

Page creation templates

 * bcp3

Taxa level

 * bcp-u
 * bcp-g
 * bcp-s
 * bcp-v

Navigation

 * bcp-nav
 * bcp-nav2 (currently blank)

Identification characteristics

 * bcp-chars

version tracking
Versions of the Bcp3 templates are tracked using these templates. They are blank, but can be modified to include categories in order to impliment a DPL search for older versions requiring updates. See ../Template versions/ for details.

Categories
Plant log pages use a large number of categories (eventually there could be hundreds of categories on each log).

Main Clock Pages

 * Temperate clocks go by season.
 * Other clocks (wet/dry season, etc.)... we don't have these yet.

User-specific Clock Pages

 * Users who add multiple entries at once may want to consider using personal clock pages to avoid edit conflicts (since it can take a while to sign under all the plants).

Plant Logs

 * Plant logs (pages using the prefix "BCP/") are the eventual target for all data. These pages are also used in a manner similar to templates on the visual based clocks.

 * Plant logs may eventually be placed in hundred of categories, in order to construct the visual clocks.

Visual-based Clocks

 * Regional and seasonal clock pages organized by flower color, plant type, and the time of year a plant blooms. These pages are created using DPL.

title: Bloom Clock/Organization


text: File:Malvern weed aa001.JPG

title: File:Malvern weed aa001.JPG


text: File:Malvern weed aa002.JPG

title: File:Malvern weed aa002.JPG


text:
Extraordinary School Project

This project has changed to the Effective Education Project

The Extraordinary School Project is a research project to engineer the creation of "brick and mortar" schools that can be a model for a new school system. The goal of the Extraordinary School Project is to create a self-sustaining school that will help ordinary students achieve extraordinary results. To accomplish this the school will utilize the following:

 * 1) The most current research in the cognitive sciences
 * 2) Improved Memory and Learning techniques
 * 3) The Systems And Tools Educational Model
 * 4) Applied Academics teaching techniques such as those in the Public Pupil Pizza Project
 * 5) The SCANS Competencies
 * 6) A system that is as self-sustaining and self-running as possible
 * 7) A "one school room" technique of "self-paced"/Mastery learning
 * 8) Completely "Game based" Education
 * 9) Instilling the philosophy that all learning should be fun, exciting, and enjoyable

Changing the School System by Being Outside the System
The American School System, and most school systems in developed nations have a self contained and maintaining cycle. Large scale ongoing actual change is very difficult to do in these systems for the same reasons it is difficult to change things in nearly any large system. True change will only occur when there is an alternative system that is so compelling and successful that the current system has no choice but to change. This is the ultimate goal of the Extraordinary School Project.

While the project is at first designed to be a competitor to the traditional school system, all ideas used are open for any school to utilize, and the ulitmate goal of the project is to be in cooperation with traditional school systems to change and improve those systems.

Developing the Extraordinary School Project in the Developing World
Less developed countries have a deep need for improving the standard of living of the majority of residents. Further, due to a lack of existing infrastructure, in some ways, it is easier to build new infrastructure and have new ideas develop. Further, many of the startup costs in most developing countries are generally far less than those in more developed nations. (Although infrastructure costs, such as electricity, and telecommunications/Internet may be greater.)Extraordinary schools in these less developed areas will bemore targetted and focused than in more developed areas.

By building successful systems in less developed nations, other countries will have more of an incentive to "keep up", and copy the successful system. Also, by building success in less developed nations, it will prove the point that the more developed nations are only not able to do these tasks due to a lack of thinking, not a lack of resources.

 * Extraordinary_School_Project/Developing_World
 * Extraordinary School Project/Northern Computer Center, Ghana

Foundation Beliefs, Paradigms, Postulates, etc

 * 1) Every student can succeed.  But how, where, when and what success means will vary per student.
 * 2) Learning is meant to be fun, interesting, exciting, and useful.
 * 3) Students should learn the most accurate information available, and have accurate tools to be able to judge accuracy for themselves.  All information should be provable.  (This needs to be thought about, because often accuracy needs to improve over education, for example Newtonian physics is easier to learn, and accurate enough before Einsteinian physics is learned.)

Standing on the Shoulder of Giants
While often discouraged, the belief that "Reinventing the wheel" is a actually useful exercise to truly understand "the wheel". This is part of the answer to "How should we learn?".

