Open Educational Resources (OER):Examples

This page lists selected content from Wikiversity. The page is related to featured content on Open Educational Resources (OER), but extends much more widely to content which illustrate things about Wikiversity other than educational value. This page is not a directory of Wikiversity content.

Possible purposes of this page edit

Studying Wikiversity content in order to develop a theory of wiki learning.
Finding candidates for content development drives.
Research into Wikiversity.

Featured resources edit

Note: this table is transcluded from featured content. Please refer to the original page for more information about featured content.

Name	Main coordinator(s)	Subject	Level	Size	Notes
Observational astronomy	User:Mu301	Astronomy	Secondary, tertiary	1	Project participants access public astronomy databases and explore outer space.
Bloom clock project	User:SB_Johnny	Biology, horticulture	Research, universal	858	Participants record bloom times of wildflowers and other plants; 858 plants and 144 keys.
Teaching and Learning Online	Various	eLearning, information technology	Secondary, tertiary		This is a collection of originally unconnected resources revolving around the topic of teaching and learning online. Some of the resources are highly developed - others hardly at all. Plenty of opportunity for enhancement. 22 resources, some of which have many pages and are featured in their own right; others are smaller and some are currently just a single page. Authors include User:Teemu, User:Cormaggio and User:Leighblackall.
Historical Introduction to Philosophy	User:MaryCordova	philosophy	Tertiary, (secondary)	21	"material generated by participants in a course outside of Wikiversity"
Learning the basics of Filmmaking	User:Robert Elliott	film, media	Secondary, tertiary	60+	Nicely designed course on writing scripts, storyboards, and other aspects of narrative Filmmaking; difficult to tell how large this project is.
Technical writing	User:TWFred	writing	non-formal, vocational	18	very well developed resources
Web Design	User:Michaelnelson	information technology	universal	0	Launched in 2005; has managed to encourage other contributors to come in from the wild, but is still mainly the original scrappy but voluminous framework. Needs work on aesthetics and structure. Some pages need completing. Modules missing. Great opportunity for improving this.
Economic Classroom Experiments	User:FeeleTim, User:Toddkaplan, User:Dieter	economics	tertiary, secondary	21	The coordinators and main contributors are staff at the University of Exeter and won a national teaching award for work documented in these pages.[1]
Topic:Breton	User:Luzmael, User:AC'hM.	languages	tertiary, non-formal	69	nice design; well-developed
Media literacy	Renee Hobbs	information technology, media	tertiary, secondary	7	a collaborative project between graduate students working under Renee Hobbs
Topic:Instructional Design	User:Phonebein	Education, eLearning	Tertiary	c.130	Collaborative development emerging from real world courses. Ongoing. Probably graduate students working on this. Created under the aegis of Dr Peter Honebein of Indiana University.
Nonlinear finite elements	User:Banerjee	Mechanical engineering	Tertiary	150-200 (300-350)	Individually developed course material, probably in connection with real world courses. The higher page count in brackets refers to the total number of pages if closely associated projects by the same user are included.
Electric Circuit Analysis	User:Thuvack	Electrical engineering	Secondary, tertiary	12	Elaborately designed.
Trade Finance	User:MSUglobal	Economics	Tertiary	240	Developed as part of Michigan State University's first Open CourseWare and simultaneously published on Wikiversity by the creators. An example of government grant money being used directly for the creation of open educational resources.
Assistant teacher course	User:Fasten	Education	Secondary	100	Course materials for training secondary school pupils to become involved in the teaching process as assistant to their teachers, following the principle that the best way to learn something is to teach it.
Introduction to Swedish	User:Mats	Languages	Universal	17
Introduction to Computers	User:Areil123	Information technology	Universal	21	Originally run as a course at a real-world college. The content is almost entirely created by a large number of User:Areil123's students. Uses a lot of images and many podcasts prepared by the students. Genuinely very introductory. Some of the later lessons in this resource need better wikifying and dividing into subpages.
Spanish 1	User:Allioshida	Languages	Universal	29	A good solid start to Wikiversity's Spanish language training. Should provide inspiration and/or frameworks for others when creating more Spanish courses.
Motivation and emotion	User:Jtneill	Psychology	Tertiary	178	Course materials for an undergraduate psychology course about motivation and emotion. Includes lectures and tutorials plus students have contributed over a 1000 pages about specific motivation and emotion topics.

