Abstract:

The popularity of Web 2.0 in higher education is no longer in question and there is an abundance of research to support it. There are numerous records of Web 2.0’s delivery of interactive, collaborative and open learning. Nonetheless, many teachers remain overwhelmed with the amount of available tools and uncertain about the best practices for their implementation. The coalition between Web 2.0 and higher education is at the origin of a more interactive and collaborative learning, where students have the opportunity to create and exchange content, to design their own personal learning environments, to engage in community building and social interaction and to adopt self-regulated learning practices.

There is a wide assortment of Web 2.0 tools that can be used for educational purposes, namely wikis, social networks websites, blogs and forums. Previous research has reported the existence of over 200 technologies that could be used for teaching and learning. While, this profusion of tools speaks to Web 2.0’s potential for educational purposes, it equally constitutes a challenge in terms of its concrete application. With such variety, teachers are faced with the predicament of selecting the most suitable technologies. Besides technology selection, there are other concerns that affect the deployment of Web 2.0 in learning settings. The most commonly cited impediments include privacy concerns, the preservation of intellectual property, issues related to copyright, teacher training and technical problems. Hence, despite its popularity, Web 2.0's potential in education remains greatly unrealised and it becomes necessary to focus on constantly improving the tools that are available. Thus, it is fundamental to explore strategies that will assist the successful implementation of Web 2.0 in multiple higher education scenarios.

This paper aims to outline a comprehensive model for the effective implementation of Web 2.0 within higher education settings. The model that is proposed in this paper emphasises Web 2.0’s own nature to promote its success and it is composed of six elements: technology selection, which establishes the criteria for selecting the most appropriate tools; student participation, concerning the value that the contributions of the students have for the success of the tools; high number of active students, which accounts for the importance that an abundance of actively participating users has for harnessing collective intelligence; user friendly tools, referring to the necessity to deploy technology that the students can find intuitive and easy to use; availability of content, which constitutes an essential requirement for the accomplishment of any Web 2.0 tool and it is one of the reasons that justifies students’ participation; and features for content addition and communication, concerning the need for features that enable the students to create their own content in a multiplicity of formats as well as features that allow them to communicate among themselves and with the teachers. This model’s theoretical foundation derives from a review of existing literature and it is validated by the viewpoints of higher education teachers. Their opinions were collected in an internationally distributed online questionnaire about the deployment of Web 2.0 technology.

Keywords:

Higher education, web 2.0, teachers.