But to answer the question "What should we learn?" we are wisest to look at what others have learned and created before us. Newton summed up the concept in his quote "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." [Insert Footnote about original intent being different]

Extraordinary Educators
The following educators have demonstrated that education can occur at advanced levels in all human beings. Their methodologies, attitudes, philosophies, etc are worth studying to determine the core of what has made them a success, and see if that can be duplicated in the Extraordinary School Project

 * Marva Collins
 * Jaime Escalante
 * W. Edwards Deming

title: Extraordinary School Project


text:
File:June junk text.png

Licensing
Served by srv117 in 1.242 secs.

13 June 2007

title: File:June junk text.png


text:
User talk:Manmangie~enwikiversity

Hello Manmangie, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. When leaving comments for others to read, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone keep track of who is writing messages. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. To help you get started:
 * Take a guided tour and learn how to edit;
 * Explore our learning projects;
 * Browse our portals, schools, and research pages; and
 * Read and help develop our community policies.

Also, don't forget to experiment with the links to your left. Be bold, and see you around Wikiversity! --Student Galaxy 15:11, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Manmangie. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Manmangie~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:15, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Manmangie~enwikiversity


text: File:Web 2.0 report.png

title: File:Web 2.0 report.png


text:
Web 2.0

Welcome to the Wikiversity learning project Web 2.0. Participants explore tools for accessing, evaluating, transforming and creating  internet content, including media such as digital audio and video, while actively participating in multiple course-related social networks.

Expectations
Web 2.0 is, by design, immersive, interactive, and collaborative. This course is based on experiential learning. In other words, to really increase your knowledge regarding Web 2.0, you must personally use and utilize Web 2.0 tools and services. This holds true whether you are interested in self-paced independent study or using this course as a guide to teach others. It is essential that you stay active and contribute to online communities and knowledge, and reflect on your experiences. Start a blog, Wordpress, Facebook page, or similar forum that can contain your personal reflection. As you go through the course, try to write a reflective post on each new thing that you learn.

What is Web 2.0?
During the 1990s, the World Wide Web provided a way for people to use a network of computers to efficiently exchange files. In general, content for the Web was created by a relatively small group of individuals or small "content development groups." Once created, the content (HTML pages and media files) was uploaded to servers and then downloaded by "content consumers" who used a web browser to display webpages. The average person was not involved with creation of Web content. This period of time is now referred to as Web 1.0.

The evolution of the Web has led to what is called "Web 2.0". What is new about Web 2.0 is the gradual and continuing increase in technologies that allow more people to participate in Web content creation. These facilitating technologies include advances at the level of the computer hardware available to most people and at the level of software that makes it easier for people to create Web content.

"Web 2.0 is both a usage and a technology paradigm. It is a collection of technologies, business strategies, and social trends. Web 2.0 is more dynamic and interactive than its predecessor, Web 1.0, letting users access content from a Web site and contribute to the contents of that Web site. Web 2.0 enables users to keep up with a site's most recent content edits even without visiting the actual Web page. It also lets developers create new Web applications that draw on data, information or services available on the Internet to more precisely manufacture their programs to fit their desired demographic."

Web 2.0 is an umbrella term encompassing several new Web technologies. These technologies will be outlined later. "It harnesses the Web in a more interactive and collaborative manner, emphasizing peers' social interaction and collective intelligence, and presents new opportunities for leveraging the Web and engaging its users more effectively."

Objectives
*Define Web 2.0.

 * Where Web 2.0 started and understand the direction it is going.

 * Discover new Web 2.0 tools and applications, and apply them to daily lives and jobs.

 * Explore and contribute to a variety of online communities, including adding content, posting comments, correcting false information, and learning how to be collaborative.

 * Anticipate future web trends: Web 3.0? Web 4.0? Web 10-million-point-oh?

 * Contribute knowledge gained using Web 2.0 tools in professional/personal lives.

 * Learn how others are using Web 2.0 tools and weigh pros/cons.

 * Learn how to troubleshoot hardware/software issues.

 * Become familiar with leading tools in specific categories.

 * Become aware of ethics and privacy in Web 2.0 and its applications.

 * Understand Web 2.0 and be able to educate others on the topic.

 * Develop discipline in approaching the complexities of multiple tasks, time lines, tools, logins, URLs in an unstructured environment.

Hardware
During the past 15 years, increasing numbers of people have obtained access to computer technology and the Internet. Internet data traffic passed voice data traffic at about the turn of the century and Web traffic now greatly surpasses voice data transfer. At about the same time, home internet access reached about 50% of homes in the USA. In this century, use of high-speed internet connections has increased rapidly with over 50 million U.S. residential broadband connections achieved in 2006. The emergence of smartphone technology is still changing the landscape of access to the Web, as people can easily carry Internet ready devices with them at all times. A recent survey shows a 15% increase in Smartphone sales than the previous year. Smartphones compromise about 12 percent of the mobile phone market, a number that is only expected to increase in coming years. The 2010 Horizon Report predicts that, in the next 12 months or less, mobile computing will enter into mainstream use for teaching, learning, or creative inquiry. Devices from smart phones to netbooks are portable tools for productivity, learning, and communication, offering an increasing range of activities fully supported by applications designed especially for mobiles.

