On an increasingly large scale Warwick has promoted, and sometimes created, ‘Web 2.0’ technologies for staff and students. The pervasive ubiquity of Sitebuilder, Warwick Forums and Warwick Blogs has encouraged the widespread adoption of new online activities as normal and everyday: social/academic networking; wiki-esque collaborative writing and tagging; keyword and full-text search; blogging; podcasting; eportfolios; news and event services; RSS content aggregation. Independently adopted Web 2.0 services have blended into this potent and often confusing mix: a recent poll of 100 students indicated that most were accessing and updating Facebook more than twice a day.

Web 2.0 is not a superficial development. It is not merely a new interface to an old world. It changes the nature of knowing, and hence of knowledge and the known. It is a ‘disruptive technology’ for a knowledge based business, with negative and positive effects. This presentation will examine the nature of knowledge and knowing in a Web 2.0 environment, with reference to specific technologies (see above). The effects of this new epistemography on established pedagogical practices will be examined.

Web 2.0 may encourage loosely coupled concepts: a rapid turn-over of low-value and interchangeable ideas; with redundant detail, few dependencies and many connections. This results in a wide and shallow sea, eroding the deep structures and specialisations around which university learning is constructed, and promoting scattercast channels over familiar broadcast and narrowcast teaching. A significant change in academic skills and student behaviour is already being encountered.

What effects does this Web 2.0 epistemography have upon the learning design patterns that are commonly employed by teachers and students? How are these patterns and their users (staff and students) adapting to Web 2.0? Are there any good transferable strategies and techniques that can be recommended?
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My research for this will look at a range of learning design patterns, including:

Transmit, record, report, verify.
Last-minute mash-up.
Predict, experiment (risk take), infer.
Cognitive Apprentice.
Adopt and test a perspective.
Perspective switching.
Build a product (write a text).
Reflective learning diary.
Peer review.
Practice and evidence based competency development.