Hi Valerie, Kirby, Jan, Leo, Rob and Randy At last a remedy for my WE withdrawal symptoms resulting from my summer vacation (and lack of connectivity because of moving house combined with local idiosyncrasies with my previous telecom provider :-( -- with emphasis on *previous* provider -- I've now changed supplier ;-)
Its great to be back -- and my best wishes to all WikiEducators for the new year. 2010 is going to be an amazing year for OER! Apology for the rather long-winded response below -- however, given the importance of quality in education, should we think about setting up a Community Workgroup ( http://www.wikieducator.org/Workgroup:WikiEducator_Workgroups/Guidelines )? Do we have folk on the list who would be keen to sign up and help us develop quality guidelines and processes that will work for educators? *Reflections * Quality is a very pertinent and relevant discussion for our WikiEducator community. As a community of educators -- this is important for us and we have the opportunity (and freedom) to get this right in ways that will work for us (educators and researchers). Gee you got to love open education and open philanthropy -- we can work collaboratively in the co-design of Q & A processes that will support our mission. Nurturing the development of appropriate quality processes is a priority for the OER Foundation -- As a community of educators, quality is important for us WE have made some progress. I look forward to working with the community in pioneering appropriate solutions. A few random thoughts and reflections -- in no specific order: 1. From a technical point of view it would be possible to site a specific historical instance of a wiki page (notwithstanding an open authoring environment). The wiki keeps a history of every edit -- a very powerful feature of the technology. Using the history tab -- we can cite a specific historical instance of a page (see for example: http://wikieducator.org/index.php?title=Wikieducator_tutorial/What_is_a_wiki&oldid=451248). However, a more user friendly solution for citing specific instances would be great. 2. In the future, it will be easier to generate a static instance of content produced collaboratively in WikiEducator. The OER Foundation has secured generous funding support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for building a technical bridge between the Mediawiki software and the Connexions platform (see: http://wikieducator.org/CNX-WE ). When completed -- it will be possible to export a static version of a WikiEducator page for hosting on the Connexions platform -- In this way a dynamic draft can be hosted in parallel with a static version. Useful for research papers and course materials where the teacher would prefer to use a static version of the OER. It will also be possible for going the other way -- that is exporting a Connexions module for collaborative authoring in a wiki environment -- great for saving time with course revisions. 3. As we move forward with the planning for the launch of WikiResearcher.org, the OER Foundation is keen to take a look at refining a Mediawiki extension called Flagged Revisions (see - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:FlaggedRevs ). With some refinement it would be possible to assign peer review rights to "approved" editors. The idea is that edits can be peer reviewed and then 'Flagged" as a peer reviewed resource. Users visiting a page would then see the peer reviewed version as the default view. 4. WE have made a reasonable start on thinking about quality assurance and review (see: http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Quality_Assurance_and_Review ) and the start of a portal page on Q&A ( http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Quality_Assurance_Framework ) -- this is a great start and we can build on these foundations. Thoughts? Cheers Wayne 2010/1/19 valerie <[email protected]> > As an assignment in a community college course, my students are asked > to find a learning resource in WikiEducator. Finding good learning > objects in WE can be difficult, so I have included this assignment to > have students find what they thought was complete and interesting. > Although there is usually some frustration, they find some amazing WE > pages. I'm accumulating a list of pages they discover. > > However, sometimes I get more information and feedback than I > bargained for... I though this was an interesting comment from one of > my students. > "Also, the color scheme and design of the website is exactly the same > as Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia is known for false information, and cannot > be used for research papers. I feel that this site is similar to > Wikipedia; therefore, this site's information cannot be trusted." > > Sigh... Yes, some of our faculty are convinced that Wikipedia and by > association, all wikis, especially those that look like Wikipedia > because they use Mediawiki are evil and populated by gangs of internet > hooligans intent on provide false information to unsuspecting web > users. They explicitly forbid the use of Wikipedia. > > Has anyone else heard of similar credibility issues for WikiEducator > content? Is this something that is limiting adoption of WE learning > objects? > > ..Valerie > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "WikiEducator" group. > To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org > To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > -- Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D. Director, International Centre for Open Education, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Board of Directors, OER Foundation. Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org Mobile +64 21 2436 380 User Page: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg Skype: WGMNZ1 Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
