Wikiversity:What is Wikiversity?

Wikiversity is a learning community

Wikiversity is a community effort to learn and facilitate others' learning. You can use Wikiversity to find information or ask questions about a subject you need to find out more about. You can also use it to share your knowledge about a subject, and to build learning materials around that knowledge.

The basic definition of a university in Latin is universitas magistrorum et scholarium - a community of teaching and learning. The basic definition of a wiki is software that allows collaborative creation of online documents. Wikiversity combines wiki technology and culture with a variety of learning communities and projects. Wikiversity is the viciversitas magistrorum et scholarium - a wiki-based community of teaching and learning.

See below for ideas on how you can help yourself and others or help us help you.

Wikiversity for learning

In Wikiversity, you can find learning materials of all types to use yourself as self-study materials. If you are interested in learning about a subject, browse our content to see if there is anything that suits your needs. It would also be helpful if you comment on the materials you use, so that we can continually improve our resources.

Also, if you want to meet other people who are interested in your subject, you may want to join a learning community devoted to that subject (or help create one if one doesn't yet exist). You may find someone there who can help you with your learning, or you may want to help someone else with what you already know (or have just found out).

Please help Wikiversity to develop its education potential at the learning and learning projects pages.

Wikiversity for teaching

Wikiversity is designed to collect a range of learning materials for various uses. These materials are designed, not just for self-study, but also as material which can be used in your classroom. What we aim to provide is a way of searching for content easily, which can be printed/saved and used in class - as well as a lesson plan to guide you through this material.

As Wikiversity is only just getting started, there is hardly any content here yet. We would really appreciate any content you have that you would be willing to provide, and maybe also an indication of what you have done with it, and how that worked. In this way, we hope to build a living resource of real use to teachers, not only in their classrooms, but also as somewhere to improve teaching practice through sharing materials and experiences.

Please help Wikiversity to develop its teaching potential at the education and teaching pages.

Wikiversity for researching

Wikiversity will offer a space not just for hosting research, but also for facilitating research through creating researcher communities. Please help Wikiversity to do this by adding your ideas to Wikiversity:Research.

Wikiversity for serving

Wikiversity will offer opportunities for service and learning development in a variety of contexts. Please help Wikiversity to do this by adding your ideas to Wikiversity:Service.

Wikiversity for sharing materials

If you have learning materials that you think could be of use, you can add them to Wikiversity! Or, if you have an idea for how to help someone learn about a topic, you can start developing learning materials right here. However, if it's suitable for a textbook, it's best to add it at Wikibooks; if it's suitable for an encyclopedia, it's best to add it at Wikipedia. Textbooks at Wikibooks and resources elsewhere on the internet can be used as materials in a Wikiversity syllabus, and should generally be linked from the module rather than duplicated here.

See Wikiversity:Browse for links to our various sections of materials. You can also read adding content and naming conventions to guide you in adding content.

Wikiversity for sharing ideas

A word-map or tag cloud of Wikiversity (based on Wikiversity RSS content, using Wordle)

Wikiversity is also a place to share ideas - about how to teach, how to learn, what the best ways of facilitating learning are, what has worked in the past, and what hasn't. It is hoped that Wikiversity will (amongst other things) provide a platform for teachers and learners to form learning communities about learning.

Wikiversity for sharing community

As is obvious from the above, Wikiversity is a place to share community. It is hoped that Wikiversity will not only provide spaces for persons to form various communities of learning and discovery, but also provide a place where service, learning, and research can be integrated in meaningful ways that benefit individuals, larger communities, and our global society.