Harnessing the affordances of Web 2.0 and social software tools: can we finally make "student-centred" learning a reality?

This paper highlights the importance of considering the educational affordances of information and communication technologies (ICTs), in particular the raft of new and emerging Web 2.0 and social software tools that offer rich opportunities for collaboration, interactivity, and socio-experiential learning. The authors argue that perceived affordances, which are a function of individual users’ or learners’ perceptions and views, are of central significance, and encourage educators to empower learners with freedom and autonomy to select and personalize the tools and technology available to them, as well as allowing them to determine how best to use the technology to support their learning. While “student-centered” learning has become somewhat of a mantra for educators in recent decades, the adoption of social software tools driven by appropriate pedagogies may offer an opportunity for this goal to be truly realized. Introduction: The affordances of ICTs for education The term “affordances” is generally attributed to the perceptual psychologist, J. J. Gibson (1977, 1979), who used it as a core component of his ecological theory of human perception. The term is now used in a range of fields, including but not limited to cognitive psychology, industrial design, human-computer interaction (HCI) and interface design, and artificial intelligence. Overall, an affordance is an action that an individual can potentially perform in their environment by using a particular tool (Affordance, 2007). In other words, an affordance is a “can do” statement that is not necessarily pre-defined by a particular functionality, and refers to any application that enables a user to undertake tasks in their environment. For example, telephones allow the placing and receiving of calls, which in isolation are not affordances, but which substantively enable the affordances of communication and information exchange. Salomon (1993) advocates analyzing information and communication technologies (ICTs) from the perspective of their educational affordances. According to Kirschner (2002), educational affordances can be defined as the relationships between the properties of an educational intervention and the characteristics of the learner that enable certain kinds of learning to take place. Conole and Dyke (2004) draw on social and educational theory to propose a taxomony of the educational affordances of ICTs, which include the identified themes of: accessibility, speed of change; diversity; communication and collaboration; reflection; multimodal and non-linear learning; risk, fragility, and uncertainty; immediacy, monopolization, and surveillance. They believe that the taxonomy will be useful as a “checklist” for practitioners, to assist them in making informed decisions about the use of different ICT technologies, and also to help increase their awareness of the properties of different tools and resources. This awareness will be beneficial as they design and develop learning activities and teaching plans. In this paper, the authors first discuss the affordances of the new wave of social software tools that are beginning to pervade our classrooms and institutions. They then argue for a broader view of affordances that recognizes the central role of the user or learner in determining the possibilities and uses of the technologies available, before using this as a starting point to discuss the potential—and need—for truly student-centered learning to come to fruition in a Web 2.0 era. Web 2.0 and social software tools and their affordances “Web 2.0” refers to an apparent second generation or improved form of the World Wide Web that emphasizes collaboration and sharing of knowledge and content among users. While Web 2.0 does not entail radical changes in the technical specifications of the Web, most proponents of the concept describe it in terms of new possibilities and applications. O’Reilly (O’Reilly 2005a, 2005b) believes that these new applications have emerged due to a changing socio-cultural context, giving rise to the perception of revolutionary new uses for the same technologies. Characteristic of Web 2.0 are the socially-based tools and systems referred to collectively as social software, which includes but is not limited to web logs (blogs), wikis, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and podcasting feeds, peerto-peer (P2P) media sharing applications, and social bookmarking utilities. These new tools make possible a new wave of online behavior, distributed collaboration, and social interaction, and are already having a transformative effect on society, triggering changes in how we communicate and learn. A few examples will illustrate the new forms of communication and participation enabled by social software tools. Users are now engaged in creative authorship by being able to produce and manipulate digital images and video clips, tag them with chosen keywords, and make this content available to their friends and peers worldwide through Flickr, MySpace, and YouTube. Other individuals write blogs and create wiki spaces where like-minded individuals comment on, share, and augment these sources, thereby engaging in a new genre of dynamic “personal publishing” (Downes, 2004). Advocates of Web 2.0 assert that the terms “co-creation” and “users add value” encapsulate the practices of those who participate in and use social software, showing that that is not just an assembly of tools, but a set of concepts, practices, and attitudes that define its scope. This can be exemplified by contrasting two sites, Encyclopædia Britannica Online (2007) and Wikipedia (2007), the former maintained by a commercial organization and the latter by an open community. In Wikipedia, users can participate and create content, and in doing so become “prosumers” (both consumers and producers). This openness is the characteristic hallmark of Web 2.0, in which users mix, amend, and recombine content, collaboratively and open to a global audience, inviting revision and commentary. Moreover, the added dimension of scale means that the more people using the tools, the greater the network effect. The combined efforts and collective intelligence of hundreds of individuals can result in the co-production of resources such as Wikipedia entries, illustrating the power of the “wisdom of crowds” (Surowiecki, 2004). The “wisdom of crowds” concept acknowledges that when working cooperatively and sharing ideas, communities can be significantly more productive than individuals working in isolation. It is this “architecture of participation” (Barsky & Purdon, 2006, p. 65) that ensures that Web 2.0 is continually responsive to users. So, what does Web 2.0 mean for education? The advent of this new wave of tools and technologies provokes us to consider the implications for and potential applications to formal spaces of learning in colleges and universities (Berg, Berquam, & Christoph 2007). Social software applications can also be viewed as pedagogical tools that stem from their affordances of information discovery and sharing. Anderson (2004) observes that: “The greatest affordance of the Web for educational use is the profound and multifaceted increase in communication and interaction capability” (p. 42), which is even more evident in Web 2.0 when compared to the set of linked information sources that characterized “Web 1.0. ” Drawing on extant Web 2.0 research and practice, some examples of the affordances of Web 2.0 and social software tools are as follows: • Connectivity and social rapport. Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Ning, and Friendster attract and support networks of people and facilitate connections between them. They are representative of what Gee (2004) calls affinity spaces, in which people acquire both social and communicative skills, and at the same time become engaged in the architecture of participation of Web 2.0. In these spaces, users engage in informal learning, and creative, expressive forms of behavior and identity seeking, while developing a range of digital literacies. • Collaborative information discovery and sharing. Data sharing is enabled through a range of software applications, and experts and novices alike can make their work available to the rest of the virtual world, for example through personal and collaborative blogs. Social bookmarking tools such as del.icio. us, Furl, and Digg allow people to build up collections of web resources or bookmarks, classify and organize them through the use of metadata tags, and share both the bookmarks and tags with others. In this way, users with similar interests can learn from one another through subscribing to the bookmarks and tags of others, and actively contribute to the ongoing growth and evolution of the “folksonomy” of web-based information and knowledge. • Content creation. Web 2.0 emphasizes the pre-eminence of content creation over content consumption. Anyone can create, assemble, organize, and share content to meet their own needs and those of others. Open source and open content (cf. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007; MERLOT, 2006; Beshears, 2005) initiatives, as well as copyright licensing models like Creative Commons (2007), are helping fuel the growth of user-generated content. Wikis enable teams and individuals to work together to generate new knowledge through an open editing and review structure. • Knowledge and information aggregation and content modification. The large uptake of RSS, as well as related technologies such as podcasting (Curry, 2004) and vodcasting (which involve the syndication and aggregation of audio and video content, respectively), is indicative of a move to collecting material from many sources and using it for personal needs. Hilton (2006) describes these technologies as part of a move from “producer push” to “demand pull,” whereby students are now accustomed to obtaining and consuming content “on demand. ” There is also a trend towards the unbundling of cont