A 2012 study by Edison Research and Arbitron found that there was a 50% increase in smartphone ownership from 2011 to 2012 and that about 50% of cell phone owners own a smartphone. Smartphone owners are more likely to access social networking sites and public domains like youtube at least 5X a day from their phones. 60% of smartphone owners report that they keep their phone at an arms lengths away at all times. Smartphone users spend almost the same amount of time on their smartphones as they do watching tv. The smartphone has enabled users to be connected and using web 2.0 applications on the go. This number will only grow as well all become connected with mobile phones, computers and tablets. [4]

The study also reported that 3 in 10 smartphone owners own a tablet. Tablets have the capability to browse the internet, create and share presentations, videos conference with clients, stay connected with corporate email, download books, games and videos, watch movies, share photos and much more. [5]

As of January 2014, Pew Research Center reports that:

 * 90% of American adults have a cell phone
 * 58% of American adults have a smartphone
 * 32% of American adults own an e-reader
 * 42% of American adults own a tablet computer

Software
Web 2.0 is characterized by software that supports easy Web content creation in the form of blogs, wikis, digital media uploading websites, and new types of online social networking websites. Software advances make it easier for more people to participate as Web content creators. Websites where users are participants in Web content creation have brought an increasingly robust social nature to Web 2.0 that has built upon the spirit of simpler online communities that formed in the first decade of the World Wide Web. Another important trend influencing Web 2.0 is an increase in options for openness in the creation of software and the growing phenomenon of the Free Culture Movement.

Early software allowing computer network users to add content to servers
The first widely used type of software that allowed computer users to upload files to servers was software that allowed users to make use of computer programming languages running on mainframe computers. One of the first types of nonprogramming-related software that allowed users of computer networks to upload content of their own design was email software. Computer networks with email systems pre-dated the Internet, but their use only became wide-spread in combination with the Internet and the World Wide Web. See Web-based email.

Some of the earliest online communities grew up around "bulletin board systems." "Message board" systems that were centers of social interaction in Bulletin board systems evolved into Internet forums. Some internet forums are email-based mailing lists (example) while others function independent of email or use a mixture of email and non-email-based methods for adding "posts" to the "community discussion" (example).

One of the most influential online discussion forums has been Usenet. Two serious problems for Usenet are spam and use of Usenet servers for pornography and illegal file transfers. Some Usenet groups have moderators who screen for off-topic postings. In terms of bandwidth use, most Usenet traffic is not text-based discussion, but rather digital media files such as illegally shared software, music, and movies. See: Warez.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) provides another example of a text-based messaging system that spawned internet-based communities pre-dating the growth of the World Wide Web in the late 1990s. With more powerful personal computers and higher speed internet connections, voice chat and video chat have become increasingly popular. Such "live" channels for communication are useful for allowing members of internet-based communities to communicate effectively and support community cohesion. See: Chat.

In addition to online discussion systems (above), "Web 1.0" included a Web hosting service industry that provided users with server space for their own HTML pages and media files. Some web hosting companies attempted to develop a "community model" in which users with similar interests could "congregate" and interact online. One of the more famous examples is GeoCities. Geocities users could construct personal webpages and participate in topical discussion groups. Similar Web 2.0 websites host wikis (see wiki farm) and blogs.

Cloud Technologies
The term "cloud" is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network,  and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction  of the underlying infrastructure it represents. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online that are accessed from another Web service or software like a Web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers. A key element of cloud computing is customization and the creation of a user-defined experience.

Most cloud computing infrastructures consist of services delivered through common centers and built on servers. Clouds often appear as single points of access for all consumers' computing needs. Commercial offerings are generally expected to meet quality of service requirements of customers, and typically include service level agreements (SLAs). The major cloud service providers include Microsoft, Salesforce, Dropbox, Amazon and Google.

Archives
While many "Web 1.0" online discussion systems featured message archive systems, the content of the online discussions was generally of transient relevance to the active participants. With the growth of the World Wide Web, some online discussion systems either made use of associated web pages or integrated into an HTML-based interface. A comprehensive approach to archiving Web content is the Internet Archive project, but many websites routinely exclude themselves from the archive. Even when an archive system exists for user-uploaded computer network content, the nature of email, online discussion forums, and personal websites makes much of the content quickly dated and irrelevant.

