Cormac’s blog

I'’ve been linking up with the Wikieducator project over the last week, and it was this post by Leigh Blackall that prompted me to take another look into that project. Interestingly, it was Leigh’s frustration and apparent ‘leaving’ (is that right?) of the Wikiversity community that has provided a link between the two communities and has brought them together to an extent! I’ve enjoyed the dialogue at Wikieducator, subsequently through email with Wayne Mackintosh, and now moving onto the OER grapevine where we hope to work on issues of common interest (example).

Leigh’s post itself prompted a number of interesting replies (mostly in the comments, and also in a separate post by Teemu Leinonen) about what Wikiversity and Wikieducator are doing. Teemu makes an interesting comment:

“In sociology of education there is a set of questions one should always ask when looking for educational systems. The questions are: Who is educating Whom? On What, Why and How?
In the case of Wikiversity it is easy to answer these questions. The members of the Wikiversity are educating each other on topics they are interested in and want to learn about. They have found collaborative learning as the most suitable method to do this. This suits me, too. In the case of Wikieducator one should also ask who, to whom, what, why and how?”

I personally don’t think Wikiversity can afford to be so self-assured here either. True, Wikiversity is attempting to provide a space that people can use to learn collaboratively about whatever they feel like learning about (or sharing their knowledge of). But Wikiversity is also attempting to develop curricula and resources for anyone to put to educational use - in face to face or distance classes, and in self-directed courses. So, obviously Wikiversity needs to think about these questions too. It’s for this reason that we’ve developed pages like “Disclosures” - though it occurs to me again that this isn’t anything remotely like enough. One of the best points raised during my mini-presentation at last year’s Wikimania was that, in order to be fully useful, Wikiversity materials would have to make explicit what kind of educational assumptions and aspirations went into creating them, and what use they were intended to be put to - so that the person accessing them can use the materials in a way that they themselves see fit.

Teemu also asks whether the wiki format, which has proven to be so successful in Wikipedia, will be similarly successful in creating educational materials. It’s an interesting question - and one that I’ve been recently discussing with Drew, my PhD supervisor. Well, we’ve actually been discussing whether the whole idea of decentralised organisation will work for an institution of learning, like a university, as well as it has done for software development. These are two distinct questions - looking at two different aspects of Wikiversity’s mission. But they are related - in the sense that Wikiversity is adapting (or perhaps adopting?) a model which has been shown to be successful in one realm - and attempting to apply it in another. The first - collaboratively creating materials - isn’t very different from Wikipedia’s model (and I would question Teemu’s questioning of how well the wiki model works for Wikibooks - I would be interested to know why he thinks it doesn’t work). But the second is a far larger question - involving a deep look at what education is, how it’s provided for, what its purpose is, and, of course, who is educating whom. What is collaborative learning anyway, and how is it provided for in practice - and in this context? I think Wikiversity needs to address all of these questions with as much urgency and sincerity as Wikieducator does. In fact, is there more of a need to do so in Wikiversity, seeing as it is a space for collaborative learning - or is this something that will be an inherent part of the process as people engage with each other in discussion and debate?