World University and School: Wiki Data-centric Education

https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/data/entries/world-university-and-school-and-data

WUaS seeks to make data work for individuals and communities by creating wiki schools for free CC degrees for highest quality education.

Written by Scott MacLeod

Updated on 11:11, Sep 28, 2015

In one sentence, describe your idea as simply as possible.

Under the umbrella of World University and School, we will set up wiki schools in as many of the world’s languages as possible and will gradually expand from single courses in many areas into degree programs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecsy8lfW-yQ

Open wiki data-centric schools in many or most of the world’s 8000 languages, the incorporation of courses created under Creative Commons licensing, and open-courseware universities and degrees provided to citizens of any of the world’s 200 countries will generate much data and allow learning-oriented sharing of data. This will benefit many individuals and communities. WUaS presently allows people to teach and generate data by wiki-adding news articles in any language, and is planning both school newspapers as well as Journalism Schools focusing on online news in each of the 200 countries. WUaS also seeks to help facilitate and define the educational web and the flow of open education information and knowledge generation interactively as conversation, and both inter-lingually and in terms of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Briefly describe the need that you're trying to address.

World University and School will address the problem of affordable education for poor students in many parts of the world. This need extends to courses of the highest academic quality that can be delivered online at essentially no cost for degrees, unlike those provided by current online institutions where the fees charged are beyond the resources of many students and the courses often are of questionable value.

What progress have you made so far?

Over several years, WUaS has developed a wiki platform, which has about 700 areas devoted to open teaching and learning. World University and School (EIN:27-3105368) is a 501c(3) organization licensed in California (CA Corporation #:3289561). WUaS is also Google-verified.

What would be a successful outcome for your project?

World University and School would like to become a major academic employer in all languages, and a leading on-line educational institution in all countries. A successful outcome in the first year would be enrolling at least 500 students in at least 100 courses. By the end of 2020, a successful outcome would entail awarding undergraduate degrees to at least 25 students, delivering courses in 100 languages, and enrolling students in 75 countries.

Please list your team members and their relevant experience/skills.

1. Scott MacLeod has a B.A. from Reed College and a M.A. from the University of California. He’s been developing the WUaS web site for 7 years, and has taught courses on the ground and online.
2. Larry Viehland has a B.S. from M.I.T. and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. He is a tenured professor of chemistry at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, PA. He has published more than 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
3. With funds World University and School will build a team.

Location

While incorporated in California as a non-profit initially for accreditation reasons, World University and School seeks to be online in all countries for accrediting university and degrees.