A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Interacting With Users, Remote In Time And Space: A Presentation From UKOLN Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath UK UKOLN is supported by: About The Speaker Brian Kelly: Funded by JISC and MLA to advise HE/FE & cultural heritage sectors on Web technologies, standards & best practices Based at UKOLN, University of Bath About The Speaker Brian Kelly: Funded by JISC and MLA to advise HE/FE & cultural heritage sectors on Web technologies, standards & best practices Based at UKOLN, University of Bath This work is licensed under a Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 licence (but note caveat)

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 2 Collaborative Web 2.0 Technologies Examples of Web 2.0 collaborative technologies: Blogs – user-focussed Web content creation (usually with calendar metaphor) Wikis – collaborative Web-based authoring Instant messaging – e.g. MSN Messenger, Jabber, IRC, … VoIP (Voice over IP) – e.g. Skype Podcasts Example of the Web 2.0 culture: The network as the platform A willingness to experiment A culture of openness (e.g. Creative Commons licences, open source software, …)

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 3 Using Such Technologies We can use the technologies to support learning: Blogs: so students to reflect on their (and their peers) learning Wikis: so students can work collaboratively, whilst avoiding difficult-to-use tools IM, VoIP: so students can easily communicate with each other, with support staff, etc. Podcasts: so students can create reports, etc. using new medium Lecturers can be using the technologies in similar ways: Delivering learning content Engaging with students Exploring benefits and limitations of the technologies

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 4 Barriers To Their Use There are various barriers to use of the technologies: IT Services barrier (not addressed here) Inertia Fears Lack of training, understanding, … Concerns over funding and resourcing … Google for "IT Services help or hindrance" to find relevant talk at UCISA conference

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 5 Addressing The Barriers This presentation is intended as an example of how such barriers can be addressed: Use of Skype is planned: to demonstrate an example of distance collaboration; possible accessibility benefits; … A recording of the talk is available as an MP3 file and a Podcast: to demonstrate ease of creating such resources A live instant messaging channel is planned: to demonstrate benefits of real-time chat for local and participants Use of PowerPoint to provide an annotated set of links, to allow for interactive use A fall-back position, in case of problems (a pre- recorded talk and SMIL presentation)

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 6 Conclusions To conclude: Web 2.0 collaborative technologies are available for use in teaching & learning They can provide a variety of benefits …. … but will also have limitations We'll need to gain experiences in their use Conferences such as SOLSTICE 2006 provide a valuable opportunity for gaining experiences Note that resources mentioned in this talk are tagged in del.icio.us with solstice tag Also note that many of these issues will be addressed at the 10 th Institutional Web Management Workshop, at Bath University on June (Google for IWMW 2006)