Evolving technologies
Blogs, wikis, media uploading websites, and social networking sites are four examples of newer technologies that support broader participation in the process of content creation for the internet. Blogs are particularly omnipresent among businesses that adopt a web site to connect and engage with customers. Given the role that social media plays in helping a majority of sites get found on the Internet, corporate blogs often serve as a creative channel to readers with an affinity to extraordinary content.

Blogs
"Blog" is an abbreviated version of "weblog," which is a term used to describe websites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog features diary-type commentary and links to articles on other websites, usually presented as a list of entries in reverse chronological order. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects. Usenet discussion group contributors and personal website authors were among the first bloggers (see Wikipedia). Starting in the late 90s, websites and software devoted to blogging became available via the World Wide Web. In the early part of this century, blogging increased in popularity and is now an integral feature of many online communities and social networking sites such as MySpace, Blogspot or Tumblr. See also blogs here at Wikiversity. Remember that blogs are public, not the same as magazine articles, books, or personal journals hidden between the mattress and the box spring. Blogs are generally communities networked by subjects, interests, and niches. When a user enters the blogosphere, whether as a blogger or a blog reader, they are joining a community (or communities) of people who usually encourage a high degree of interaction. Think of it this way: when you read a magazine article, it is a one-way communication. Knowledge is only transferred from the writer to the reader. Blogs are a bit different. With blogs, this transfer of knowledge from writer to reader still occurs, but a blog affords the reader to then become a writer as well. There is a comment field where the reader can leave feedback, share additional information, or ask questions. And bloggers encourage this. Often they want to start and maintain open lines of communication with their followers. Conversations also exist between blogs. Bloggers routinely link to other bloggers in their communities through blogrolls and in-post references. This not only broadens conversations, it also raises reader awareness about other resources.

If you decide to blog, keep in mind that you are entering a community. To increase your popularity In that community, be sure to post regularly and comment on other blogs. Link back to other bloggers you wish to form a stronger relationship with.

Helpful blogging resources to get you started

 * Blogging Basics 101
 * 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging
 * Secrets of Successful Bloggers
 * Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging

Wikis
Traditionally, the ability to edit a particular webpage is severely restricted, often to just one person. Wiki technology was first used in 1995, by Ward Cunningham and introduced a simple way for many people to collaboratively edit a website's webpages. Wiki websites achieve functionality as an online community by providing user pages (where participants can describe their personal interests) and an assortment of forum and discussion pages where wiki participants ("editors") can participate in community discussions. Wikipedia was started in 2001 and became widely known by 2006, particularly among school age internet users. By mid-2007, Wikipedia had become a top 10 website and as many as 6 percent of internet users make use of Wikipedia. Many smaller wiki websites exist, some facilitated by Wiki farms, other wikis are run independently by individuals or organizations. Wiki is a Hawaiian word meaning "fast" or "quick."

Media sharing websites
Due to low bandwidth connections (dialup) available in the early internet, image files were the dominant media file format during the 1990s. Digital audio for CDs and larger hard drives made audio files an increasingly popular file format during the 1990s. DVD use did not surpass video tape until 2003. Digital cameras and personal computers with optical disk drives became increasingly common in the early years of this century. Image sharing websites such as Flickr and video sharing websites such as YouTube allow users to upload and share their pictures and video. Broadband internet, larger hard drives, and faster CPUs in personal computers now allow more individuals to work with digital video files. Websites such as YouTube provide user interfaces that include support for text-based special-interest discussion groups as well as video blogs.

Social Networking websites
There are a variety of social networking websites, including Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Orkut, Ping, Google+, and Twitter. These sites facilitate online communication through a variety of media. The interactive, interlinking environment supports the creation of personal and business webpages where information, photos and videos are shared. In February 2010, Google released Google Buzz, a service for sharing thoughts, multimedia, and social media website feeds using the existing email service, Gmail. Google Buzz is an open environment that adheres to open standards, meaning that developers will be able to create applications for buzz across many platforms. Google buzz was retired in 2011. In its place, Google launched Google+ in 2011. Google+ integrates social services such as Google Profiles, and other services like Circles and Hangouts. Google+ is available as a website and on mobile devices. Social bookmarking sites, such as Delicious, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon allow people to discover, organize and share content on the web and to access their own favorites from any personal computer.

