The evolution of the media and the Internet in education today is an unquestionable reality. At the university level, the use of Web 2.0 tools has become increasingly visible in the new resources that professors have been incorporating both into the classroom and into their research, reinforcing the methodological renewal that the implementation…

This article reports on the pedagogical value of Web 2.0 tools at Unisa (i.e., whether these tools can improve teaching and learning). A quantitative approach was used to conduct the study, with a questionnaire as a data collection instrument. The sample size was 301 lecturers drawn using stratified sampling, with proportional allocation drawn…

This paper presents a study of the use of wikis to support online group projects in two courses at the UK Open University. The research aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a wiki in supporting (i) student collaboration and (ii) tutors' marking of the students' collaborative work. The paper uses the main factors previously identified by the…

Various tools and services based on Web 2.0 (mainly blogs, wikis, social networking tools) are increasingly used in formal education to create personal learning environments, providing self-directed learners with more freedom, choice, and control over their learning. In such distributed and personalized learning environments, the traditional role…

Remix is touted as one of the most important practices within the field of open educational resources (OER). But remixing is still not mainstream practice in education and the barriers and limitations to remix are not well known. In this article we discuss the design and development of a print and web-based booklet created to introduce the topic…

This paper describes a pilot study in using Facebook as an alternative to a learning management system (LMS). The paper reviews the current research on the use of Facebook in academia and analyzes the differences between a Facebook group and a regular LMS. The paper reports on a precedent-setting attempt to use a Facebook group as a course…

In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in the use of social networking tools (e.g., Facebook) and social media in general, mainly for social purposes (Smith, Salaway & Caruso 2009). Many educators, including ourselves, believe that these tools offer new educational affordances and avenues for students to interact with each other and…

This report explores the first iteration of a teacher professional development courselet grounded in constructionist theory and activities. This online teacher professional development (oTPD) courselet provided opportunities for teachers to engage in just-in-time, ongoing TPD within a social networking site for educators. The topic of the oTPD was…

This paper deploys notions of emergence, connections, and designs for learning to conceptualize high school students' interactions when using online social media as a learning environment. It makes links to chaos and complexity theories and to fractal patterns as it reports on a part of the first author's action research study, conducted while she…

This paper examines how emergent technologies could influence the design of learning environments. It will pay particular attention to the roles of educators and learners in creating networked learning experiences on massive open online courses (MOOCs). The research shows that it is possible to move from a pedagogy of abundance to a pedagogy that…