From: Adriaan@scinet.up.ac.za (Adriaan Odendaal)
Subject: Re: ADMIN: DOC: FAQ for Usenet University
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 10:30:46 GMT
Organization: University of Pretoria
Keywords: self, distance, education, uu, volunteer

In article <1992Aug29.210734.11915@nntp.hut.fi> jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala) writes:
>From: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
>Subject: ADMIN: DOC: FAQ for Usenet University
>Keywords: self, distance, education, uu, volunteer
>Date: 29 Aug 92 21:07:34 GMT
>[Followups directed to alt.uu.future]
>
>FAQ for Usenet University		Last changed 29 August 1992
>
>Available by anonymous ftp on host nic.funet.fi, in file pub/doc/uu/FAQ.
>
>Contains the "what-is-uu" document
>(nic.funet.fi:/pub/doc/uu/what-is-uu) and a current list of UU groups
>(nic.funet.fi:/pub/doc/uu/newsgroups), both of which plus this
>document are available also in Gopherspace at Helsinki University of
>Technology, under Topics/Learning.
>
>----------------------------------------
>What is UU?
>
>Contents:
>
>1. What is Usenet University?
>2. What the name means and how to participate in UU
>3. Goals and principles
>4. Administration
>5. Copyright on the articles and learning material
>6. Technology
>7. Disciplines or division of topics 
>8. Practical steps
>
>
>1. What is Usenet University?
>
>Usenet University, or UU (not to be confused with Uppsala University)
>is, or more accurately will be, a society of people interested in
>learning, teaching or tutoring.  There is no formal organization or
>funding at least as of yet, and the concept exists currently mostly in
>the newsgroup alt.uu.future which was created on June 12, 1992.  It is
>the group for discussing the future of Usenet University, and
>discussions on alt.uu.future will to a large extent shape what the UU
>will become.  Many people have already participated on the discussion
>and influenced the shaping of this document.  (If you do not get
>alt.uu.future, contact your news administrator for more information if
>it's a problem with the propagation or some other reason - the
>administrator often can provide a newsgroup when requested).
>
>
>2. What the name means and how to participate in UU
>
>"Usenet" refers to the global conferencing network used as a medium or
>one of the media for Usenet University, as well as the "spirit" of UU
>- UU is open to anyone who can access it, free for expressing ideas,
>is quite a bit anarchistic in nature, and thus as Usenet newsgroups UU
>will be what the participants cause it to be.
>
>"University" refers to the "community" aspect of UU, not so much to
>"university level" or "academic discipline", neither does it mean that
>there are specific plans for UU to become a university where you can
>get a certificate from.  This doesn't mean to say that certificates or
>recgonition of Usenet University by accepted academic would be
>unthinkable, just that it isn't central to the concept of UU at least
>at this point in the development.  Certificates and recognition
>probably will come via cooperation with existing organization if they
>will.
>
>For now, Usenet Univesity will operate under the "alt" hierarchy, as
>"alt.uu.*".  It would be desirable to later move to a separate
>distribution, out from under alt when there will be numerous
>newsgroups for various areas of learning.  Thus, there would be a
>separate distrubution and hierarchy like (just an example)
>
>uu.future
>uu.lang.esperanto.beg
>uu.lang.esperanto.material
>uu.lang.esperanto.exercises
>uu.comp.lang.pascal.env.gnu
>uu.comp.lang.pascal.beg
>
>However, "uu" is already taken by Uppsala University.  Alternative
>names possible for the distribution are World University (wu),
>Planetary University (pu), Virtual University etc.  There will be time
>to discuss and decide this when the change to a separate distribution
>and hierarchy is made - for now the name is Usenet University and the
>hierarchy is alt.uu, ie. the hierarchy will be something like the
>above list with "alt." prepended.
>
>
>3. Goals and principles
>
>One primary goal of UU is to use Usenet communications to offer
>participants possibilities to learn things, to educate themselves, to
>teach others, to exchange information on learning materials, tools and
>techniques as well as publish learning material itself.  In this
>respect UU will aim to become a kind of "place to learn".