Web 2.0 Research
For an overview on some of the recent research work and the resulting application on Web 2.0, refer to:

"Handbook of Research on Web 2.0, 3.0, and X.0: Technologies, Business, and Social Applications", San Murugesan (Editor), http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?id=34850, Information Science Research, Hershey – New York, October 2009, ISBN 978-1-60566-384-5

"Why Web 2.0 is Good for Learning and for Research: Principles and Prototypes",http://wwwconference.org/www2008/papers/pdf/p705-ullrichA.pdf, WWW 2008, The International World Wide Web Conferences CommitteeApril 21–25, 2008, Beijing, China, ACM 978-1-60558-085-2/08/04.

Activities

 * Find a Web 2.0 technology that you have not previously used and describe your experience on a Wikiversity page. Some ideas are:
 * Start a blog blog and post several entries each week.
 * Follow at least five blogs and comment on them regularly
 * Upload at least five vlogs (video logs). Here you can find instructions on how to create a vlog.
 * Choose three Web 2.0 tools that you haven’t used before and start using them for at least a week. Then post a link to your profile and share your experiences on your blog.  If you have items you can embed such as photos, videos, or audio then embed them to your blog as well.
 * Create and upload some digital media, such as photos or video.
 * Upload photos to a photo sharing website. Then share those photos with others.
 * Create a slideshow of your photos and embed them in your blog, Ning, Facebook, MySpace, etc.
 * Create a glossary and have students add the latest Web 2.0 tools both name and definition.
 * Create an account at a wiki website and edit or add content.
 * Join a social networking website and connect with family, friends, and/or coworkers.
 * Sign up to follow 5 or more friends/classmates in social networks such as Twitter, Flickr, and blogs.
 * Participate in web content creation at a project such as Where are the Joneses. Describe your experience on your blog.
 * Create a Wikimedia Foundation user name, view the tutorials on Wikipedia, then find one article (on a topic you are knowledgeable about) to edit and improve on Wikipedia.
 * What data exist documenting participation in blogging, wiki editing, creation and sharing of digital media?
 * technorati stats 2006
 * wikimetrics - a blog with some useful information
 * Visit 10 or more Web 2.0 sites like Flicker, Twitter, Facebook, register and place your profile. Have a system for organizing this information - perhaps starting out with a bookmarking site like Delicious can keep disorganization at bay. Consider creating one log-in that can be used at various sites. Some sites won't allow a log-in that begins with a number, so explore and share your findings with others on your blog.
 * Explore a social network aggregation platform and register at least 5 social networking accounts/profiles with it. Streamline all your social networking activities into a RSS news feed.
 * Which sites do you visit most often? Why?
 * What do the good sites have in common?
 * Link 5 or more of your sites to each other.
 * Sign up for an RSS feed in an area of interest. Follow the feed for 3 days and write about the experience.
 * Explore an online video sharing site, such as YouTube or Google Videos. Create an account and examine the features of the site. Consider what makes this a Web 2.0 technology.  Upload a video of your choice. Watch this video if you need assistance. Write about your experience here or on your blog.
 * Join a Ning network (a "do it yourself" site built from scratch to create a social network of your own) and get a feel for how it works. Explore all of the features and settings.  Then start your own network and invite others to join.  Be sure to include blog entries, photos, videos, links, Web 2.0 profiles, and other content.  Be sure to connect to other Web 2.0 tools with your Ning network.  This helps people to reach out and connect to users with the same interests, and produce a happy environment.
 * See a link you want to save, or have many links that you want to share with others? Try social bookmarking-you can store, organize, share, and network with other users. Sites like Digg, Pinterest, StumbleUpon,Delicious are great places to start.
 * Use several Web 2.0 tools that are similar. Then compare and contrast their features.  Which ones did you like the most?  Why?  Which ones did you like the least?  Why?  Post your experiences to your blog.  Some examples of tools are:
 * Social networking
 * Social bookmarking
 * Video Sharing
 * Audio Sharing
 * Photo sharing
 * Watch the following video produced by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod to see the future of Education, Learning, and the Role of the Internet and Web 2.0 in the educational process:
 * Did You Know 2.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

Internet content: ownership and sharing
"Web 2.0" is a term that can be used to refer to a qualitatively new and different pattern of internet behavior: a shift from an older era of restricted and expensive technologies for creation and internet-based sharing of digital media files to a new era of increasingly accessible and inexpensive technologies. As more and more people become empowered to participate on the internet as content producers, new patterns of content ownership and sharing have come into existence. The traditional model was that expensive digital content was protected by copyright, copies were sold and derivative works were possible only via rare and expensive special licensing agreements.

