Abstract:

The current digital and technological innovations are providing great opportunities to share knowledge and new meanings of what collaboration may be in this new context are arising. This phenomenon is influencing the educational system and, more specifically, we are experiencing new ways to communicate between the members of the university community.
Nowadays, the use of web 2.0 for collaborative work is increasing in many different areas. The possibilities of this tool include all the educational and research levels, integrating people from different fields in an easier of use way of communicating between them.
In the specific context of the University of Granada, we observed a lack of communication between the University and the PhD students and between the PhD students to each other. Moreover, we considered that an organization is needed to fill this gap and work as a communication channel where these students may manage by themselves the dialogue with the University and other PhD students, since they experienced a lack of unified information during the process of getting the PhD. The information flow may deal with a wide range of contents: conferences and their deadlines, courses, summer schools, fellowships, collaborative research, stays abroad and others.
Given this need, we observed the possibility of establishing the first PhD student association at the University of Granada to create strong networks between PhD students and satisfy their needs of information, since after the graduation they experience a process of institutional “disjunction” from the University.
The main focus of the association would consist in the creation of a website we named WikiPGrad to support them and to foster communication activities between them. It would follow the philosophy of a collaborative wiki, where the students could get to know each other and share their ideas, their knowledge and propose future cooperative work.
With this purpose, we developed an online open questionnaire for PhD students from Granada that gave us some clues concerning their needs. Furthermore, we test the use of the web 2.0 in their personal and professional life, and how the new wiki WikiPGrad we would offer to them may be helpful in their academic career.
The results of this study shed light on the importance of establishing networks between these members of the academic community and give more insights about why PhD students should be considered as strategic stakeholders and an effective and continuous communication with them should be considered paramount.

Keywords:

Web 2.0, wiki, collaborative research, communication.