Education/Newsletter/July 2014/VLE content reuse at Wikimania

VLE content reuse at Wikimania

There will be a "VLE content reuse" introduction at the Wikimania Education Pre-Conference this year, on 7 August. This is a new direction for those interested in the Wikimedia/education interface. At the Future of Education workshop 21–22 June in London's Barbican Centre, which will host Wikimania, I was able to give an unscheduled talk on "Wikimedia Curricula", and that opportunity led on to this development.

It wasn't actually the time or place to go for any firm conclusions on the whole topic, of matching what one teaches about Wikimedia to audience on the bigger scales. But I drew on a number of sources: How Wikipedia Works, training materials I use in workshops, and the Moodle site put up by Wikimedia UK. The Moodle—more formally the WMUK Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)—has been in development now since 2012, and this was the first time I had spoken about it in public.

During the rest of the workshop, we were working towards the program for the Wikimania Education Pre-Conference. Wikimania will be an opportunity for the community in general to get involved in the reuse of the VLE content. I went on to do some curriculum work on the VLE, now posted on the Wikimedia UK wiki. The text of the VLE has been dumped into a dedicated wiki so that anyone can find it, without a VLE account; and that content is CC-by-SA licensed. But the VLE has further content: a set of around 400 quiz questions, for example, that could be re-used via a new tool I demonstrated, authored by Magnus Manske. There are also ample resource sections, giving access to helpful Wikipedia pages on the VLE topics.

I'm hoping to explain more, throughout Wikimania, at the WikiLounge drop-in training sessions.

Editor's Note: VLE is the acronym for Virtual Learning Environment, a type of online learning platform.