Wikiversity - Wikipedia

Wikiversity - Wikipedia
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Wikimedia wiki for learning materials
Wikiversity
Screenshot
Screenshot of the Wikiversity home page
Type of site
Educational
self study
Available in
Multilingual
(18 active)
Owner
Wikimedia Foundation
Created by
Wikimedia community
URL
wikiversity
.org
Commercial
No
Registration
Optional
Launched
August 15, 2006
; 19 years ago
2006-08-15
Wikiversity
is a
Wikimedia Foundation
project
that supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from
Wikipedia
in that it offers tutorials and other materials for the fostering of learning, rather than an encyclopedia. It is available in many languages.
One element of Wikiversity is a set of
WikiJournals
which publish peer-reviewed articles in a stable,
indexed
, and
citable
format comparable with
academic journals
. These can be copied to Wikipedia, and are sometimes based on Wikipedia articles.
As of April 2026, there are Wikiversity sites active for 18 languages
comprising a total of 164,950 articles and 1,009 recently active editors.
History
edit
Wikiversity's data phase officially began on August 15, 2006, with the
English language Wikiversity
The idea of Wikiversity began with the initial development of the Wikiversity community within the
Wikibooks
project. However, when it was nominated for deletion from Wikibooks, soon there was a proposal to make Wikiversity an independent Wikimedia project,
with the fundamental goal to broaden the scope of activities within the Wikimedia community to include additional types of learning resources in addition to textbooks.
Two proposals were made. The first project proposal was not approved (2005) and the second, modified proposal, was approved (2006).
The launch of Wikiversity was announced at
Wikimania 2006
Project details
edit
Wikiversity is a center for the creation of and use of free learning materials, and the provision of
learning activities
Wikiversity is one of many wikis used in educational contexts,
10
as well as many initiatives that are creating free and
open educational resources
The primary priorities and goals for Wikiversity are to:
Create and host a range of free-content, multilingual learning materials/resources, for all age groups in all languages.
Host scholarly/learning projects and communities that support these materials.
11
The Wikiversity
e-Learning
model places emphasis on "learning groups" and
"learning by doing"
. Wikiversity's motto and slogan is "set learning free",
12
13
indicating that groups/communities of Wikiversity participants will engage in learning projects. Learning is facilitated through collaboration on projects that are detailed, outlined, summarized or results reported by editing Wikiversity pages. Wikiversity learning projects include collections of
wiki webpages
concerned with the exploration of a particular topic.
14
Wikiversity participants are encouraged to express their learning goals, and the Wikiversity community collaborates to develop learning activities and projects to accommodate those goals.
15
The Wikiversity e-Learning activities give learners the opportunity to build knowledge.
16
17
Students have to be language-aware in order to be able to correct their classmates. By doing this, students develop their reflection skills. Secondly, they enable students to be autonomous deciding what to write or edit, also when and how to do it. Students are able to free resort to any mean of support. At the same time, it fosters
cognitive development
, engaging students to collaborate.
citation needed
Learning resources are developed by an individual or groups, either on their own initiative, or as part of a learning project.
18
Wikiversity resources include teaching aids, lesson plans, curricula, links to off-site resources, course notes, example and problem sets, computer simulations, reading lists, and other as devised by participants – but do not include final polished textbooks. Texts useful to others are hosted at
Wikibooks
for update and maintenance.
19
Learning groups with interests in each subject area create a web of resources that form the basis of discussions and activities at Wikiversity. Learning resources can be used by educators outside of Wikiversity for their own purposes, under the terms of the
GFDL
and a
Creative Commons
license (like
Wikipedia
).
Wikiversity "administrators" are metaphorically referred to as "custodians".
20
Wikiversity also allows
original research
(in contrast to Wikipedia which does not).
16
21
Such research content may lack any
peer review
21
WikiJournals
edit
WikiJournal of Science
on display at
Athlone Institute of Technology
Library, 2019
Several
WikiJournal
s operate with an
academic journal
format on the Wikiversity website (under the WikiJournal User Group). Submitted articles are subjected to
peer review
by external experts before publication of an
indexed
citable
, stable version in the journal, and an editable version in Wikipedia. They are wholly free, offering open access to readers and charging no publication fee to authors (
diamond open access
).
22
Some articles are written from scratch, and others are adapted from Wikipedia articles.
23
They therefore aim to encourage experts to contribute content creation and improvement (as authors and peer reviewers), and provide an additional quality control mechanism for existing Wikipedia content.
24
This activity started with
WikiJournal of Medicine
in 2014.
25
The sister journals
WikiJournal of Science
and
WikiJournal of Humanities
both began publishing in 2018.
