"Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education" is a report that was funded by the JISC (a UK body - Joint Information Systems Committee) and prepared by Tom Franklin and Mark van Harmelen. The report can be downloaded at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_digital_repositories/project_web2_and_policy.

Below I summarise each of the main sections, with a little explanation:

Introduction

The study was carried out between March and May 2007, and included a "webinar" with invited speakers and a general audience. I knew of this webinar but didn't participate because it occurred at a time when we were busy with exam marking and results. The report includes many recommendations, mostly aimed at JISC and the need to guide and help the UK Higher Education (HE) community in its potential use of Web 2.0. However Recommendation 1 is aimed at institutions and in the report's introduction is presented as:

Web 2.0

The body of the report starts with a discussion of what is Web 2.0. They include the usual references  and list and explain a number of systems that are often labelled as "social software", including:

• Blogs
• Wikis
• Social bookmarking
• Media-sharing services
• Social networking and social presence systems
• Collaboative editing tools
• Syndiaction and notification technologies

For each of these they present examples of educational use.

They conclude the section with a description of Bricolage and mashups.

Institutional Practice

Four case studies are presented:

• University of Warwick: which has offered all students personal blogs since October 2004.
• University of Leeds: which in October 2005 installed MediaWiki and Elgg as a stand alone systems for staff experimentation. This is not integrated with their VLE for two reasons: 1. they are in a period of transition with VLEs: 2. they wanted the wiki/blog combination to be used beyond teaching.
• University of Brighton: since September 2006 they are using Elgg across the university.
• University of Edinburgh: the authors believe Edinburgh is the only UK university to have a Web 2.0 strategy:

Web 2.0 content

In this section the authors discuss a number of thorny issues, including:

• Content sharing: research much of the current sharing of material is done via email, there is some reluctance among academics to use repositories.
• Ownership and Control: ethical and legal implications need to be considered, including issues of copyright and IPR. Issues such as moderation need also to be considered.
• Versioning and Preservation: by its nature dynamic content changes and issues of archiving needs to be considered, both for preserving material that is referred to, but also some material probably should be temporary. The authors mention that there is anecdotal evidence that some employers "google" people before interviewing them, personally I believe this is a wide spread practice with academics checking each other out before they meet.
• Externally/Internally hosted services: the risks and cost involved with externally funded systems are considered. The impact of scale is also mentioned, interestingly they say:

Similarly the pros and cons of internal hosting are presented

• Integration: there is a discussion of the integration with VLEs and other user systems.

Learning, Teaching and Assessment

This section covers a wide range of issues and gives rise to a number of recommendations.

• Changes in student populations: the term "Digital Natives" is introduced and their different expectations explained, plus a pattern that could be classed as lifelong learning.
• Examples of Web 2.0 in learning and teaching: this sub-section touches briefly on Web 2.0 in the areas of; group work; social constructivism; constructionism. The latter term was new to me the authors explain it as follows:

• Independent learners: the authors question whether it is possible to build tools that do more than help the development of independent learning.
• New pedagogies and new assessment methods: this is still at a very early stage, but there is a recognition that work is needed in these areas.
• Possible issues and problems: one particular problem is the possible development of a cut'n'paste culture, others include economics, skills gaps, changing roles of teachers.

Strategy and Policy

While few universities have Web 2.0 policies many have others that impact on Web 2.0 (e.g Learning and teaching; IT; accessibility, IPR).

Issues of security need to be considered both from the point of personal security (e.g the threat of cyber-bullying) and from the point of view of systems (e.g. possible introduction of viruses).

Preservation of material needs to be considered.

Conclusions

The conclusions are brief, re-iterating points made in the Introduction. The authors stress that Web 2.0 is just one part of the HE ecosystem.

In their final paragraph they once again stress the need for institutions to take a light touch approach in regulating this area.