An alternative approach to digital media began with the Open-source software industry. Recognizing that software innovation is promoted by making software "open" to a distributed community of developers, some software developers began to experiment with new strategies for licensing software. In 2001, Wikipedia was launched with contents licensed under the GFDL and the Creative Commons licenses began to be developed. A growing Free Culture movement supports the licensing of digital media files so as to facilitate file sharing and re-use of media for the creation of new works. In the collaborative environment of Web 2.0, sharing intellectual property, without the intermediate step of requesting permission directly from the owner, allows easier access to materials and fosters greater creativity. However, owners of intellectual property must consider whether the Free Culture Movement adds value or takes away value from their work. While some intellectual property might gain value from easier access, other intellectual property like artists' works might lose value.

Tools for digital media file creation
Wikiversity learning resources for digital media file creation and editing.
 * Text
 * ICAU1129A - Operate a word processing application
 * Word processing challenges
 * Web 2.0 Journal

 * Website Creation
 * Adobe Dreamweaver
 * Textwrangler
 * OnBlastBlog

 * Blogs
 * WordPress
 * Tumblr
 * Blogger
 * Weebly
 * Typepad

 * Images
 * GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)
 * Review:Inkscape
 * Pixlr
 * Adobe Photoshop
 * Paint.net
 * 2D Animation process
 * PhotoScape
 * Sumo Paint - Online photo and painting manipulation application
 * Artweaver - Photo manipulaton application (Free version and for fee)
 * Aviary- An online suite of graphic and audio programs

 * Audio
 * Audacity - Free sound editor for recording and editing
 * Wiki Campus Radio - Live internet chat and podcasts
 * Podcasting - includes video podcasting
 * Apple GarageBand - Macintosh software for manipulating digital audio
 * Pro Tools

 * Video
 * Landscape rendering - computer-generated landscape scenes
 * Rendering models of living organisms - computer-generated characters
 * Lesson:3D Storyboard - at Narrative film production, Wikiversity Film School
 * Course:Digital Puppet Animation - 3D computer-generated animation
 * Apple iMovie - Video editing software
 * Quicktime Player/Recorder 10.0- screen/video recording
 * Final Cut Pro

 * Animation
 * GoAnimate - a cloud-based tool for creating short cartoons, including 'scenes', 'props', and text-to-voice software to create dialogue.

See additional links at Topic:Internet audio and video. See also: Template:Web 2.0;
 * Web 2.0 Tools and Applications

Wikipedia

 * Web 2.0 for development

title: Web 2.0


text:
Talk:Learning and learning about learning in Wikiversity

namespaces
"Content has been organised in Wikiversity around the creation of distinct structures, known as 'namespaces'" <-- This strikes me as an interesting way to describe the situation. Wikipedians discovered that it is convenient to have multiple namespaces for a wiki website's "meta-level content", that is, the content that helps participants work together rather than the "actual content" that is the goal of the wiki.

Within the Wikipedia community, namespaces were invented to meet the emerging needs of the community. At the level of Wikimedia, choices have been made about which namespaces are "canonical", that is, which ones should be provided by default to all Wikimedia Foundation wiki projects. Thus, the Wikiversity website was started with all of the namespaces that are used at Wikipedia except for the "Portal:" namespace (which had to be added to Wikiversity by special request). Namespaces such as the "Help:" namespace were inherited from Wikipedia. The "Help:" namespace of Wikiversity was initially populated with some pages by copying help pages from Wikipedia. The Wikipedia "Help:" namespace is essentially a book, a user's manual for Wikipedia, and as such, it certainly cannot go in the main namespace. Should Wikiversity be satisfied to adopt the Wikipedia approach to help? Should Wikiversity incorporate help into lessons of the main namespace?

The Wikiversity "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces provide ways to organize content development projects. The idea of special namespaces for content development arose "by chance" when lists of content development projects were made at Wikibooks and had to be imported to Wikiversity. In some sense, Wikipedia was "locked into" using the "Wikipedia:" namespace for content development. Wikiversity was new and could more easily innovate and make special "compartments" for content development...a more elegant solution than the "WikiProject:" pseudonamespace of Wikipedia.

Here is an analogy: the namespaces of a wiki are like the terrain that a city is built on. Picture the city of Rome and the land that it was built on. Would anyone say, "Well, here we have a city, Rome. I want to start a new city, London, so first let us make a copy of the hills of Rome and then we will build the city of London upon the "correct" terrain for a city"? No. It is absurd. A city can be built upon any terrain and the residents of every city build their cities according to the unique terrain of each individual city. Each wiki needs to define its own namespace structure as a way of meeting its own special needs. In the case of the Wikiversity "Help:" namespace, it was convenient to start by copying the structure and function of Wikipedia's "Help:" namespace. However, Wikiversity does not need to be locked into providing help in the same way that Wikipedia does. Help pages are for the purpose of helping people learn how to work within a wiki community. A major part of the business of Wikiversity should be main namespace learning resources that help people be active participants in Web 2.0, wikis in general and Wikiversity in particular. It will probably always be useful to have the "Wikiversity user's manual" in the "Help:" namespace, but we need to be innovative in placing help into the main namespace of Wikiversity. This is not something we learn from Wikipedia, it is something for the Wikiversity community to discover and elaborate according to this project's mission and goals.

