Web+2.0+in+Tertiary+Education+(+Luyue+Wang)



__Tertiary (Luyue Wang, Student No.: 210989717)__  Web 2.0 in tertiary education In recent years, an increasing number of students have arrived on campuses of tertiary education institutions with previous computer experience. Integrating Web 2.0 into the tertiary curriculum is becoming more common, as many colleges and universities are offering new courses focused around specific aspects or technologies of Web 2.0. In this part, I will analyze three methods that used Web 2.0 in tertiary education by discussing cases. Blog Within the education domain, blogs are generally integrated within the virtual learning environment of the institution, or individual course teams may use external blogging services (Lee & McLoughlin 2011). One of the aims of tertiary teaching is to help students to build their own thought and have the ability to research in a special area. The rich variety of content in the students’ blogs in this study is an indication of the flexibility of this medium for supporting learning and research. Blogging activity was more focused on students’ personal study and research needs. For example, a research has given some aspects that how blogs help Ph.D. Those include blogs developing their academic skills by writing for an audience which helped them to develop both writing and argumentative skills; blogs create a network with other researchers; blogs also offer them academic opportunities through recognition of their research as documented in their blogs and they can keep a Journal or Diary. While, there is also disadvantage of using blog. It shows less serious in academic area which is everyone can write anything just like hypotheses. So people do not know which writing is more reliable. It can be concluded that the self-motivated student bloggers in the study perceived their blogs as being useful for a variety of study and research-related purposes, including serving as memory aids, for making notes about their reading and research, for keeping a record of their own progress, for project planning, and so on. WIKI Several successful uses of wikis have previously been reported in a number of educational contexts, Previous studies have also shown that some students become aware of a larger audience when creating wiki content, and subsequently write more concisely and accurately (Wheeler et al., 2008). Wikis have specific pedagogic functionality. From earlier studies of the implementation of wikis in undergraduate teacher education, it has been observed that students required some semblance of structure in order to maintain their sense of purpose and avoid inertia (Wheeler et al., 2008). But now it is more specific and has been developed into the five-stage wiki activities model which can be use in tertiary teaching. They are 1. Exploration--students can use wiki to do orientation, basic principles, making initial contact. 2. Exhibition—wiki is used to Show and tell, share ideas, post links to resources. 3. Explanation-- simple posting and editing, describing, informing on wiki. 4. Elaboration—using wiki to collaborative posting, dialogue, complex editing. 5. Evaluation—wiki is used to assess value, accuracy, and significance of content. However, Wiki also has some drawbacks. In our group practice, we found that it is not easy to use the part of “file”. Because in university study, a large number of information include thousands of words and cannot type easily. So it is important to upload files quickly and easily. So, this is one part wiki need to be improved. Moreover, the words size and color are a little monotonous there should be more type and size to show which is more important and more attractive to user. Students in university gained a sense of ownership due mainly to the user-centric character of the wiki, which demanded that they generate their own content. The wiki activity framework appeared to be successful as a form of scaffolding, to provide students with an initial template and guidance in how and what to add to the space. Facebook The main benefits of Facebook for teaching and learning arise from its ability to enable students to share information, knowledge, and artifacts within a community and co-creative, dynamic network linked through members’ personal profiles and the associations between them. From a pedagogical perspective the changing “connection”between the teacher and student mediated through such sites as Facebook can be described as a move from “sage on the stage” to “meddler in the middle” (McWilliam, 2008). There are some activities that adopt in tertiary teaching and learning through Facebook. For example, 1.Add Courses: At the time of writing of this chapter, this is the only application with instructor and course management functionality. 2. Study Groups: This tool allows the creation of online spaces for study groups and project teams which is important for tertiary students. 3. My Documents: Allows students and teachers to upload documents for sharing with other users.4. Make a Quiz: This is an application that can be used by teachers and students to facilitate the creation of simple online quizzes. On the other hand, facebook has an important function that adding friend which is easily to expose your research program to others. Another limited is it cannot be used in some countries like China, So people cannot share their thought and research all over the world. Many students entering tertiary education are likely to be users of Facebook (Golder et al. 2007). Although most of this activity is hidden to educators, it is significant because it is interlaced with studying and more formal teaching and learning structures. The use of Facebook within tertiary education does represent a new, and so far, tentatively explored landscape for learning.

 References Wheeler, S., Yeomans, P., & Wheeler, D. (2008).The good, the bad and the wiki: Evaluating student-generated content for collaborative learning.British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(6),987–995. McWilliam, E. (2008). Unlearning how to teach. Innovationsin Education and Teaching International,45(3), 263–269. Golder, S. A., Wilkinson, D., & Huberman, B.A. (2007). Rhythms of social interaction:Messaging within a massive online network. Lee, JW. M & McLoughlin, C (2011), Web 2.0-Based E-Learning:Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Teaching, InformatIon scIence reference, New York.