Projects which are not featured edit

This section lists major projects on Wikiversity which are worth studying to understand what Wikiversity is, but which for some reason (usually given) are not suitable for listing as featured resources. The experience behind this listing is that during its first years, much content on Wikiversity was created and then simply disappeared, forgotten, leaving little sense of what Wikiversity was actually doing.

Multi-page projects edit

Anything big at Wikiversity should be listed here.

Name	Main coordinator(s)	Subject	Level	Size	Notes
Lunar Boom Town	User:Mirwin	Engineering, management	Universal	71	Was the point of this course to really plan a city on the moon? Either way, the use of fantasy scenarios for simulations is an approach used in many fields of applied learning. This project experiments with Wikiversity as a centre for multiple simulations related to the same topic. The project is unique in kind and worth studying to see what a wiki learning environment could be used for.
History of Quebec and Canada/Study Guide	User:Mikec	History	secondary, tertiary	18	Unmaintained and incomplete. The author was a retiring schoolteacher looking to preserve his course materials for posterity. He had difficulty finding a suitable site to host them and turned to Wikiversity shortly after Wikiversity was launched. The publication of the materials elsewhere led to copyright misunderstandings. The coordinator left Wikiversity as a result of these misunderstandings. Other things which need sorting out: wikification, conversion of quizzes to new format now that the quiz extension exists.
Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War	User:Daanschr, User:Erkan Yilmaz	Literature, history	nonformal	13	This was one of the larger reading group projects which experimented with synchronous IRC-based study methods coupled with wiki pages. Strongly experimental in nature. Worth studying to see what worked, what didn't and why or why not.
Educational Media Awareness Campaign	User:McCormack	eLearning, information technology	Universal	100-150	Includes a rotating Picture of the Day facility for the main page, and more rotating subject-related pictures for subject portals and other portals.
ESL for Primary School	User:Laserenite	Languages	Primary	9	Abandoned project. ESL is likely to be a popular topic on Wikiversity if it was properly coordinated. Quite a lot of detailed work was done here, but it fizzled out and things are quite a mess.
Science for kindergarten	User:Harriska2	Science	Primary	7	The contributor has created a variety of pages across the whole early primary school curriculum during 2007 and 2008. The resources have a feeling of incompletion and scatteredness. Support for this project needed?
High school physics	None	Physics	Secondary	27	The project is perhaps half-developed. The resources are remarkably flat and media-free. Could be developed. The most interesting thing about this project is that it appears to have no coordinator at all. It was put together by a genuinely leaderless and large group of contributors.
Introduction to Latin	User:Prothmes	Languages	Secondary	6	Recently started (2008).
Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society	User:Countrymike	Education	Tertiary, nonformal	7	Another experiment in the "reading group" learning format.
Category:Japanese	User:Balloonguy (and others?)	Languages	Universal	48	There are a surprisingly large number of detailed pages devoted to learning Japanese. This category needs sorting out and making sense of. The area is currently unmaintained, but there is plenty of opportunity for turning this into something good.
Fundamentals of Neuroscience	User:Kernsters	Science	Universal	25	Currently still under review for featured status.

Single page projects edit

Name	Main coordinator(s)	Subject	Level	Size	Notes
Hitler's Germany	User:Kfitton	History	Tertiary	1	The project is structurally interesting, as it represents an early and partially successful attempt to realise a specific learning model for Wikiversity. The project attracted a variety of contributors over a period of more than a year.
Human Genetic Uniqueness Project	User:JWSchmidt	Biology	Secondary, tertiary	1	This project is a prime example of a model of learning promoted at Wikiversity during 2006 and 2007. The initial "coordinator" starts a framework, into which a community is invited. The "coordinator" then steps back and disengages from the project, waiting for it to achieve a life of its own. Questions which need to be applied include: what is the measure of success? what can we learn from the (in)activity of this resource?
War and Iran	None	Politics	Nonformal	1	An experimental resource from the early days of Wikiversity. This resource experiments with the debate format. It is a large and unstructured series of discussion threads expressing points of view.
Sugar in the times of cholera	User:Aldenis	History	Research	1	Failed research proposal on a very specialised subject. Placed here in Wikiversity's early days, it could be that the author hoped to attract wide attention from academia.
Crocodile	User:jtneill	Science	Primary	1	One of User:jtneill's earliest experiments in using a wiki environment for education. Exemplary use of media. Probably ought to be featured, but currently a little small? Could more pages in the same series covering different animals be developed?