23
26
The WikiJournal User Group received an open publishing award in November 2019.
27
WikiDebates
edit
WikiDebates on Wikiversity allow compiling arguments of both sides on controversial topics such as the
legality of cannabis
, to create an overview. For fairness, users are encouraged to add arguments of their opposing view too.
28
29
Languages
edit
There are currently seventeen different Wikiversities: Arabic, Chinese, Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish (locked since 17 June 2021); Wikiversity projects in other languages are being developed at the "beta" multilingual hub.
30
For newly established specific language Wikiversities to move out of the initial exploratory "beta" phase, the new Wikiversity community must establish policies governing research activities. Wikiversity may act as a repository of research carried out by the
Wikimedia Research Network
, or others who are involved in wiki-based, or other research. Wikiversity hosts original research in addition to secondary research, unless a specific language group decides upon no research. It is expected that researchers will respect and update guidelines for appropriate research through a community consensus process.
31
32
Currently the English Wikiversity hosts more than 376 research pages.
33
As of April 2026, there are wikiversity sites for 18 languages of which 18 are active and 0 are closed.
The active sites have 164,950 articles,
There are 3,542,339 registered users of which 1,009 are recently active.
The top ten Wikiversity language projects by mainspace article count:
Language
Wiki
Content pages
Pages
Edits
Admins
Users
Active users
Files
German
de
76,640
147,970
1,077,894
41,422
39
2,728
en
37,504
242,695
2,774,956
10
3,066,148
329
41,710
French
fr
17,428
54,616
981,601
79,965
71
83
Chinese
zh
6,779
17,533
344,659
19,367
169
Italian
it
5,384
28,465
283,591
46,401
47
10
Portuguese
pt
4,873
25,861
182,133
44,027
150
102
Czech
cs
4,591
14,421
147,243
18,746
21
Russian
ru
4,240
22,385
164,692
36,661
39
405
Spanish
es
2,093
15,235
178,779
62,287
31
10
error: language code: beta not recognized
beta
1,117
20,764
381,603
55,247
27
For a complete list with totals see Wikimedia Statistics:
34
Reception
edit
PCWorld
reported the Wikiversity project in 2007, when the most popular course was on film-making. It compared the project to
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
's "
MIT OpenCourseWare
", noting however that while free, MIT's offering was "not free enough for Wikiversity".
35
In their 2008 book on
Empowering Online Learning
, Curtis Bonk and Ke Zhang noted that if "the Wikimedia Foundation can nurture credible resources and communities within Wikiversity, it will send serious shock waves throughout
higher education
."
36
Steven Hoffman, in his 2010 book on teaching humanities, wrote that Wikiversity could do for higher education what Wikipedia had done "for the traditional encyclopedia". Hoffman noted that Wikiversity courses could look much like traditional
online university
courses, except that they were open in every sense. He did not expect Wikiversity to replace traditional universities, but could supplement them for "retiring
baby boomers
" spending time and energy on "education as leisure".
37
The
Association for Psychological Science
noted in 2018 that Wikipedia, often "Internet users' first source of information", is constantly changing in search of accuracy, accompanied in this by Wikiversity, its "lesser-known sister site".
38
J. Rapp et al., writing in 2019, commented that Wikiversity allowed readers to become active contributors; writing materials "can be regarded as a learning task for advanced Wikiversity authors in general." They noted that the Wikijournals differed from conventional journals in being transparent about reviewers' backgrounds, possibly facilitating interdisciplinary discussion, and in revealing the stages in the development of an article (by versioning).
39
See also
edit
Internet portal
OpenStax
OpenLearn
WikiEducator
Wiki Education Foundation
Wikipedia:Wikipedia for Schools
WikiJournal User Group
References
edit
Wikimedia
's
MediaWiki
API:Sitematrix
. Retrieved April 2026 from
Data:Wikipedia statistics/meta.tab
Jimbo Wales (2006).
"Welcome speech"
. Wikimania.
Archived
from the original on 2007-12-26
. Retrieved
2006-08-12
Jimbo Wales (2006-08-04).
"Wikimedia Opening Plenary"
Supload.com
Archived
from the original on 2013-10-20
. Retrieved
2014-01-17
Wikimedia
's
MediaWiki
API:Siteinfo
. Retrieved April 2026 from
Data:Wikipedia statistics/data.tab
Reswik (2006-08-22).
"Wikiversity:History of Wikiversity"
Wikiversity
Archived
from the original on 2021-04-26
. Retrieved
2014-01-17
Invadinado~foundationwiki (2013-03-25).
"Resolution Wikiversity"
. Wikimedia Foundation.
Archived
from the original on 2014-09-13
. Retrieved
2014-01-17
"Opening Plenary (transcript)"
. Wikimania. 2007-02-17.
