On 15 August 2006, Wikiversity opened a new space within the Wikimedia movement: a place where people could not only access educational resources, but also create, share, and participate in learning together.

Wikiversity had grown out of work within Wikibooks and became an independent Wikimedia project in August 2006. Its creation expanded the educational possibilities of the movement beyond textbooks, with a focus on both learning resources and learning activities in English and other languages.

Twenty years later, that idea remains at the heart of Wikiversity.

Its motto, “Set learning free,” captures an approach to education built around participation, collaboration, open resources, and the ability for learners and educators to shape the learning environment themselves.

But what does learning in the open actually look like?

Find learning resources for teaching and learning

One of the simplest ways to use Wikiversity is to find and adapt learning resources. The project hosts lesson plans, course notes, reading lists, problem sets, activities, simulations, teaching aids, and other materials that educators and learners can use and develop.

For example, Student Success: Information Literacy introduces learners to library resources, database searching, digital media evaluation, evaluating online sources, academic honesty, and citation. It combines explanations with multimedia resources and activities that can support the development of research and information literacy skills.

Resources like these can be used as they are, adapted to meet a particular learning need, or developed further by other educators and learners.

That ability to build on what already exists is an important part of learning in an open environment.

Build a learning experience

Wikiversity is not limited to individual learning materials. Educators can also use it to bring together the different elements of a course or learning environment.

A Wikiversity course can include a syllabus, learning objectives, readings, activities, assignments, discussions, and other supporting materials. The project’s School and University Projects page documents examples of educators and institutions using Wikiversity in formal teaching and student assignments.

SPIR608 Political Simulation and Gaming, an open educational resource supported by the University of Westminster, shows what this can look like in practice. The module combines lectures, game playing, workshops, tutorials, presentations, and group discussions. Students analyse political simulations, participate in role playing exercises, research historical and contemporary conflicts, and eventually create and play test their own political simulation prototypes.

This shows how Wikiversity can become more than a collection of pages. It can become a shared learning environment, structured around a subject, a course, or a particular group of learners.

Learn by doing

Perhaps one of Wikiversity’s most distinctive features is its emphasis on learning by doing.

Learners can edit pages, contribute to course-related projects, write papers, conduct research, discuss what they are studying, and collaborate with others. Instead of simply consuming educational content, participants can become involved in creating and improving it.

Over the years, this approach has supported a wide range of school and university projects, including Technical Writing, Design for the Environment at the University of Toronto, Instructional Design at Indiana University, and Media Literacy at Temple University.

Wikiversity has also provided space for learners and educators to explore emerging subjects, including Artificial Intelligence.

This approach brings learning and knowledge creation together. Learners do not simply study existing knowledge; they can question it, contribute to it, document what they learn, and share their work with others.

That is one of the ideas that makes Wikiversity part of the wider Wikimedia ecosystem: learning can itself become a form of knowledge creation.

Explore research and scholarly learning

Learning on Wikiversity can also extend into research.

The project supports research activities and provides spaces where learners and educators can explore questions, develop ideas, and share their work. This reflects an aspect of Wikiversity’s original vision: creating not only educational resources, but also opportunities for people to learn through research and participation.

One example is Introduction to Scientific Journalism, an open course that connects scientific journalism with contributions to Wikimedia projects, giving participants opportunities to develop their skills while contributing to open knowledge.

Another is An introduction to the use and needs of Research Groups with WikiEducation tools on Wikiversity. The research examines how Wikiversity could support Scientific Research Groups through shared resources, documentation, collaboration, and the dissemination of research. It draws on questionnaires, interviews, and literature review to explore the needs and experiences of research groups using or considering Wikiversity.

Wikiversity also hosts WikiJournals, where scholarly articles can undergo external peer review before being published in an indexed, citable, open access format.

These examples show how learning can move beyond the classroom: a question can become a research project, a course activity can become an open contribution, and work developed by learners can become part of a wider knowledge ecosystem.

Learning that remains open

A learning resource does not have to remain fixed. A course does not have to belong to a single classroom. A learner does not have to remain only a consumer of information.

On Wikiversity, educational materials can be created and adapted collaboratively. Courses can evolve. Learners can participate in shaping the resources they use. Educators can share what they develop with others. And learning activities can contribute to a growing body of open knowledge.

For educators looking to experiment with open and collaborative approaches to teaching, Wikiversity offers many examples through its School and University Projects. WikiConecta, a free course for university educators, is one example of how learning resources can remain openly available beyond the original course and participants, allowing others to explore and build on them.

Learners can also explore resources such as the Open Educational Resources lesson, German Home Immersion School, and UrSchool to see different approaches to self-directed and community-based learning.

For subject-based and university learning, examples include Environmental Ethics, Programming with Wikidata, and Hindi Literature.

The EduWiki Hub also maintains an OER Documentation page that brings together resources and examples from across the Wikimedia education community.

Twenty years of learning in the open

Twenty years after its launch, Wikiversity with over 166,000 learning modules on the platform, continues to embody a simple but powerful idea: learning does not have to happen behind closed doors.

It can be created, shared, adapted, questioned, and developed together.

That is what makes Wikiversity’s model relevant today; not simply as a repository of educational materials, but as a space where learning and knowledge creation can happen together.

Set learning free.

Happy 20th anniversary, Wikiversity!

This Diff post is brought to you by the EduWiki Hub team, as part of our ongoing effort to highlight practical ways Wikimedia projects can support teaching and learning. As Wikiversity celebrates 20 years of open learning, we hope this overview helps educators and learners discover how the project can support courses, learning activities, research, and collaborative knowledge creation.