A short introduction of the Wikiwersity-based open course model I use for my e-courses (May 18, 2018)

1. A different kind of e-learning
KAIDO KIKKAS
associate professor
IT College, TUT
kaido@itcollege.ee
18.05.2018

2. For introduction: the mighty technology
 Things that earlier required ‘rocket science’ and a lot of
money, are now available to everyone. Examples:
− Today’s home computer vs top tech 40 years ago
− Today’s smartphones vs old-time supercomputers
− Social media (blogs, wikis, social networks) vs
traditional media
− Music or video/movie studio at home vs earlier
dedicated facilities
 BOTTOM LINE: people can do great things if they do not
have to face stupid obstacles from business, government
and antiquated legislation

3. A timeline of technology-assisted learning
 Up to the 80s: contact learning or pre-Internet tech
measures (TV, radio, cassettes, videotapes etc)
 80s and early 90s: computer-based learning (computers as
a glorified, interactive VCR - CD-ROMs, multimedia,
educational software
 Later 90s: e-learning 1.0 – e-mail, Web (1.0), scripts and
applets
 First years of 00s: e-learning 2.0 – learning management
systems (WebCT/Blackboard, Ilias, Moodle)
 10s: e-learning 3.0 – Web 2.0 and distributed learning
environments, MOOCs

4. Wikiversity
 A project under Wikimedia Commons (probaby the most
common of those is Wikipedia)
 Similarly to Wikipedia, all content is distributed under free
licenses, mostly
− Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
− GNU Free Documentation License

5. Components of the course
 Main page at Wikiversity (the central hub):

Short intro and main data (credits, supervisor etc)

Detailed guide for the course

Participant list

Team list (if used)

Exam registration (if using traditional exam)

Link to forum
 Plus outside resources:

Forum (Nabble.com; monitored over RSS)

Team wikis

Personal blogs (monitored over RSS)

Skype and/or e-mail

6. Weekly workflow
 Read the ’lecture’ at Wikiversity
 Weekly blogging tasks
 Wiki-based team paper (4-5 people)
 Reviewing another team’s work (blogged)
 Topical discussions in forum
 In some courses: weekly text chat (approx. 1 hour, part
consulting, part informal discussion of weekly topics)

7. Grading the works
 Grades are often considered private information
 How to keep them private in an open course?
 Options include
●
Using the hosting institution study information system
(feasible if no/little outsiders)
●
Public grade table, password protected (easy to do with
Excel or LibreOffice Calc)
●
Public grade table, coded (numbers or pseudonyms)
●
On-demand: everyone can ask over e-mail, Skype etc
(feasible in smaller courses)

8. Three levels of participation
 For credits, formal enrolment – need to register through
the faculty (similarly to other courses)
 For credits, from outside – need to register through the
complementary learning/training faculty
 Free listeners, want just the information rather than credits
– free to come and go as they please

9. Typical question: why teach outsiders?
 For-credit students are sponsored by state, the course load
increase gets formally recognized (and paid)
 Free listeners (in sensible amounts) act as valuable
marketers of the course – provided that the content is
good. Workload increase can be optimized (e.g. more
stress on peer reviews etc)
 The course type needs careful planning of tasks and
structure, so that 10 x increase in students does not mean
10 x increase of workload
 Example: continuous points-gathering (with some choice)
and basing the grade on the final sum rather than doing a
traditional exam

10. What is different
 Fits well for more narrative type of courses
 Analytical rather than purely fact-oriented tasks (analyze,
describe, give examples, compare...). Means that

Different solutions can be equally valid

Good old cheating does not work well, especially with
more experienced supervisor

11. Kaido Kikkas
Associate professor
IT College, TUT
kaido@itcollege.ee
https://www.slideshare.net/UncleOwl