Wikibooks Research

While doing some cleanup rounds the other day, I stumbled onto a book project being conducted on Wikibooks by Professor Curtis Bonk, from Indiana University. Professor Bonk, with whom I've had the pleasure of helping on other occasions has been studying Wikibooks, and Wikibookians for some time, and has even written some papers about us. I wrote about Professor Bonk in August. His website contains the lion's share of his information, but I've also been given copies of other papers he's been working on, and I've been informed that he is planning another study of Wikibookians, for which he needs volunteers.

In 2005 he did a study called "A Window on Wikibookians", and found out some neat demographic information about out little project. The majority (39%) of Wikibookians polled were between the ages of 18 and 25). Only 5% were over the age of 50. Strikingly, only 2.5% of Wikibookians polled were female. 50% had a bachelors degree or better, of which 54% had a graduate degree of some kind. 42% of surveyed Wikibookians were employed as teachers or professors.

Wikibookians who contributed to other WMF projects:

• Wikipedia: 98%
• Wiktionary: 34%
• Wikinews: 19%
• Wikiquote: 18%
• Wikiversity: 14%
• Wikijunior: 11%

Professor Bonk has been busy recently writing a few books on Wikibooks, such as [[The Practice of Learning Theories]], and [[Web 2.0 and Emerging Learning Technologies]]. You always hear about people doing cool research about Wikipedia, it's good to hear people doing the same for Wikibooks too.