A Strategy for Web 2.0

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A Strategy for Web 2.0

• Michael Webb
• Head of IT and Media Services
• University of Wales, Newport

The work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommer
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excludes the Bebo and Think.Com screenshots. The
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modified in any way.
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Presentation Overview

• Background
• Very brief Web 2.0 introduction
• Our use of web for teaching and learning
• Developing the Strategy
• Relationship between IT and the student
  experience
• How we updated the strategy
• Implementing the Strategy
• Learning more about Web 2.0
• Technical, Teaching and Learning and Marketing
• Other issues
• What we plan to do next
• Turning the strategy into a service

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What do I mean by Web 2.0?

• a second generation of services available on
  the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate
  and share information online (Wikipedia 12th May
  2006)

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Web for teaching and learning

• 2003 Wed reached a crossroads with our
  (commercial) VLE and had a chance to rethink our
  strategy.
• Our Question
• Which VLE should we use? Wrong Question!
• Our Question v2
• What was our strategic aim for the VLE from a
  Teaching and Learning Perspective?
• How do we want our staff and students to
  interact?
• Our initial answer
• We wanted as many lecturers to make course
  materials available as possible.

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myLearning Essentials 1.0

• Our solution
• Build a (technically basic) portal
• Add in the functionality we wanted
• Make it so we could add more functionality later
• (Similar in spirit to the JISC MLE framework but
  technically much less ambitious!)

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myLearning Essentials 1.0

• Functionality
• Distribute course material
• Course discussions
• Access to documents off-site
• Access to better web email
• University news
• Focus was largely on the University communicating
  with students

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myLearning Essentials 1.1

• A year later added in more functionality,
  changing the communication flow
• Student-to-Student
• For Sale boards
• Accommodation wanted/offered etc
• Student-to-University
• Poll of the month

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2004 Time to update the IT Strategy

• University's Strategic Aim No.1
• To provide the highest quality student
  experience possible as the highest priority for
  the University of Wales, Newport
• Question What is the greatest contribution IT
  can make to the Student Experience?

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What makes a good student experience?

• Good computing facilities?
• Reliable service?
• Friendly support?
• Good VLE?
• ?
• What else?

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Time to step back and take a wider view

• Blogs starting to get media coverage
• eBay and iTunes entering mainstream
• What Can Internet Technologies Offer - Brian
  Kelly UCISA Conference 2004
• http//www.ucisa.ac.uk/events/2004/conference/pap
  ers/10-kelly
• IM Blogs Wikis FOAF Lets Kill Email

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Our conclusion

• Emerging (Web 2.0) technologies could play an
  important role in supporting the Universitys
  main strategic aim.
• i.e. contribute to the overall student
  experience, not just improve teaching (although
  hopefully it would do that as well!)

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Updating the IT Strategy

• Two important statements made
• We will support existing (or emerging) Web 2.0
  technologies such as Blogs, Wikis etc
• Caveats relate to resourcing rather than
  technical issues
• 2) We are going to become an adaptive, agile
  service, and quickly support new technologies.
• Funding for innovation included in the IT
  strategy.

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Turning the strategy into action

• We needed to learn more.
• Our approach
• Use the technology!
• Find out what your future students may want
• Find out what the students are doing
• Ask the students what they want

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Using the technology What did we find out?

• Release our inner digital native
• We set up our own Blogs, Wiki and Jabber
  services, and used them to discuss the
  technologies it worked!

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What are our future students doing?

• School children being are introduced to blogging
  when they are as young as 7 or 8 years old
• see www.think.com as a great example

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What are our current students doing?

• Our students use Web 2.0 applications eg.
  www.bebo.com
• to form social networks relating to the
  University.
• Join it! (although it may make you feel old!)

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What are our current students are doing (2) ?

• Student are using freely available web
  applications to create their own communities.
• Some presented the University in a good light,
  others maybe didnt

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What do our current students want?

