School talk:History/Archive 2010

Active Participants*

This section is a discussion of a policy, guideline, or goal in development for the School of History. Please contribute your thoughts so that a consensus can be reached and action can be taken.

• School talk:History/Archive 2007
• School talk:History/Archive 2008

Jade Knight, I have seen many of your fine actions in the school, it's lessons, and various departments. If we can raise the schools profile I'm sure more people will contribute to it's important function as the Teritary History section. =) William Hamblin 12:26, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Departmental Liasons

• American History Department: Geo.plrd
• Military History Department: William Hamblin 12:26, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

World History Department

Hello! I am new to Wikiversity, but I have just created a course entitled the Human Legacy Course. Basically, in this course, we can go through the whole subject of human history which I saw was a bit of a topic on "Requesting A World History Course." But, while I am making this, I am not exactly seeing a department for this type of history as I do know that it is a broad subject, but I feel as if I have brought it down to a couple of notches. So, I am requesting that we try to open a World History department for those of us that wish to study the broad subject of human history. Also, anybody is free to enroll in the course as I am always taking students! Thank you very much for your time and cooperation. MrABlair23 22:56, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but I'm not sure that World History classes need a separate department; ideally, participants from many departments would get involved in such courses. The Jade Knight ^(d'viser) 16:04, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Cleaning up this article

I am in favour of removing all courses without activity. Maybe it would be wise to first contact all developers before their course is removed from the list.Daanschr 09:03, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe we could "shelve" them. I think we also need to distinguish between viable courses, which have usable material - by which I mean they should also include some form of assessment, albeit self assessment, as well as information pages. However with other pages which may contain some useful information, but cannot be effectively used without further work, they could go on the shelf.

Perhaps we could have [[Category:History Shelf]].

As regards contacting contributors, if they created the page, it should be on their watchlist, and they can always put the course back on the School:History page. DO you think that would work?Harrypotter 10:08, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Both good ideas. We could put all courses on the shelf which hadn't had any activity anymore this year. And discuss those courses which have valuable learning materials.Daanschr 10:35, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I support reorganization courses to indicate their level of activity. I cannot support removing courses though. People need to be able to find courses in order to collaborate on them and for courses to ever have a chance of becoming active and viable. Removing courses can also lead to people developing new courses independently of each other rather than collaborating like they should. Wikiversity is about learning through human interaction, so I think activity level should be enough to judge whether a course is viable and useful. I think in terms of activity, courses could be listed as active (within the last month?), stale (no activity for 90 days?), and dead (more than a year without activity?).

Schools typically list departments (pages in the topic namespace) rather than courses. Departments usually list courses. I think if this school is to list courses directly a lot of department pages should be deleted as part of any effort to reorganize. -- darklama  11:00, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I would propose that Chinese History, East Asian History, Indic History and Southeast Asian History are merged into Asian History.Harrypotter 12:44, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree, that merger makes since to me. -- darklama  13:37, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks like Jade Knight tried to propose such a merger in 2008, and nobody has made any objections known. I think we can go ahead with the merger, since enough time has passed. -- darklama  13:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I generally agree with Darklama's statements/suggestions, though I oppose the delition of most Departments (though I fully support making a single Asian Department instead of the rest). The Jade Knight ^(d'viser) 06:20, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Lack of participants

In all my projects on Wikipedia and Wikiversity, i suffered from a severe lack in participants. So, i like to do something about it. It could be that the school of history is mainly filled with developers and not with participants in courses. But, maybe i am wrong about that.Daanschr 09:03, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, there don't seem to be too many people about. Checking the history list, there are maybe four people still editing who have edited this page. However a couple of us have agreed to get going on this, so perhaps we can attract some more.Harrypotter 10:54, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

People usually participate in courses like Daanschr said. For that reason participants are usually listed within course pages. People don't usually participate in all school or department activities, and for that reason participants aren't usually listed on school or department pages. -- darklama  11:07, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I think less activity in schools compared to departments and courses should be expected. After all a school page is usually only updated when a new department is created. A department is usually only updated when new courses are available. -- darklama  11:11, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

The look of the page

I think we should have something more positive at the top of the page. Maybe a list of resources we are happy with and want to showcase. These should be completed and currently active resources Perhaps we could have a School of History Template, nothing to big, but which would show where a particular resource fits in. I've looked through the current resources and they don't seem too current. Hopefully Jade Knight has just been away on holiday as he hasn't edited since July. Let's see!Harrypotter 10:54, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, as you can see I have gone ahead with some changes. I hope people like them. Don't worry I'm not precious about my work, and if you've got some ideas which would work better, let's try them out.Harrypotter 12:39, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I also found this! Harrypotter 13:01, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Good job, HP!Daanschr 06:57, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Currently, the TOC doesn't overlap the Department listing, and that's annoying. I also dislike the generic introductory paragraph, which says very little about this school. I don't mind the overall reorganization, however. The Jade Knight ^(d'viser) 06:28, 15 October 2010 (UTC)