Silky sifaka: 4 Questions from MIT OCW exploring WUaS as a Translation Affiliate into the Indonesian language

4 Questions from MIT OCW exploring WUaS as a Translation Affiliate into the Indonesian language


Dear Yvonne Ng (at MIT OCW),

Thank you for your emails.

In these steps toward a possible pilot agreement as an OCW Translation Affiliate, I have read the following MIT OCW pages - http://ocw.mit.edu/help/faq-using-ocw-materials/#5 - and - http://ocw.mit.edu/terms/ - and Creative Commons’ licensed World University and School plans to comply fully with them as they develop, in seeking to become a MIT OCW translation affiliate.

I have responded to these questions below.

1. Please provide a brief background on your university that includes:
  - when it was founded, how many students attend, how many faculty currently teach

2. How will this project be funded/supported?

3. How many employees/dedicated translation volunteers will be involved in this project?

4. What is their level of expertise in the subjects they plan to translate and how much general translation experience do they have?


1. Please provide a brief background on your university that includes:

  - when it was founded, how many students attend, how many faculty currently teach

World University and School incorporated in 2010 in the state of California, and received U.S. tax-exempt 501 c 3 status in 2011. (In a conversation in a “Society and Information Technology” class he’s taught for many (7) semesters on Harvard’s virtual island in Second Life, Scott MacLeod (WUaS's founder and president) started talking about an online, wiki, world university, probably in 2007; Scott gave a talk at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh (in Oakland), Pennsylvania in 2007 about World University and School, among whom were Quakers from the local Meeting present).

WUaS is like Wikipedia with MIT OCW (but not endorsed by MIT OCW), so WUaS is both teachable at and editable, as well as is planning online, accredited, Creative Commons’ licensed (so, free), great universities’ centric, bachelor, Ph.D., law and M.D. degrees, as well as International Baccalaureate, high school diplomas, first in English, then in the 6 United Nations’ languages, and then in many larger languages (accrediting in some of 204+ countries), as well as with extensible, wiki schools in all 7,105+ languages, each a wiki page to begin, for open teaching and learning; Wikipedia is in 285 languages by way of comparison, and we all wrote it thanks to wiki technologies.

WUaS is planning to matriculate its first, online class of undergraduates from all over the world in the autumn of 2014, in English, for undergraduate, bachelor’s degrees. WUaS has received the ‘green light’ for initial state approval from California’ Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE), which is required for seeking accreditation with Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC senior). WUaS has also talked in person with a vice president at Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC senior) accrediting agency, which accredits Stanford, UC Berkeley, and about 160 other colleges in California, Hawaii, as well as a few higher education institutions in other states and countries; WASC senior just accredited, for example, the Hastings School of Law, one of two UC Berkeley law schools, at the Ph.D. level. Undergraduate accreditation with WASC senior is a 3-stage process, and WUaS won’t become fully accredited until after we graduate our first undergraduate class, probably in 2018. WUaS is anticipating anywhere from a couple of hundred students to a couple of thousand students applying this autumn 2013, to take 32 MIT OCW-centric courses over 4 years, matriculating online in the autumn of 2014.

WUaS plans to hire graduate students from great universities, particularly MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, etc., to teach, in part, interactively and in real time via the Conference Method - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_Method_of_Teaching_and_Learning - in something like Google + group video Hangouts, and accredit on the MIT OCW faculty in video - http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/ - as a beginning.


2. How will this project be funded/supported?

Creative Commons’ licensed World University and School has an endowment / bookstore-computer store business model - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Business_Plan, - and needs presently to raise $5,000 to pay the BPPE fees, and an initial $12,500 to pay the initial WASC senior fees. Eventually, as WUaS gains legitimacy and credibility, WUaS plans to fund raise from governments and companies, as well as individuals, around the world to offer free, C.C. MIT OCW-centric, accredited, university degrees in many, many countries.


3. How many employees/dedicated translation volunteers will be involved in this project?

For World University and School’s degree wing, WUaS plans to become a significant employer worldwide as a great, STEM-centric, online university, in many languages and countries. As WUaS begins to hire graduate student instructors (ideally MIT graduate students who have taken the MIT OCW courses, for example, and from other, great universities) on Professorial career paths, and to matriculate students for university degrees in many languages, WUaS plans, significantly, to focus on hiring this population of young, digitally oriented, overachieving academics over decades. WUaS could conceivably employ thousands and thousands of great universities’ graduate student instructors over the next 20 years.

For World University and School’s open teaching and learning, wiki wing, in all languages and countries via wiki information technologies, particularly vis-à-vis the newly developed Wikidata database, WUaS will engage a Wikipedia model of volunteers, potentially with thousands and tens of thousands of volunteers in 20 years.


4. What is their level of expertise in the subjects they plan to translate and how much general translation experience do they have?

With regard to translation into the Indonesian language, WUaS Board Member, Tito Dimas, for example, is a native Indonesian speaker, and a lecturer at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, and is in active communication with the head of this Indonesian OCW project - http://ocw.ui.ac.id - as well as in communication with a head in the Indonesian Ministry of Education (vis-à-vis WUaS accreditation), who has 1 or 2 Harvard degrees. This is the model WUaS plans to engage for other languages, as well. (Here's WUaS's Indonesian page, - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Indonesia - and the beginning of an online, accredited, C.C., MIT OCW-centric university in Indonesian (as well as in English and eventually in other languages).

To the degree possible, WUaS plans to engage Wikipedia’s translators, as well as develop translators from matriculated students studying for WUaS’s MIT OCW-centric, university degrees in English, but with other first languages.


Please let me know if there’s any other information I might provide you as WUaS proceeds to explore becoming an OCW translation affiliate. Thank you.

Best,
Scott

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