You may be interested in my report on Web2.0 take-up and usage which I submitted to JISC a few weeks ago. It’s analysis of some data that blogged back in March. I included the responses to the data in the report. It was all very ‘participatory’. The report can be downloaded from here: www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/digitalrepositories/spiresurvey.
As part of the JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project we ran a survey to try to discover which online services people were using and in what manner. We were interested to find out which services were popular and if they were being used for work, for study or socially / for fun. The SPIRE project was originally looking into the possibility of using peer-to-peer technologies in UK HE and FE for informal sharing but switched to a more Web 2.0 focus as it became clear that these types of services were already having an impact on the tertiary education sector. They also appear to be where most of the informal sharing and collaboration is currently taking place online.
The survey was advertised to the Department for Continuing Education’s online students and on the online courses marketing pages. We received circa 1400 responses which left us with a lot of data to analyse. I have processed this data in to a number of colorful charts which are in the PDF below.
I have already drawn a number of conclusions from these charts but have not included these thoughts in the PDF as I would be interested to know what others think the data might mean.
Results of the survey undertaken by the JISC funded SPIRE project (PDF)
For the full analysis of this data please download the final report here:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/digitalrepositories/spiresurvey.pdf
At TALL we’re particularly interested in how the many forms of online collaboration might be used in education and educational institutions such as our own, and currently have a couple of projects touching the subject: SPIRE and Isthmus.
There has been something of an explosion of these services over the last few years, producing photo hosting, calendaring, bookmarking, mapping, and blogging sites just for starters. With so many of these various services to consider, we need a list of what they all are, and how they compare, complement, and compete with each other… and which ones should I use!?
Here are a couple of sites listing these services:
Here’s a quick selection of those that easily come to mind…
Identity/authentication/login
Reputation/profile
Photo hosting
Blogging/journals
News/aggregation
Bookmarking
Meeting/calendaring
Some provide multiple services, e.g. many profile services such as myspace provide some form of journal facility.