There are other wiki sites which develop coursework. The purpose of this policy is to lay out:
- how Appropedia relates to those sites,
- how to avoid duplication
- when content should go here, and when on a different site
Wikibooks and Wikiversity
W has textbooks and W has courses. Unfortunately there is little at this stage that is of relevance to appropriate technology, sustainability, or international development. (Discuss on the talk page.)
Develop on Appropedia, or other sites?
Possible policies:
- All coursework development could be directed elsewhere. Appropedia would have a portal, or a bunch of resource pages, as a guide to educational resources online (and offline, i.e. books, programs)
- Encourage open wiki development of material at Wikibooks and Wikiversity, but allow more closely monitored development on Appropedia, when desired. Appropedia has an editing community which is focused on these areas of knowledge (sustainability and development), and we have a policy of rigor.
- Allow posting of coursework on Appropedia as an alternative to OpenCourseWare - is this of value? (E.g. if a small institution or course wants to release their material are they likely to find it difficult to do it through OCW?) Or should we look into OCW, and facilitating the sharing of materials?
- Note: OCW may not exist for some members of the academic community. A list of OCW Members is shown, so what about other universities?
- Appropedia could focus on Service Learning, applied and experiential learning. (On the other hand, Wikibooks and Wikiversity don't exclude this kind of material, do they? If not, it's an artificial distinction.)
- Appropedia, focusing on sustainability, appropriate technology, poverty reduction and service learning, can integrate the coursework laid out for students with the site. Coursework can find students editing and creating pages at Appropedia as part of their coursework. E.g. A course teaching about safe drinking water, can include assignments where students edit water-based pages at Appropedia (the instructor checks their user-contributions to assess a grade) and can include a project where students create a project-based page that is reviewed by the instructor. This integrates the site that thier coursework is published on, with their actual coursework.
Note that whatever policy is chosen, Appropedia intends to drive the development of material for sustainable education in Wikibooks and Wikiversity. All material developed here is under GFDL and so can be used by other wiki sites.