Wikiversity - Wikipedia Jump to content Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Special pages Search Search Appearance Donate Create account Log in Personal tools Donate Create account Log in Contents move to sidebar hide (Top) 1 History 2 Project details 3 Learning resources 4 Research Toggle Research subsection 4.1 WikiJournals 5 Languages 6 Reception 7 See also 8 References 9 External links Toggle the table of contents Wikiversity 82 languages Afrikaans Alemannisch العربية الدارجة مصرى অসমীয়া Azərbaycanca Boarisch Беларуская (тарашкевіца) Betawi Български ပအိုဝ်ႏဘာႏသာႏ বাংলা Català 閩東語 / Mìng-dĕ̤ng-ngṳ̄ Čeština Чӑвашла Dansk Deutsch Ελληνικά Esperanto Español Eesti Euskara فارسی Suomi Français Hausa 客家語 / Hak-kâ-ngî עברית हिन्दी Hrvatski Magyar Հայերեն Bahasa Indonesia Italiano 日本語 ქართული ಕನ್ನಡ 한국어 Lietuvių Latviešu മലയാളം Bahasa Melayu Malti नेपाली Nederlands Norsk bokmål ଓଡ଼ିଆ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ Polski Português Română Русский Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Simple English Slovenčina Slovenščina Shqip Српски / srpski Svenska Kiswahili ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ தமிழ் ᥖᥭᥰ ᥖᥬᥲ ᥑᥨᥒᥰ Тоҷикӣ ไทย Tagalog Türkçe Татарча / tatarça Українська اردو Oʻzbekcha / ўзбекча Vèneto Tiếng Việt Winaray 吴语 მარგალური Vahcuengh 閩南語 / Bân-lâm-gí 粵語 中文 Edit links Article Talk English Read Edit View history Tools Tools move to sidebar hide Actions Read Edit View history General What links here Related changes Upload file Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Switch to legacy parser Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Meta-Wiki Wikibooks Wikiversity Wikidata item Appearance move to sidebar hide From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Wikimedia wiki for learning materials "},"type":{"wt":"[[E-learning|Educational]], [[Autodidacticism|self study]]"},"language":{"wt":"[[Multilingual]] ({{NUMBEROF|active|wikiversity}} active)<ref name=\"Sitematrix\" />"},"registration":{"wt":"Optional"},"owner":{"wt":"[[Wikimedia Foundation]]"},"author":{"wt":"Wikimedia community"},"launch_date":{"wt":"{{Start date and age|2006|08|15}}"}},"i":0}}]}'>Wikiversity Screenshot Screenshot of the Wikiversity home page Type of site Educational, self study Available in Multilingual (18 active)[1] Owner Wikimedia Foundation Created by Wikimedia community URL wikiversity.org Commercial No Registration Optional Launched August 15, 2006; 20 years ago (2006-08-15) Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project[2][3] 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. There are Wikiversity sites active for 18 languages[1] comprising a total of 167,004 articles and 1,024 recently active editors.[4] 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,[5] 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).[6] The launch of Wikiversity was announced at Wikimania 2006.[7] Project details [edit] Wikiversity is a center for the creation of and use of free learning materials, and the provision of learning activities.[8][9] 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] Wikiversity "administrators" are known as "curators", "custodians", and "bureaucrats" based on their user rights.[18] Learning resources [edit] Learning resources are developed by an individual or groups, either on their own initiative, or as part of a learning project.[19] 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.[20] 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). Research [edit] 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 WikiJournals 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] 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.[28] 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.[29][30] Currently the English Wikiversity hosts more than 376 research pages.[31] As of August 2026, there are wikiversity sites for 18 languages of which 18 are active and 0 are closed.[1] The active sites have 167,004 articles,[4] There are 3,586,817 registered users of which 1,024 are recently active.[4] The top ten Wikiversity language projects by mainspace article count:[4] № Language Wiki Content pages Pages Edits Admins Users Active users Files \n"},"2":{"wt":"<nowiki>\n|- style=\"text-align: right;\"\n| {{{i}}}\n| {{Mw lang|{{Wikipedia rank by size|{{{i}}}|wikiversity}}}} \n| [[:v:{{Wikipedia rank by size|{{{i}}}|wikiversity}}:|{{Wikipedia rank by size|{{{i}}}|wikiversity}}]]\n| {{NUMBEROF|articles|{{Wikipedia rank by size|{{{i}}}|wikiversity}}.wikiversity|N}}\n| {{NUMBEROF|pages|{{Wikipedia rank by size|{{{i}}}|wikiversity}}.wikiversity|N}}\n| {{NUMBEROF|edits|{{Wikipedia rank by size|{{{i}}}|wikiversity}}.wikiversity|N}}\n| {{NUMBEROF|admins|{{Wikipedia rank by size|{{{i}}}|wikiversity}}.wikiversity|N}}\n| {{NUMBEROF|users|{{Wikipedia rank by size|{{{i}}}|wikiversity}}.wikiversity|N}}\n| {{NUMBEROF|activeusers|{{Wikipedia rank by size|{{{i}}}|wikiversity}}.wikiversity|N}}\n| {{NUMBEROF|files|{{Wikipedia rank by size|{{{i}}}|wikiversity}}.wikiversity|N}}</nowiki>"},"count":{"wt":"10"}},"i":0}}]}'> 1 German de 78,206 150,190 1,111,739 9 41,728 62 2,728 2 English en 37,376 243,798 2,791,120 12 3,105,780 327 42,452 3 French fr 17,602 54,917 985,313 8 80,549 54 83 4 Chinese zh 6,841 17,795 356,367 4 20,405 170 0 5 Italian it 5,406 28,505 286,267 3 46,701 41 10 6 Portuguese pt 5,061 26,603 185,183 3 44,781 167 102 7 Czech cs 4,558 14,399 149,132 4 18,836 15 1 8 Russian ru 4,248 22,465 165,132 3 36,896 30 405 9 Spanish es 2,257 15,608 179,633 3 62,584 23 0 10 error: language code: beta not recognized beta 1,136 21,064 383,768 7 55,616 44 0 For a complete list with totals see Wikimedia Statistics:[32] 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".[33] 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."[34] 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 Wiki…