The midden

This spin-off from the JISC-funded SPIRE project polled nearly 1400 respondents between December 06 and February 07 and asked them about their knowledge and usage of Web 2.0 technologies. It’s worth noting that only about 10% of respondents were clearly identifiable as HE students, the other 90% were individuals who visited the University of Oxford’s online short courses page, so we don’t really know who they were!

A group of academics teaching on courses within the Department of Continuing Education at Oxford were also polled and this yielded another 46 responses.

A summary of the survey results can be found here.

Some of the more interesting findings include:

Wikipedia - Wikipedia was one of the most popular Web 2.0 tools. More than 70% of respondents used Wikipedia as one of their main, if not only, source of reference for study. Of the tutors surveyed, more than 80% said they used it. A significant proportion also used it for work and for their own social activities. So it looks like the much maligned Wikipedia has been accepted as a reliable reference source at one of the most prestigious universities in the land!

Blogs - the report suggests that blogging is no longer an activity purely for the geeks. About 25% of respondents claimed to write their own blog, either for their own personal purposes (61%), or for study and work (39%).

MSN messenger, YouTube and MySpace - probably not very surprisingly, the popularity of these tools decreased with age with more than twice as many under 24s using them regularly compared with the over 55s. The rather obvious reasons given for this pattern included:

• the young are the ones who are targetted by these sites
• they are more likely to belong to online communities
• the content and style of these services is aimed at the younger age groups

If you’re over 55 and haven’t yet ventured into YouTube here’s an interesting example of the creativity that is waiting to be discovered.

Conclusion

Although not perfect, this survey highlights a lot of what most of us in the e-learning field already knew or at least thought we knew. The younger generation (under 16s) are the true digital natives and use these Web 2.0 services and tools in ways that complement both their social and educational life-styles. These tools allow them to interact and form communities where they generate and share ideas and materials; where they discuss and collaborate; where they are creative and where they are entertained. At the other end, most lecturers and institutions haven’t really grasped what is happening or, if they have, don’t know how to deal with it.

As these young people come into our universities and colleges over the next 3 or 4 years are we going to stifle and block these social, interactive and collaborative instincts that they will bring with them? Are we going to straightjacket them into an mausoleum of a VLE or a corporate wiki or an institutional blog?

Of course not!