"obvious lack of structure in Wikiversity" <-- Does this mean that the Wikiversity community is still going through the process that Wikipedia went through, that any wiki should go through, a process of discovering how to efficiently use namespaces and other organizational devices? Alternatively, is the point that Wikiversity participants are doing "small experiments, tests, see what works, what doesn't", and that we are, "prepared to be flexible and change", and not, "too locked into stone about how things should work"?

"how do we direct potential students to actual lessons" <-- The basic "first-line" answer is that we use portals. The second-line approach is to have featured content as a way of explicitly putting on display "actual lessons" or any other content that we want to put on display. A third approach is to have a system for marking the completeness of learning resources. This could both involve categories and visual indicators. In general, the more complete a learning resource, the more it will be linked to from other pages, but I think it is safe to say that many members of the Wikiversity community do not know how to use tools like categories, portals, featured content and navigation templates to make Wikiversity content more accessible.

"the semantic structure of the Mediawiki core is based on the assigning of categories" <-- For Wikiversity, there is no point in discussing categories independently from also discussing portals. Portal pages provide a user-friendly interface for the "Category:" namespace. Any large category can have a portal page. Portal pages link to related portals, categories and main namespace content. There is probably an optimal ratio of main namespace pages to portal pages. There is probably some "rule of good editing" that defines how many portal page edits should be made per main namespace edit. That "rule" is probably a complex function of how richly interconnected main namespace pages are at a particular website.

"a more structured, semantic system" <-- I think a system of richly connected portals can do wonders. I would stress that diversity is good. There is no need to create and force on Wikiversity visitors a single hierarchical content directory system. There might be dozens of good ways to sort Wikiversity content. So far, Wikiversity has been essentially locked into creating a rather conventional college course catalog. That is just one approach, the obvious default, but it should not remain the one and only system. Wikipedia has had the luxury of adopting the idea that there is "Mr. average Joe" and so each article can be written for a single audience. Wikiversity must explicitly tackle the problem of providing learning resources for learners at all levels of sophistication. I expect subpages to play an important role in allowing wikiversity to deal with this extra dimension of complexity. We are going to need a more sophisticated content search process that will involve first finding out what people already know and then getting them to where they need to be within the Wikiversity web of content.--JWSchmidt 19:40, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

epistemology of knowledge
"epistemology of knowledge" <-- this seems redundant, like saying "biology of life". --JWSchmidt 03:07, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Defining Wikiversity
"long-standing uncertainties regarding its relationship with another sister project, Wikibooks" <-- Jimbo kicked Wikiversity out of Wikibooks by saying, "Wikibooks has an identity and mission, and other stuff doesn't belong here." The "logic" of the situation was that Wikipedia had encyclopedia articles, Wikibooks had textbooks and Wikiversity would have "other stuff". Wikiversity should have learning resources that do not fit into other Wikimedia projects. In a sense, this means that Wikiversity has a negative definition, or that Wikiversity is defined as complementing other sister projects.

The Wikiversity project proposal tried to clarify the situation by giving explicit examples of what would be at Wikiversity and by explicitly saying that Wikiversity does not duplicate other projects; Wikiversity does not host textbooks, but it can be a place that fosters wiki participants who might help write a textbook. That was all fine, but a potential problem is that a broad definition of "books" can include everything held on collections of webpages.

For a long time Wikibooks was explicitly and narrowly defined as hosting conventional textbooks that must be constructed without involvement of original research: people interested in other kinds of learning resources were not made welcome. Many Wikibooks participants, but in particular Jimbo, adopted the view that the Wikibooks mission did not have room for other kinds of learning resources. Lately, there has been a trend towards making Wikibooks more open to certain types of books that are not textbooks and towards allowing some original research. This shift back towards a more inclusionist model of Wikibooks makes it is possible for some people to look at Wikiversity and think, "This is just a branch of Wikibooks".

