1. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i18/18b02601.htm
From the issue dated January 5, 2007
What Web 2.0 Can Teach Us About Learning
By EDWARD J. MALONEY
The past 15 years have seen a significant increase in the use of technology in higher education. In fact,
professors now find it difficult to imagine teaching without the Internet, course-management systems,
Microsoft Office, e-mail, and other technological applications. Meanwhile prospective students and
new faculty members increasingly judge colleges and universities based on the educational
technologies they offer. And — especially in the wake of Hurricane Katrina — many administrators
are seeing e-learning technologies as key components in academic continuity and emergency planning.
Of course, the more we make those technologies part of the educational landscape, the greater their
potential for changing the way people teach and learn. But except for a few small pockets of
innovation, many of the technological tools we use in the classroom — from course-management
systems to PowerPoint — help primarily not with teaching students to think, but with the most
pedestrian (and often least effective) aspect of teaching: the delivery of content. Online course-
management systems are perhaps the most pernicious in that respect, in part because IT departments
across the country have made them the primary teaching-and-learning tool available to faculty
members.
The problem is not the idea of a course-management system itself — a basic set of tools for content
delivery, evaluation, and communication — nor the various uses of such systems, many of which serve
their purposes quite well. Rather, the problem is that most course-management systems were
developed at a time when the Internet was seen primarily as a mechanism for information delivery.
Course-management systems were not created to enhance learning, but to make it easier for a faculty
member to deliver materials to students. Even though most of the systems now include basic tools that
allow students to turn in assignments, take exams and surveys, and communicate with each other
through discussion boards and chat programs, those tools tend to be limited in functionality, generic in
form, and based on relatively old technology.
Course-management systems are generally used in very basic ways. A recent study by the Educause
Center for Applied Research, for example, suggests that the vast majority of students who use course-
management systems do so simply to gain access to course materials and their grades. In other words,
the role that the systems play most often is like that of an advanced photocopier, allowing faculty
members to deliver materials to their students with greater ease than was previously possible. That use
can be important, but it is only part of what the systems could do.
The most significant problem with course-management systems is that they are built around the credit-
based course, not the individual student. Although the systems may enable students to communicate

2. with their professor and each other outside of class time, the assumption behind the systems is still that
all learning takes place within the confines of the course, and during a semester or quarter.
E-learning technologies have not managed to make the way we teach match the new learning styles of
the current generation of students — see Robert Zemsky and William F. Massy's "Why the E-Learning
Boom Went Bust" (The Chronicle Review, July 9, 2004) for some suggestions as to why. That leaves
us with the question of whether the technologies can at least help improve the ways professors teach
and students learn. One answer may be found in the latest evolution of the Web, often called the
"read/write Web" or "Web 2.0," some of whose improvements are already available. That new Web is
less a planned upgrade than a recognition of the way small technical developments, along with quite
significant changes in practice, are altering how we interact with information and with each other in
the electronic medium.
One of the developments has been the ability of people to write to the Web without the specialized
skills once necessary to create a Web page. The resulting change is that, rather than simply reading
from the Web, people everywhere are now creating online content.
What we can see in the Web's evolution is a new focus on innovation, creation, and collaboration, and
an emphasis on collective knowledge over static information delivery, knowledge management over
content management, and social interaction over isolated surfing. The jargon-laden stars of the second-
generation Web — wikis, blogs, social networking, and so on — all encourage a more active,
participatory role for users.
Those new uses mirror much of what we know to be good models of learning, in that they are
collaborative and encourage active participation by the user. Just as important, they offer us an
opportunity to create still other models through the use of digital technology.
One such model is the information "mash-up." Mash-ups are Web sites that take dynamically changing
pieces of information from completely different sources and combine the data into an integrated user
experience, one that continues to change and grow as the underlying information changes. For
example, the group behind housingmaps.com created a mash-up that took the listing of apartments for
rent on Craigslist and mapped them onto a Google map of each city.
What makes that and other mash-ups possible is the willingness of companies such as Google, Xythos
Software, and Yahoo to open up the programming interfaces of their applications to users. And what
makes mash-ups interesting from a teaching and learning perspective is that they permit people with
very little technical know-how to manage knowledge online, modeling solutions for others to see,
collaborate on, and use in new ways.
The mash-up is only one example of the possibilities of Web 2.0. Blogs, wikis, and online office
applications also give users tools for creating information and collaborating in its management.
Tagging technologies give users the ability to assign keywords, or tags, to all types of information —
images, blogs, encyclopedia articles — and to share the tags and thus connected pieces of information.
New communities of users have grown up around such collections of information. And social-
networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have shown, among other things, that students will
invest time and energy in building relationships around shared interests and knowledge communities.

3. People are using new technologies to look at problems in many different ways: to make new
connections and form relationships between disparate, sometimes apparently contradictory, pieces of
information, and ultimately to create something new that can be shared with others. All that is
reminiscent of current approaches to learning, including student-centered and active-learning models
that encourage students to solve meaningful problems and reflect on their thinking processes. The
challenge that we now face is figuring out how to incorporate the paradigm-altering technologies of
Web 2.0 into teaching and learning.
At Georgetown University, we are trying to meet that challenge with our Digital Notebook project. As
we envision it, the Digital Notebook will be an online space for students to learn, create, collaborate,
and store the evidence of their work at the university. The Digital Notebook will not only enable
students to take advantage of the types of interconnected services available in Web 2.0, but it will also
give them a detailed portfolio of what they have learned when they graduate.
Our hope is that the Digital Notebook will help students track how their thinking developed from their
freshman to their senior year, in part by giving them the tools to map connections between the pieces
of information they have learned and to share those connections and their knowledge with others —
including potential employers and admissions officers for graduate programs. Most important,
however, is the fact that the notebook shifts the emphasis from the course to the student and allows
both students and professors to track intermediate stages of learning as well as final results.
The Digital Notebook is just one model for thinking about how technology can enhance teaching and
learning. Our challenge as educators is to put technological developments to use in that and other
models, to continue to improve the educational process.
Edward J. Maloney is director of research and learning technologies at Georgetown University's
Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship.
http://chronicle.com
Section: Information Technology
Volume 53, Issue 18, Page B26
Copyright © 2007 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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