KIIT University to lead building free knowledge repository initiative
Connotea Imports 2014-01-21
Summary:
" ... Centre for Internet and Society is a Bangalore based Non profit organization which works primarily in the broader domains ofinternet and policy research, accessibility, open knowledge and open education. Its Access To Knowledge program is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and works in fostering the volunteer Wikimedia community that contributes in enhancing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Its primary mandate is upbringing Wikipedia editors by outreach, creating primary resources for sources of reference in multiple ways that lead to enrich Wikipedia.
From a technical institution, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology has grown to a multidisciplinary world class University. KIIT University is a world class university spread over 25 sq. km. of land accommodating 20 sprawling wi-fi campuses with 10 million sq.ft. built up area. The university has 25 constituent schools offering more than 100 programmes ... KIIT educational conglomerate is unique in offering a wide spectrum of academic programmes from kindergarten to postgraduate level, earning it a place in the Limca Book of Records. Wikipedia has a critical stand in academia when it comes to peer academic research. But on the other side students ofter access and use Wikipedia for their assignment work despite of the non acceptance of Wikipedia content by the teacher community. The primary reason of Wikipedia's factual errors in many Indic related articles being Wikipedia's low contribution from the global south needs more contribution. Academicians and subject experts who are in charge of building the infrastructure of providing free knowledge to everyone often were stuck because of this setback. This led to an conjugation of subject experts and Wikimedia contributor communities to set up a system called Wikipedia Education Program (WEP) where editing, correcting and enhancing Wikipedia articles become part of the curriculum. To begin with the students in different schools at KIIT University the local Wikipedia community with the support from CIS-A2K is going to conduct classroom Wikipedia workshops to pilot Wikipedia contribution. KIIT University would be one of world's few universities to pilot student Wikipedia contribution as part of their curricula in any regional language."