I do not think it should be difficult to adopt the position that Wikiversity is a place where people can explore how to use wiki technology for learning - and I mean that each participant should try to personally discover how to make use of wiki technology as a tool for exploring their personal learning goals. If some Wikiversity participants end up writing encyclopedia articles or textbook modules, no harm is done. Wikiversity needs a culture that promotes awareness of the fact that this will happen and when it does it is not the end of the world. Sometimes those encyclopedia articles or textbook modules will only be useful as a learning exercise for the people who make them and there will be better stuff at Wikipedia or Wikibooks. Other times, some of the new content might need to be moved to Wikipedia or Wikibooks. In other cases, it might be decided that the content should stay at Wikiversity as a specialized learning resource that really does not fit into Wikipedia or Wikibooks. If people are still puzzled about how Wikiversity differs from other projects, the main page can direct them to pages such as Wikiversity as a Wikimedia sister project.--JWSchmidt 05:23, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

feeling of isolation
"This feeling of isolation" <-- There are two contributing processes. First, Wikiversity has a larger playing field. Pick any Wikipedia article or Wikibooks textbook module and it is not hard to imagine several Wikiversity learning resources that could complement what is at the sister project. Even if two Wikiversity participants are interested in basically the same topic, they may come at that topic from different perspectives and so not feel a desire to collaborate. Second, projects like Wikipedia have a rather simple model of the wiki participant as someone who knows something and can write it down. Wikiversity includes elements of that model, but is also open to a more complex model of participation that requires a learner-teacher pair. Many people who know a topic do not know how to explain it and they need to interact with people who are learning that topic in order to discover/remember what needs to be said to a newbie. The other side of the learner-teacher pairing requires that learners not look for static content at Wikiversity and leave when they do not find it. For many years Wikiversity will be mainly about content development. Learners need to be made comfortable with the idea that they can learn by editing wiki pages and that they cannot wait for experts to magically arrive and create the content.....learners are going to play a fundamental role in the development of Wikiversity content.

We have been talking for a long time about the need for at least one "model learning project" that would attract a functional learning community and serve as a prototype. It may be that we need to invest serious effort in making that idea explicit for Wikiversity participants rather than just waiting for a group of participants to find each other and make it happen by chance. An obvious candidate project is the Sandbox Server. Wikiversity will always attract many people who are interested in computers, but there is nobody who should expect people to learb about computers without computing resources to play with. It is too bad that the Foundation has no mechanism for providing support (a server) to Wikiversity for the Sandbox Server project. --JWSchmidt 06:03, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


text:
User:Elcairo~enwikiversity

Hello, i'm italian wikiversitan! :-) See my page

de:Benutzer:Elcairo es:Usuario:Elcairo fr:Utilisateur:Elcairo it:Utente:Elcairo

title: User:Elcairo~enwikiversity


text: User:Ponchodehesa

title: User:Ponchodehesa


text:
User:Akin

Hi, I am a high school student with many diverse interests. I practice the philosophy of Objectivism. I read all the time. You can e-mail me at Akin-j@hotmail.com

title: User:Akin


text:
User talk:Elcairo~enwikiversity

Hello Elcairo, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. When leaving comments for others to read, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone keep track of who is writing messages. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. To help you get started:
 * Take a guided tour and learn how to edit;
 * Explore our learning projects;
 * Browse our portals, schools, and research pages; and
 * Read and help develop our community policies.

Also, don't forget to experiment with the links to your left. Be bold, and see you around Wikiversity! --HappyCamper 20:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Elcairo. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Elcairo~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:32, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:06, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Elcairo~enwikiversity


text:
User talk:Akin

Hello Akin, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. When leaving comments for others to read, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone keep track of who is writing messages. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. To help you get started:
 * Take a guided tour and learn how to edit;
 * Explore our learning projects;
 * Browse our portals, schools, and research pages; and
 * Read and help develop our community policies.

Also, don't forget to experiment with the links to your left. Be bold, and see you around Wikiversity! --HappyCamper 20:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Invitation
Dear user of Wikiversity,

Do you like to join a reading club, where you can read and discuss literature? Reading clubs could have active and inactive participants. Active participants could be required to edit on a regularly basis untill a deadline is reached and another topic can be chosen for reading and discussing. Hopefully, reading clubs can ensure a social network on Wikiversity of people cooperating with eachother and becoming friends while discussing knowledge.--Daanschr 09:36, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Akin


text:
User talk:Ponchodehesa

Hello Ponchodehesa, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. When leaving comments for others to read, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone keep track of who is writing messages. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. To help you get started:
 * Take a guided tour and learn how to edit;
 * Explore our learning projects;
 * Browse our portals, schools, and research pages; and
 * Read and help develop our community policies.

Also, don't forget to experiment with the links to your left. Be bold, and see you around Wikiversity! --HappyCamper 20:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Ponchodehesa