>
>Connected with this, a primary principle of UU is openness, to stay
>open for anyone passing by just willing to learn, with little formal
>qualifications or requirements.  To try to commit to this principle
>much of the activity will happen on open newsgroups.  It probably will
>be desirable to have some kind of classifications in some of the
>groups for "beginner" and "advanced" topics to avoid problems of
>participants having very different vocabularies, concepts, levels of
>expertise etc. and thus communications problems.  To implement
>classification and make groups more worthwhile with moderated
>newsgroups, a possibility would be to have a matching unmoderated one
>from which "the cream" will be replicated on the moderated group.
>
>One important goal is to offer several alternative ways for learning.
>People learn best with different ways - some learn by reading books on
>their own, some by browsing around and experimenting, some prefer
>tutors or close teacher/student relationships, some prefer
>lectures/classes with strict structure, some learn by doing.  All
>these should be provided with an opportunity to learn with the style
>they prefer - it might mean there would be several groups for one
>topic, using different methodologies.
>
>One goal is to create, organize and offer references to learning
>material, to maintain lists of literature, Usenet newsgroups, ftp
>sites and services, libraries and so on relevant to fields
>
>One goal is to offer discussion groups for students who learn by
>tossing ideas around and discussing them, asking each other and
>helping each other out.
>
>One possible goal is to create and archive learning material
>(tutorials, exercies) itself.
>
>One possible goal is to offer possibilites for tutors and students to
>find each other for email teaching.
>
>
>4. Administration
>
>There are decisions to be made concerning the process of creation of
>newsgroups, possible moderation of them, how to divide topics and
>disciplines, how to handle possible (probable) flame wars and other
>possibly destructive phenomena, and so on.  Some kind of a
>decision-making process will need to be established for these.  To be
>compatible with the goals and principles of UU, some kind of a
>groupware decision-making support system would be useful to help the
>process.
>
>To better classify information exchange and to provide feedback for
>participants, some kind of accreditation / peer review system is
>desirable.  Here again groupware mechanisms and tools would be useful
>for being compatible with the openness principles, dividing work and
>avoiding single point of failure.
>
>
>5. Copyright on the articles and learning material
>
>According to the Berne convention, the author has the copyright on his
>or her work.  If a base of learning material is created, copyright is
>a relevant issue - should a "Usenet University" trust be created which
>holds the copyright, should the authors have the copyright with some
>kind of a GNU-like copyright, should the authors have the copyright
>and give other only the right to copy the documents in the UU context,
>should the created documents be put in the public domain.  There are
>lots of possibilities and at least if the aim is to create a big base
>of material some guidelines need to be established.
>
>
>6. Technology
>
>Technology which people os Usenet have varies widely.  Many have
>text-only 80 x 24 character displays, while many have workstations
>with big graphics screens with perhaps also color and sound, and
>software for multi-media email.  This needs to be addressed - for
>topics like learning to speak languages, for example sound can be an
>essential part and transmitting sounds on UU would be very beneficial.
>
>Besides the capabilites of the media, access to on-line resources such
>as ftp servers, archie, www, wais servers, newsgroup archives and
>other services on the Internet varies.  Some only have a Usenet feed
>with little possibility to access on-line services, some have very
>fast lines to the rest of the world and some are in between.
>
>These differences probably will divide discussions a bit - for
>learning of languages for example it could be useful to have a
>separate group for those who have sound capabilities, to avoid
>frustration on the part of those with no such access.
>
>
>7. Disciplines or division of topics 
>
>There are several possibilities for how to divide topics handled in
>UU.  There is the discipline division of the scientific community,
>there are various classifications used by libraries, there is the
>Usenet newsgroup division, etc.  It probably is not wise to use
>strictly just any one of these divisions, but it would seem useful to
>borrow from many of them.
>
>This is an issue which needs discussing.
>
>
>8. Later steps
>
>To get things rolling with respect to full-fledged course on UU, we
>should discuss suggestions for topics you think would be good as
>"prototype topics", with suggestions for group names.  These topics
>should be ones for which there are enough people interested on to
>reach "critical mass" to develop the course material.  One possibility
>would be to take a topic for which there already is reference material
>for - some newsgroups on Usenet have excellent FAQs with literature
>references, answers to many questions, hints from old-timers etc.
>which could offer a good start for a tutorial and/or a course run by
>teachers on the topic.
>
>It probably will be desirable to have a few groups for each topic.  An
>example division would be to have one group for generic discussions
>and one for material references / exercises / other
>"carefully-written" articles standing on their own.  Alternatively a
>system of keywords in the Subject field could be adopted (like used in
>sci.virtual-worlds) to mark the type of each article, but for
>unmoderated groups it would be hard to maintain the practice.
