Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Spine-cheek anemonefish: Hi Scott -- what is World University & School?

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Hi Scott -- what is World University and School?


Hi R,

World University and School is a startup university and school, like Wikipedia with MIT OpenCourseWare / edX / MITx / HarvardX. With a MIT OCW academic focus, WUaS is 1) a wiki platform for open teaching and learning, planned for all 3,000-8,000 languages and greater than 200 countries, and 2) is also planning free, online, bachelor, Ph.D., law and M.D. degrees, in as many languages and countries as possible, accrediting in California with the same organization that accredits Stanford and Berkeley, for example, to start, on MIT OCW. WUaS is planning for its first, online, matriculating, bachelor's degree class in 2014, using and building on the Conference Method, - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_Method_of_Teaching_and_Learning - as used at Reed College, in Google + group video hangouts, for example.

Scott




Hi R,

WUaS dates from around 2007 (from a conversation in a "Society and Information Technology" course I was teaching on Harvard's virtual island in SL), incorporated in 2010, got 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt status in 2011, and its second wiki, at Wikia, just began a few years ago (2009-ish), and its third wiki via Wikidata, as backend (written with Wikipedia's 285 languages in mind), is imminent.

WUaS is planning to matriculate our first bachelor's degree class in English in 2014 based loosely on a Reed College, undergraduate model (32 required courses, distribution requirements, required Freshman Humanities, junior qualifying exams, a senior thesis, plus a required, Freshman biology class with a programming component, for all), ideally with MIT professors in Google + group video hangout-like spaces, and with WUaS-hired graduate students from great universities (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#University_course_listings) learning to become professors and facilitating the conference method. WUaS is planning for our first, matriculating Ph.D. class in 2015, based on MIT's approach to Ph.D.s, our first law class in 2016 (ideally Harvard Law-centric) and our first M.D. class in 2017 (ideally Harvard Medical School-centric). WUaS is Creative Commons' licensed, and STEM-focused, vis-a-vis MIT OCW. WUaS would like our first, matriculating, foreign language, MIT-centric, Ph.D. degree class to begin in 2015.

In terms of Reed College, there's a lot of potential for graduate degrees at WUaS for Reedies, especially, in these early years ahead, but WUaS is too new for Reed to have used it yet in any way, per your question.

What do you do at MIT and Harvard?

Best,
Scott






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