ELEARNING 2.0 – HOW CAN HIGHER EDUCATION BENEFIT FROM WEB 2.0?

Changes, which information and communication technologies (ICT) bring, are so revolutionary that a so called 'new model' is sought in many scientific disciplines. Also in the field of education there are calls for a diversion from an authoritative education model controlled by the teacher to processes of metalearning and to a model based on an ability to learn. The underlaying trend is clear: technologies and ease of use for making people connect and communicate is highly appealing.
However, are we able to take and use these tools to step over deep-rooted standards and to pursue activities in a different way than before? It is only possible in case we step out of the box represented by a model of 'a classroom and textbook'. Without understanding limitations of this box’s walls, we will only search for electronic analogies of current principles in the sense of never-ending improvement of the model that has already been superseded.

It is time to accept that Learning Management Systems are by their nature predetermined only to replicate the old mental model of education. Authentic Learning in this era of ICT requires a new model, thereby, making it possible to overcome the centuries-old paradigm which now stands in the way of achieving revolutionary changes in education. This article describes the practical realization of a model with students at the center of activities in an online graduate studies course and discusses and describes the use of Web 2.0 and its goal oriented services in higher education model namely the utility of wikis as a resource for achieving these objectives.

Sharing of Space and Time is Being Replaced by Sharing of Thoughts. The teacher relinquishes his place at the centre to his students.

The purpose of this paper is to show how students obtain a broad space for performing the activities during which they are learning. Such learning happens under the systematic direction of authority and by accepting and using influences of a wide spectrum of net participants. Students are designing their virtual Personal Learning Environments (PLE), in which they collect their study materials, connect them together into the new context, try to find their meaning and by doing this students learn. At the same time students work in the teams in the Team Learning Environment (TLE) where they make relations between the different points of view of their schoolmates, use knowledge acquired while designing PLE and optimize their cross-site working partnerships and learning process productivity. Spiral model, being transformed to the wide net of connection, culminates during a work at Course Learning Environment (CLE). Here all challenges are concentrated and accomplished by the new views across up to now work of teams and individuals. The significant part of the learning process is spreading feedback being again connected to a net among students. The obtained results of mutual evaluation added by self-reflection are being used as a base for the final evaluation made by a pedagogue.

The heart of the changes includes divergence from a linearly coordinated system with teacher in the middle, i. e. from all the participants only the teacher leads the process, towards a network structure of roles. Activities are newly developed by all participants according to students' needs, and with the goal of supporting their work, their learning.