>
>
>9. What to do to keep the UU ball rolling and growing?
>
>For all who are willing to support the idea of UU and possible
>similar community projects / resources (like a community effort
>encyclopaedia, dictionaries between different languages), the thing to
>do is to _contribute_ something - just a simple thing like drafting a
>two dozen-item itemized list of subtopics on a thing you know
>something about and which you think could be turned into a document
>for others to read and help them learn.  Then others could fill in
>things on the document, and with each person contributing just a
>relatively small amount of work, something just might come out of it.
>Another thing to do would be to point out the UU idea and UU groups to
>people on other Usenet groups on topics you're interested in - many
>Usenet groups have FAQ's which are good information resources on the
>topic field, and the UU groups could be used as a media to develop
>those FAQ's.
>----------------------------------------
>Current newsgroups
>
>These new groups (created 22 July 1992) are part of the Usenet
>University.  For futher information on UU, see directory pub/doc/uu on
>the machine nic.funet.fi.
>
>A "material" group means that the group exists for postings of
>course material, announcements, pointers to material and resources,
>essays, etc. relevant to the "department" of the group and/or the
>topic.  This group is for one-time articles / posts - discussions are
>_not_ suitable for this newsgroup but should instead be held in a
>corresponding .misc group.  Followups should be directed and posted
>there.  On some UU groups (where there is a volunteer teacher /
>teachers) the material will be mostly for course-like work, on others
>for self-study, on others the main info will be something else.  The
>conventions will form as time passes and while there are none, a wide
>range of relevant postings will appear.  Later, different styles of
>learning will perhaps spin off different newsgroups.
>
>A "misc" group exists for discussions on learning, followups on the
>"material" group articles, and other discussion relevant to the
>department or topic.
>
>For all departments / topics, there are as of yet no "material" groups
>but instead only .misc groups - in that case, articles fitting in the
>material group should be posted with "MATERIAL" as the first word in
>the Subject: field of the article.
>
>The following groups have been created 1992, July 22nd:
>
>alt.uu.lang.misc	Language department of Usenet University
>
>This is a group for the "language department" of UU.  This is the
>"main group" for learning languages, linguistics etc. - later there
>will be more specific groups for different topic in the field.
>
>alt.uu.math.misc	Math department of Usenet University
>
>This is a group for the "math department" of UU.  This is the
>"main group" for learning mathematics - later there
>will be more specific groups for different topic in the field.
>
>alt.uu.comp.misc	Computer department of Usenet University
>
>This is a group for the "computer department" of UU.  This is the
>"main group" for learning things to do with computers - later there
>will be more specific groups for different topic in the field.  Both
>"computing science" and "using computers as tools" topics are suitable
>under this department, at first at least.  Some of the computing
>science topics perhaps will fit better under math - the choice is left
>to each participant.
>
>alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc	Study of Esperanto in Usenet University
>
>This is a group for learning Esperanto.  This is the 
>"main group" for learning Esperanto - later there
>will be more specific groups for different topics in the field.
>
>alt.uu.misc.misc	Misc. department of Usenet University
>
>This is a group for learning about topics not suitable for other
>groups of UU.  This is the "catch-all" group, "misc department" of UU.
>
>alt.uu.virtual-worlds.misc	Study of virtual worlds in Usenet University
>
>This is a group for learning about virtual worlds or virtual reality.
>
>alt.uu.tools		Tools for Usenet University and education
>
>This is a group for discussing tools useful in UU and self-education /
>distance education, what tools are recommended to be used with UU,
>what tools are helpful, where to get such tools, etc.  Examples of the
>tools include machinery for viewing languages other than English on
>computers, possible UU "courseware" (for studying UU course pacakges) etc.
>
>alt.uu.announce		Announcements of Usenet University
>
>This is a group for announcements of UU.
>
>alt.uu.future		Planning the future of Usenet University
>
>This functions as a group to discuss the future of UU, and currently
>also as a "misc" group in which generic meta-discussions of UU take
>place.  The first UU group, created in June 1992.
>
>----------------------------------------
>
>Feel free to start using the UU groups!
>
>//Jyrki


Newsgroups: alt.uu.announce,alt.config,alt.education.distance,misc.education,comp.edu,alt.education.disabled,alt.culture.usenet,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.uu.future