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15 January 2008
Commons 2.0
Posted by Richard Wallis at January 15, 2008 01:21 PM
Tame The Web gives a heads up on the Bryan Sinclair article in EDUCAUSE Quaterly - Commons 2.0: Library Spaces Designed for Collaborative Learning.
The article is about the way in which the physical spaces, provided for students to gather and work with technology, need to evolve with the times to meet the needs of those students. Moving away from the static computer lab towards an environment that incorporates the freedom of wireless communication, flexible workspace clusters that promote interaction and collaboration, and comfortable furnishings, art, and design to make users feel relaxed, encourage creativity, and support peer-learning.
Bryan comments:
With the rise of Web 2.0 and social software we are witnessing a major shift in the ways students approach and use information. They no longer merely consume and download information; increasingly, they create and participate in it. They are social creatures in every way that past generations were and in some new ways, sharing information digitally and using each other as sounding boards. They value social experiences that blend communication and learning.
Social software in the form of blogs, wikis, MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube is merely an extension of this socialization in a wired culture. The software, spaces, and instruction provided to today's students should encourage them to become well-equipped participants in an online global community, skilled in written and visual communication and critical thinking. We can provide innovative spaces and facilities, but ultimately the instruction we provide is key to creating ethical and effective online citizens.
I contend that it is equally important for the academic libraries, who should be creating Commons 2.0 spaces for their students, to be following their own lead and ensure that the libraries become well-equipped participants in an online global community. Looking at what online resources are available for students, from their University, it is clear that we have a long way to go in getting a joined up view.
Few would argue that academic institutions, and their libraries, have not in general grasped the online world and done much with it. Nevertheless, in most cases you will find little or no integration between learning management systems, institutional repositories, library catalogues, local databases, course reading list systems, journal aggregators, and the like. That's just at the search and discovery interface level, delve down into how the valuable data within those systems is interconnected and examples become nonexistent.
Many use Google as an example of search to take notice of. Check out their results page - be it a video, or a map, or a web page, or a book, or a person, you get a seamless integration of all those resources in one place. How many universities can give their students that - be it a book, a reading list, a professor, a journal article, or pre-print.
The academic world has come a long way, but has got much further to go both in the physical, and the online, Commons 2.0
Technorati Tags: Commons 2.0, Web 2.0, Integration, EDUCAUSE, Library, Talis
Photo of Learning Resource Centre South Devon College published on Flickr by jisc_infonet.
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