• myLearning Essentials Poll
• Showed some level of interest in all
  technologies
• 64 wanted SMS notifications
• 45 IM
• 40 Discussion Boards
• 33 Blogs, wiki, web space, social networking

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Summary of the things we learnt (1)

• Students are already using Web 2.0 technologies,
  both to support their courses and for socials
  reasons.
• We can no longer control the Universitys web
  presence, even if we wanted to.
• Providing these sorts of services is not without
  risks
• The risks dont all go away if we ignore these
  technologies.

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Summary of the things we learnt (2)

• We can change the communication channels
• University ? Student (1.0)
• Student ? University (1.1)
• Student ?? Student (1.1)
• Staff/Student ?? Staff/Student (2.0)
• Staff/Student ?? The World (2.0)
• This is exciting from a student experience
  perspective!
• The world is changing rapidly and we really do
  need to change too if our services arent going
  to be boring and irrelevant!

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Technical/IT Challenges (1)

• What services, if any do we need to provide?
• Isnt it all available out there for free?
• What value-added can/should we provide?
• Conclusion We do need to provide some services
• At the moment students and staff arent all able
  to just do it
• We can provide good user support for beginners
• We can combine services to create a sense of
  community
• There are some important extras that we can add
  if we provide services ourselves (eg auto
  creation of RSS feed lists)

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Technical/IT Challenges (2)

• Services we think we should provide
• Blogs
• Instant Messaging
• Wiki(s)
• RSS enable Forums
• Photo Galleries
• SMS texting
• Web 1.0 space
• Services we think we should support/encourage
• Social networking
• Instant Messaging (external)

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Technical/IT Challenges (3)

• How does our technical strategy need to change?
• Move to open source software? What extra skills
  do we need?
• New development skills (eg Ajax)
• Being more agile and providing services quicker
• Accepting the world of perpetual beta?
• Standardisation? One package fits all?

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Teaching and Learning Challenges (1)

• Do we need to engage academic staff, or is this
  just a social media?
• How do we engage academic staff?
• Find a few advocates others will be thinking
  the same thing
• Give them early access to the technology
• Ask for their views!
• How could this technology be used?
• How does this relate to traditional VLE
  functionaility?
• Specific projects - eg Blogs as reflective
  journals?
• What about information literacy?

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Teaching and Learning Challenges (2)

• How to we stop technology overload for academic
  staff?
• Many are still getting to grips with our VLE/Web
  1.0 technologies
• We are going to sell this is a service for
  students in the first instance.
• What sort language do we use to describe these
  services?
• Person-centric vs Topic-centric?
• Asking vs Telling?
• How do you explain when to use a blog, a wiki or
  a forum?

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Marketing Challenges

• How does this fit into our existing Web 1.0 site?
• Still a need for this for formal, structured
  information
• What if people say the wrong thing?
• They will anyway!
• Hopefully people will present a positive image as
  well.
• How do we use this technologies to sell the
  University?

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Other issues

• Clear from our forum experience you need clear
  guidelines on use
• Legal issues e.g. libel need good procedures
  for removing material if necessary
• What do we do if it all goes wrong? Make services
  internal only? Remove them completely?

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What we plan to do next

• Fully deploy Web 2.0 technology!
• Plans for next academic year
• MyCommunity (working title!) blogs, wikis, RSS
  enabled forums etc provided to everyone
• Instant Messenger and SMS Texting services added
• Research projects on using Web 2.0 technologies
  for teaching

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Summary

• Web 2.0 technologies can be used to improve
  student experience
• Our IT Strategy commits us to
• Support Web 2.0
• Be agile and support new technologies
• To implement the strategy we needed to learn more
  by
• Using the technology
• Looking inside and outside the University
• There are a range of technical, teaching and
  learning issues to consider, but they arent
  insurmountable

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Question and Contact Details

• Any Questions?
• Contact details
• Email Michael.Webb_at_newport.ac.uk
• Blog http//blog.newport.ac.uk/blogs/michael