Wikiversity Introduction

Welcome to Introduction to Wikiversity, a learning project for first time visitors to Wikiversity. Newcomers should also visit Wikiversity:Introduction.

Learning objectives

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What you can learn on this page

What a wiki website is
What the Wikiversity project is all about
How you can participate
How to ask questions and get help
How to find existing learning resources at Wikiversity

Help with jargon: Wikiversity participants use many technical terms that have special meaning within the Wikiversity project; see the glossary of terms.

What is a wiki?

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The edit button.

A wiki is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit and change the content of the webpages. Wikiversity is a wiki website. Wikiversity webpages have an "edit button" that you are invited to use. Everyone can edit and improve Wikiversity webpages. The openness and ease of editing page content makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring.

Q. Where can I learn more about editing Wikiversity webpages?

A. Click here for an introduction to editing.

The discussion button.

Q. Where can I learn more about wiki?

A. Click here to learn more about collaborative webpage editing.

Q. Where can I discuss the contents of the page with other users?

A. Every wiki webpage has an associated page for discussions. For example, when you are at this page, click the "discussion" button to go to the Talk:Introduction to Wikiversity page where you can ask questions about this webpage. Also: text chat and voice chat.

Q. How is the content that I contribute to Wikiversity licensed? Who can use it?

A. Every time you use the "edit button", just below the edit window it says, "You agree to license your contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License GFDL." GFDL stands for "GNU Free Documentation License" and is the license that is applied to all the text added by editors to Wikiversity pages. Before you edit Wikiversity pages you should have a basic understanding of the GFDL. See: The GFDL and you.

What is Wikiversity?

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Wikiversity is a site for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. The mission of Wikiversity is to empower people to achieve their educational goals using resources produced by the free culture movement. The goal is to create a community of people on Wikiversity who support each other in their educational endeavors.

Wikiversity is a wiki-based learning community. Here you can use online courses and also create courses yourself. See this page for some ideas about what the Wikiversity might become. Also, see more of how Wikiversity supports learning. Different entry points and rough theory, as well as example forms are also available.

See:

Wikiversity:About - Answers to frequently asked questions about Wikiversity
Wikiversity:History of Wikiversity - How has Wikiversity evolved?

Asking questions

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As a new visitor to Wikiversity you probably have many questions. First, try asking at the Colloquium page or at the Wikiversity live chat channel. You can also ask questions that are about this page by editing this page (example) or by editing this page's discussion page. There are also other options for asking questions.

Page section navigation

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Wikiversity webpages often have multiple sections such as the Learning objectives section of this page.

Most pages are divided into multiple sections. To quickly navigate, you can click on a link in the Table of Contents. On this page, the first section is called "Learning objectives" and the Table of Contents is immediately above it.

See the figure to the right on this page.

Explore Wikiversity content

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Browse our main subject areas:

Categories. Every Wikiversity learning resource should be in at least one Category. You can browse Wikiversity by category. See: Category:Categories.

Search. Try using the search feature to find learning resources. See: Wikiversity:Searching.

Exercises

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The edit button.....use it. Wikiversity is a website where you can learn by editing the webpages.

Not yet registered? See: Wikiversity:Why create an account.
Edit your Wikiversity user page and add hypertext links to some Wikiversity pages that are of interest to you. Hint: make a link to this page so that you can keep returning here until you complete this introduction to Wikiversity. See: Making links.
True or false? B is the new C <-- A short lesson about learning at Wikiversity and learning by editing wiki website pages.

Try stuff! Learn by doing. Please make mistakes. If you make your edits in good faith, the worst thing can happen is someone coming along and saying that that is not the way things are standardly done, or that what is being done is outside the scope of the project. However, we try not to bite.

Still not sure about using the edit button? Watch a two minute-long video that offers encouragement to people who are new to editing Wikiversity and other wiki websites. Wikiversity uses the Ogg video format --> view Web 2.0 video, 9.3 Mb download. (Help with Ogg video file play.)

See also: Wikiversity computer skills <-- includes a tutorial for how to play Ogg format audio and video files on your computer. Have you checked out that little toolbox there to the left? The What links here tool is nifty!

Things you can start doing

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Begin the filmmaking courses.
Add or tweak some notes at a course portal. The School of History is now seeking students! The School of Mathematics is now seeking students: School of Mathematics:Calculus.
Tweak a random text for readability.
Create an interesting topic portal.
Create a random lesson plan.
Assemble an initial list of links useful to others interested in the topic.
Add an outline bullet
Add a factual paragraph or bullet to an article or its associated discussion page.
Publish an essay question and answer or a term paper at an appropriate location.
Write a draft quiz regarding a random Wikipedia article or other subject of interest and publish it as an appropriate link in a learning trail.
Review the standards of educational standards organisations.
Publish your course notes (Students please note that the copyright of handouts belongs to their creators and permission is required prior to submittal. Personal notes with short quotes compliant with fair use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, short quotes and citations, created to study the course material are very welcome. It is exactly what we wish to edit mercilessly and improve to leave behind published under the GFDL for others to encounter along the learning trails.), lesson plans, topical essays, or reference works for others to review, modify or fork.
Come discuss how to improve Wikiversity at our current mailing list.

Keep track of changes and discussions

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How do you know when an edit/change is made to a page or someone has replied to a comment or a question you left on a Wikiversity discussion page? If you have registered a user name and are logged in, then at the top-right of each wiki page there is a "watchlist" link. Add pages you are interested in to your watchlist by favouriting them. You can also set your user preferences to automatically add pages you edit to your watchlist. Then periodically check your watchlist to keep track of changes.

Find a course

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Browse the learning resources listed at Wikiversity Portals or the various Wikiversity Schools.

Discussing Wikiversity

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For previous discussions see the Meta page on Wikiversity. Since there is now a formal proposal to set up Wikiversity as a new Wikimedia project, try to keep discussions of Wikiversity's scope and goals centralized at Meta. Utilize a #wikiversity-en IRC chat channel as well. If you're interested, you could add your name to the many participants lists, and see who else is involved.

Wikiversity Core Courses

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One way to move Wikiversity forward is to create another core service course. Wikimedia projects are developed here at Wikiversity. Prior to formal establishment, projects were developed on other domains, but they are all now here at wikiversity.