Implications of "Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World"

10.30 - 11.00 - Richard Hill, Sheffield Hallam, Culture, Critical-thinking and Computing

The presentation will illustrate one approach to tackling cultural challenges in the teaching of Postgraduate computing students. Using a combination of commonly available 'web 2.0' type tools and curriculum changes, some of the difficulties of addressing critical-thinking in a multi-cultural environment are explored.

11.00 - 11.30 Mike Leigh & Lucy Mathers, De Montfort University, A tool for developing information evaluation skills in a Web2.0 environment:

Presentation of the results of a project that created an information evaluation tool that enhances students' understanding of how to select materials for academic work; and also provides a 'quick and easy' method facilitating comparison of diverse source materials.

11.30 - 12.00 Su White, University of Southampton Share Collaborate and Exchange, reshaping education through technology: the EdShare experience.

Our presentation would be able to look at one institutions experience of the current web 2.0 world particularly in the context of our use of departmental infrastructure and our teaching and learning repository in computer science education. The presentation will then conclude by situating our current 2.0 context/experience in terms of emerging trends towards more pervasive use and experience of linked data

12.00 - 12.30 John Traxler, Wolverhampton University Web2.0 - the University Challenge & the Changing, Moving World

The ideology and technology of web2.0, the ideology and technology that transforms us all from readers to writers, has significant consequences for the institutions of higher education. It is accompanied and accelerated by increasing, almost universal, mobility and connectedness and contrasted by the fixity or perhaps sluggishness of many aspects of institutions of higher education. This presentation will focus on these contrasts, explore whether these fundamental or superficial and ask about the responses that could come from the institutions.

12.30 - 1.15 Lunch

1.15 - 1.45 Stylianos Hatzipanagos - the impact and relevance of Web 2.0 to the culture of Higher Education;

How and where advancements in technology are altering traditional pedagogical practices; - how and where advancements in technology are altering traditional pedagogical practices; - new literacies in relation to digital media and digital cultures; - theories and technologies of change in education and future directions.

1.45 - 2.15 Mark Childs The challenges that using immersive virtual worlds present to educators.

These include institutional (who controls the technologies educators are allowed to use?), cultural (what opposition do students and institutions have to learning that is virtual? fantastic? fun? and what responses are appropriate), ethical (can we make the use of technologies compulsory if they are difficult, novel, transgressive?).

2.15 - 2.45 Jamie Wood Social Bookmarking and inquiry-based learning:

Experiences and possibilities - this presentation will report on my experiences as a practitioner, using social bookmarking in History seminars with first year students and will then reflect on the possibilities for the use of social bookmarking (and Web2.0) more broadly in teaching and learning.