Wikiversity

Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project that supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from Wikipedia in that it offers tutorials and other materials for the fostering of learning, rather than an encyclopedia. It is available in many languages. One element of Wikiversity is a set of WikiJournals which publish peer-reviewed articles in a stable, indexed, and citable format comparable with academic journals. These can be copied to Wikipedia, and are sometimes based on Wikipedia articles. As of , there are Wikiversity sites active for languages comprising a total of articles and recently active editors. Wikiversity's data phase officially began on August 15, 2006, with the English language Wikiversity. The idea of Wikiversity began with the initial development of the Wikiversity community within the Wikibooks project. However, when it was nominated for deletion from Wikibooks, soon there was a proposal to make Wikiversity an independent Wikimedia project, with the fundamental goal to broaden the scope of activities within the Wikimedia community to include additional types of learning resources in addition to textbooks. Two proposals were made. The first project proposal was not approved (2005) and the second, modified proposal, was approved (2006). The launch of Wikiversity was announced at Wikimania 2006 as an idea to: Wikiversity is a center for the creation of and use of free learning materials, and the provision of learning activities. Wikiversity is one of many wikis used in educational contexts, as well as many initiatives that are creating free and open educational resources. The primary priorities and goals for Wikiversity are to: Create and host a range of free-content, multilingual learning materials/resources, for all age groups in all languages. Host scholarly/learning projects and communities that support these materials. The Wikiversity e-Learning model places emphasis on "learning groups" and "learning by doing".