Archived
from the original on 2018-11-19
. Retrieved
2014-01-17
Nystedt, Dan (2007-08-04).
"Wikiversity Gains Momentum"
PC World
Archived
from the original on 2016-12-25.
Foster, Andrea L. (2005-12-16).
"Wikipedia, the Free Online Encyclopedia, Ponders a New Entity: Wikiversity"
The Chronicle of Higher Education
. Archived from
the original
on 27 December 2005.
Piotr, Konieczny (January 2007).
"Wikis and Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool"
(PDF)
International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning
(1): 19.
ISSN
1550-6908
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2008-05-28
. Retrieved
2008-03-19
"Approved Wikiversity project proposal"
Wikiversity
Archived
from the original on 2009-08-19
. Retrieved
2007-02-14
"Wikiversity:Learning"
Wikiversity
Archived
from the original on 2009-07-27
. Retrieved
2007-02-14
"Wikiversity learning model"
Wikiversity
Archived
from the original on 2009-07-24
. Retrieved
2007-02-14
Wikiversity learning projects portal
Archived
2009-08-03 at the
Wayback Machine
, Wikiversity
Friesen, Norm; Hopkins, Janet (2008-09-27).
"Wikiversity; or education meets the free culture movement: An ethnographic investigation"
First Monday
13
(10).
doi
10.5210/fm.v13i10.2234
Singh, Satendra (March 2013). "Use of Wikiversity and role play to increase student engagement during student-led physiology seminars".
Advances in Physiology Education
37
(1):
106–
107.
doi
10.1152/advan.00096.2012
ISSN
1043-4046
PMID
23471258
S2CID
12294204
Hladnik, Miran; Polajnar, Jernej (2016-12-21).
"Wikiji v izobraževanju - Po desetih letih izkušenj"
Andragoška Spoznanja
22
(4): 73.
doi
10.4312/as.22.4.73-83
ISSN
2350-4188
Kennedy, Ian; Pass, Delia; Cadir, Roxan (26 March 2007).
One Laptop Per Teacher: Content and Curriculum for (in-service) Teacher Training
. pp.
2564–
2569.
ISBN
9781880094617
Archived
from the original on 19 July 2011
. Retrieved
18 December
2007
{{
cite book
}}
|website=
ignored (
help
"Wikiversity:What Wikiversity is not"
Wikiversity
Archived
from the original on 2009-08-06
. Retrieved
2007-02-14
"Wikiversity:Custodianship - Wikiversity"
Nentwich, Michael; König, René (2012).
Cyberscience 2.0: Research in the Age of Digital Social Networks, Volume 11 of Interaktiva, Schriftenreihe des Zentrums für Medien und Interaktivität, Gießen
. Interaktiva Series. Campus Verlag. p. 95.
ISBN
9783593395180
Shafee, Thomas (2017-11-24).
"Wikipedia-integrated publishing: a comparison of successful models"
Health Inform
26
(2). Archived from
the original
on 2018-11-06
. Retrieved
2018-10-23
Editorial Board (2018-06-01).
"The aims and scope of WikiJournal of Science"
WikiJournal of Science
(1): 1.
doi
10.15347/wjs/2018.001
hdl
20.500.11820/d69c8176-2254-4ef6-aece-fcc2dbb301ac
ISSN
2470-6345
Shafee, Thomas; Das, Diptanshu; Masukume, Gwinyai; Häggström, Mikael (2017-01-15).
"WikiJournal of Medicine, the first Wikipedia-integrated academic journal"
WikiJournal of Medicine
(1).
doi
10.15347/wjm/2017.001
ISSN
2002-4436
Masukume, Gwinyai; Heilman, James; Häggström, Mikael (24 May 2016).
"Why getting medical information from Wikipedia isn't always a bad idea"
The Conversation
Archived
from the original on 2016-05-25
. Retrieved
2016-05-26
Miles, Dudley; et al. (2018).
"Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians"
WikiJournal of Humanities
(1): 1.
doi
10.15347/wjh/2018.001
ISSN
2639-5347
"Open publishing awards in category open publishing models"
openpublishingawards.org
. Archived from
the original
on 2019-12-20
. Retrieved
2019-11-13
"Wikidebate - Wikiversity"
en.wikiversity.org
Archived
from the original on 2021-07-09
. Retrieved
2021-07-07
"Wikidebate/Guidelines - Wikiversity"
Archived
from the original on 2021-07-09
. Retrieved
2021-07-07
"Wikiversity"
beta.wikiversity.org
Archived
from the original on 2015-09-19
. Retrieved
2022-02-07
"Scope of research on Wikiversity (in development)"
Multingual Wikiversity hub
Archived
from the original on 2009-08-15
. Retrieved
2007-02-14
"Wikiversity research guidelines (in development)"
Multilingual Wikiversity hub
Archived
from the original on 2009-09-07
. Retrieved
2007-02-14
"Category:Research"
Wikiversity
Archived
from the original on 2013-10-02
. Retrieved
2013-08-31
"Wikiversity Statistics"
Meta.Wikimedia.org
Archived
from the original on 4 September 2020
. Retrieved
11 September
2020
Nystedt, Dan (4 August 2007).
