Wikiversity:Research

Development of Wikiversity research policy, guidelines and community can be facilitated by study of the Wikiversity project source documents.

Source documents

There were two Wikiversity project proposals. The original project proposal was rejected by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The second Wikiversity project proposal was approved.

• Mission: The purpose of the Wikiversity project, which will ultimately reside at www.wikiversity.org, is to build an electronic institution of learning that will be used to test the limits of the wiki model both for developing electronic learning resources as well as for teaching and for conducting research and publishing results (within a policy framework developed by the community).

• Mission: ... "guidelines will be developed during the beta phase of Wikiversity's development on hosting and fostering research based in part on existing resources in Wikiversity and other Wikimedia projects" ...

• Secondary research:
  • "These groups/communities will be help desks, mentoring teams, cohort groups, debate clubs - practical applications might be in doing research for Wikipedia" ...
  • ... "Wikiversity will naturally complement existing Wikimedia projects by providing an environment that supports and fosters scholarly 'secondary research'."

• Original research: "Wikiversity could act as a repository of research carried out by the Wikimedia Research Network or other people involved in wiki-based research, and could also host the proceedings of Wikimania. Whether or not Wikiversity will ever host original research in addition to secondary research is the subject of debate (see the project proposal talk page) though original research could take place based on materials in Wikiversity (eg. materials on sociology prompt a survey research project). Guidelines for what would be appropriate research will be developed during the beta phase of the project through a community consensus process, and reviewed (by the Special projects committee) after six months. There will not necessarily be 'approval' of research added to Wikiversity - though some sort of review process needs to be established which will deal with potential problems."

Comments at Wikimania 2006

(source)

• "..... the idea here is to also host learning communities, so people who are actually trying to learn, actually have a place to come and interact and help each other figure out how to learn things. We're also going to be hosting and fostering research into how these kinds of things can be used more effectively."

14 August 2006 instructions from the Board (source, by Board member Anthere; similar source)

• "..... guidelines should be developed, *in particular* with regards to collaborative research. We would hope that these guidelines are as much as possible developed on the beta site (in particular collaborative research), so that all languages share a common goal and a few common non negotiable rules." see note 1
• "At the end of these 6 months [beta] period, the project will be reviewed, in particular so that the issue of collaborative research is qualified, and if possible to define whether the beta stage is over. Reviewal will be done by Spc." see note 2

New discussions

• [1] - "beta site" means Wikiversity Beta

• [2] - "Spc" is the special projects committee.

• Secondary research - research into a topic using the method of literature review.

• Original research - unpublished research into a topic using literature review and/or methods in addition to literature review.

• Scope of research - should Wikiversity allow all types of research, including original research?

• Research guidelines - what rules are needed to assure that only high quality, scholarly research activities take place?

• Chief Research Coordinator for studies of Wikimedia's content, organization and community, and first point of contact for anyone who wants to pursue interesting research projects.

• Wikimedia Research Network