Abstract:

The controversy of the use of Web 2.0 in e-Learning is far from being resolved, yet, and due to the swift evolution of the Web, another debate has begun: the impact of the Web 3.0 in e-Learning. The concept of e-Learning 3.0 emerged from the increasing popularity of the Web 3.0 technologies as an educational asset (Rubens, et al. 2011).

Since the early stages of the development of the Web, distance education has been changing to adapt to the demands of students and the needs of educational systems. What began to be known as e-Learning has mutated into different methods of delivering educational content electronically. Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 introduce revolutionary traits to this method of learning. With each evolution of the Web, e-Learning changes to incorporate its new facets. The third version , Web 3.0, is no exception.

The paper intends to understand the emergency of the concept “e-Learning 3.0” and analyses the expectations and challenges that derive from the use of Web 3.0 technologies.

E-Learning 3.0 promises personalization, intelligent agents, semantic annotations, computer-understandable data and knowledge management (Oakes, 2011). These are the core assets that Web 3.0 technologies will bring to online learning. The maximization of these resources depends on how they will be put in place by educators and on how students will use them. E-Learning 3.0 represents the opportunity to enjoy the immensity of information that exists on the Web while filtering and clustering it into units of reusable knowledge. Also, it enhances the opportunities and tools for collaboration and interaction, and consequently improves the relations that students establish online with their peers and with their teachers (Goroshko & Samoilenko, 2011).

The increasing sophistication of technology, with pedagogical value, represents numerous benefits for the education sector, but it is also the source of conflict and challenges, as the learning process requires a multidisciplinary approach to be successful. Pedagogy alone does not suffice to address educational issues in the same way that technology´s development cannot solely do the same. As it happens with Web 2.0, the Semantic Web requires an in-depth knowledge of its advantages and disadvantages when transposed to learning settings. The choice of which tools to use and the digital divide among students are just some of the examples of issues that have emerged from the introduction of Web 3.0 in education.
The first section of the paper will examines separate phases of e-Learning: its evolution under Web 1.0, the social revolution caused by Web 2.0 and the Web 3.0. A subsequent section will be concerned with exploring the potential benefits of Web 3.0 technologies in terms of web-based learning. It approaches the main advantages of e-Learning 3.0. To conclude the paper, there will be a final section that questions the implementation of Web 3.0 technologies in e-Learning and highlights the shortcomings and challenges of this new alliance.

References:
[1] Goroshko, O. I., & Samoilenko, S. A. (2011). Twitter as a Conversation through e-Learning Context. Revista de Informatica Sociala, 15.
[2] Oakes, K. (2011). Web 3.0: Transforming Learning. TrainingIndustry Quarterly, 38-39.
[3] Rubens, N., Kaplan, D., & Okamoto, T. (2011). E-Learning 3.0: anyone, anywhere, anytime, and AI. International Workshop on Social and Personal Computing for for Web- Supported Learning Communities (SPeL 2011).