Proceedings of the 4th International Barcelona Conference on Higher Education
Vol. 2 . Knowledge technologies for social transformation
GUNI - Global University Network for Innovation – www.guni- rmies.net




Web 2.0 and Higher Education: Pedagogical Implications

Luís Simões
PhD Student
University Fernando Pessoa
Portugal
&
Luís Borges Gouveia
Associate Professor
University Fernando Pessoa
Portugal

Quotation information
SIMÕES, Luís ; BORGES GOUVEIA, Luís (2008), “Web 2.0 and Higher Education:
Pedagogical Implications”. Proceedings of the 4th International Barcelona Conference
on Higher Education, Vol. 2. Knowledge technologies for social transformation.
Barcelona: GUNI. Available at http://www.guni-rmies.net.


Abstract
Education is arguably one of the most important issues that any Society must discuss
and need to consider its reinforcement. Colleges and Universities have the key role in
promoting high quality and reliable education and the knowledge development, but are
far from being the only (or even the main) source of information and knowledge
nowadays, due to the expansion of new forms of communication (most notably the
Internet).
In places like Europe and the United States, there is a new generation of
students entering Higher Education institutions which has grown within an
environment where information technology has opened unprecedented opportunities
of social interaction and peer-construction of knowledge. Also, the emergence of
social software has enabled people to connect and collaborate throughout computer-

Proceedings of the 4th International Barcelona Conference on Higher Education
Vol. 2 . Knowledge technologies for social transformation
GUNI - Global University Network for Innovation – www.guni- rmies.net




mediated communication and to easily form online communities.
On the other hand, projects like the One Laptop per Child (NEGROPONTE,
2005), allied with the exponential growth of computer and internet capabilities makes
any debate about the impact of ICT in Education extensible to countries that have
been so far deprived of this kind of technology.
New cultural, educational and inter-personal phenomena are clearly emerging
from the use of technologies capable of enhancing social networking (O’REILLY,
2004; OBLINGER & OBLINGER, 2005), but little research has been made addressing
the psycho-pedagogical foundations and implications of this new technologies.
Departing from an analysis of the new “social web” from diverse theoretical
perspectives, namely Social Constructivism (VYGOTSKY, 1978), Constructionism
(PAPERT, 1993; STAGER, 2005), Distributed Cognition (SALOMON, 1993;
HUTCHINS, 1995), Situated Learning (LAVE & WENGER, 1991; LOW &
O’CONNELL, 2006) , Collective Intelligence (LÉVY, 1997; SUN, 2006), we intend to
address those challenges, in order to:
a) explore and clarify the potential and limitations of the so-called “Web
2.0” (O’REILLY, 2004) in Higher Education, doing so from a psychological oriented
perspective, and not from a technological one, fulfilling a persistent request (e.g.
ATTWELL, 2004; STAGER, 2005) in this field for discussions on the psycho-
pedagogical foundations of learning mediated by the new technological tools;
b) explore those potentials and limitations in the context of a debate of
what is or should be the social mission of the University, faced with the challenges that
today’s information and communication technologies pose upon it’s traditional role, by
transforming the ways in which knowledge can be created, shared and transformed
collectively, outside the borders of formal institutions and traditional reward systems;
c) suggest new forms of teaching that take into account the psychology of
the new publics of Higher Education, in terms of the expectations, needs and cognitive
characteristics of students previously exposed to computers and the Internet
(TAPSCOTT, 1997; OBLINGER & OBLINGER, 2005).
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are facing strong pressures to adjust their
methods of knowledge creation, sharing and preservation (and even the way the
knowledge evaluation process is conducted), due to the technological changes of the