"Wikiversity Gains Momentum"
PCWorld
. Archived from
the original
on 20 September 2020
. Retrieved
5 June
2019
Bonk, Curtis J.; Zhang, Ke (2008).
Empowering Online Learning: 100+ Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing
John Wiley & Sons
. p. 192.
ISBN
978-0-7879-8804-3
Hoffman, Steven J. (2010).
Teaching the Humanities Online: A Practical Guide to the Virtual Classroom: A Practical Guide to the Virtual Classroom
. Taylor & Francis. p. 170.
ISBN
978-1-317-45898-2
"Students Learn Science Communication Through Wikiversity"
Aps Observer
31
(7). Association for Psychological Science. 29 August 2018.
Archived
from the original on 10 August 2019
. Retrieved
18 November
2019
Froehlich, Annette (2019).
Embedding Space in African Society: The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030 Supported by Space Applications
. Springer. pp.
248–
249.
ISBN
978-3-030-06040-4
External links
edit
Wikinews has related news:
Wikimedia Netherlands 2007 conference held on wikis and education
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Wikiversity
Wikiversity has learning resources about
Wikiversity:What is Wikiversity?
Wikipedia:List of Wikiversities
Wikiversity annual activity
English Wikiversity annual activity
The
Wikiversity multilingual portal
– with links to all Wikiversity sites.
The
English language Wikiversity
(in
beta
phase)
Resources for Professional Development
dead link
Prepared for the Fall conference of the Missouri Juvenile Justice Association, October—2006, Office of State Courts Administrator, Division of Judicial Education P48.
"Conference Review"
by Peter Mulholland; Journal of Emergency Primary Health Care; Vol.4, Issue 4, 2006. (
pdf version
Topps, D. "Sharing medical educational resources using free and open-source software." in 7th Annual WONCA Rural Health Conference – Transforming Rural Practice Through Education. 2006. Seattle, WA, USA.
"Access to Global Learning: A Matter of Will"
by Steven R. Van Hook; Education Resources Information Center; (ERIC Document No. ED492804); April 27, 2006.
"Using Wiki to Promote Collaborative Learning in Statistics Education"
by Dani Ben-Zvi; Technology Innovations in Statistics Education; Volume 1, Issue 1, 2007, Article 4; Page 4. (
pdf version
Archived
2007-09-01 at the
Wayback Machine
"Bootstrapping a Semantic Wiki Application for Learning Mathematics"
by Claus Zinn.
"Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age"
by Axel Bruns; Proceedings ICE 3: Ideas, Cyberspace, Education.
"The Challenges and Successes of Wikibookian Experts and Wikibook Novices: Classroom and Community Collaborative Experiences"
dead link
by Suthiporn Sajjapanroj, Curt Bonk, Mimi Lee and Meng-Fen Grace Lin.
Marieke Guy (October 2006).
"Wiki or Won't He? A Tale of Public Sector Wikis"
Ariadne
(49). Archived from
the original
on 2009-09-11
. Retrieved
2007-12-18
"New-Media Art Education and Its Discontents"
by Trebor Scholz.
"Wikiversity; or education meets the free culture movement: An ethnographic investigation"
by Norm Friesen, Janet Hopkins.
Beta Wikiversity
Wikimedia Foundation
People
Projects
Wikipedia community (Wikipedians)
Current
Bernadette Meehan
Lisa Seitz-Gruwell
Dariusz Jemielniak
Rebecca MacKinnon
Raju Narisetti
Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
Esra'a Al Shafei
Jimmy Wales
Past
Hampton Lintorn-Catlin
Danese Cooper
Bishakha Datta
Florence Devouard
Oscar van Dillen
Sue Gardner
Arnnon Geshuri
Mike Godwin
Aaron Halfaker
James Heilman
Maryana Iskander
Guy Kawasaki
Patricio Lorente
Katherine Maher
Erik Möller
María Sefidari
Lila Tretikov
Luis Villa
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Wikiversity
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Other
Wikimedia movement
List of Wikimedia chapters
Bangladesh
Deutschland
Israel
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Polska
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Monkey selfie copyright dispute
Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA
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The Signpost
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