WikiConference India 2011/Submissions/Accelerating WikiBooks

Links to the relevant files: Accelerating Wikibooks : PDF of presentation Accelerating Wikibooks : Report (PDF) Accelerating Wikibooks - PPT

Timestamp: 17:09, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Title of the submission

Accelerating Wikibooks : Adopting new practices suitable for collaborative creation of Textbooks Subtitle : Going one step ahead from encyclopaedic articles

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, or presentation)

Presentation

Author of the submission

Dharav Solanki (--Thewinster 17:09, 30 August 2011 (UTC))[reply]

E-mail address or username (if username, please confirm email address in Special:Preferences)

Thewinster

State of your origin (Country, if you are not based in India)

Daman_and_Diu

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)

Personal homepage or blog

http://www.pullheavendown.blogspot.com

Abstract (maximum 500 words)

Background

It was a logical step to expand the collaborative process behind Wikipedia to give birth to sister projects that dealt with more complicated things than a standalone encyclopaedic article. However, the sluggish development of materials on the Sister Projects drops anvil sized hints on us that the collaborative approach needs much more tinkering and adaptation to best serve the purposes that they were built for.

Proposal

I have been toying around with certain ideas in my head and from this time to the conference, I'll be discussing them in detail with the wikibooks community for feasibility and possible adaptations. The ideas can be summarized as follows:

1. "Begin With An End in Mind" Textbooks differ from A collection of encyclopaedic articles on the same topics in one very simple manner : Textbooks have a learning progression and every chapter has a few learning outcomes. The one key adaptation of Media Wiki software for Wikibooks is to support creating pages that Map Learning Outcomes, derive associated case studies, examples and anecdotes and connect learning outcomes through different chapters.

I will further analyse the processes through which this Map can then be translated into more actions and meaningful edits : using the work of Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab and B. J. Fogg Persuasive Design : Eight Step Process by B. J. Fogg

2. Build up a reference material section, separate from the Discussions Page Internet based portals are publishing information at a faster rate then ever before. Even filtering through the best ones and adding annotations and suggestions using these select sources - including magazine articles and newspapers - can build up a large repository of material which could then be fed to the different wikimedia projects.

The proposal here has not been worded to do the idea enough justice. However, the outcomes if such a project comes to fruition are numerous!

These could be...

Consider the current stream of articles on Governance and corruption in the Indian media. Using the best of these news items as sources of ideas for different projects can be a very big move for creating meaningful, more accessible textbooks on Civis, Administration; adapting already existing textbooks in a manner which is easier to create (thanks to what has been deposited in the repository).
Comments on articles on Popular Science, or technical articles in newspapers regarding scientific inventions can trigger discussions on relevant topics, building up examples for the respective topics.

It has to be kept in mind that such a project does not involve using newspaper and media articles as a basis. It uses their content as a trigger to create more reference items, discussions and alternative projects (for let us say Wikiversity) through annotations and debates.

Apart from these major changes, I will be delving deeper into very minor tweaks and fixes that are all geared towards accelrating the iteration of content on larger projects like books and additional learning resources on Wikiversity.

Track (Community/Knowledge/Outreach/Technology)

Knowledge

Will you attend Wikiconference if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

Slides or further information (optional)