PITFALLS AND POTENTIALS OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE
IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Ines Puntschart
Know-Center, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Klaus Tochtermann
Know-Center, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Gisela Dösinger
Know-Center, Graz, Austria
Keywords: Blog, discussion forum, knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer, social software, virtual communities, Web
2.0, WIKI.
Abstract: The overwhelming success of all different types of social software, such as WIKIs, Blogs etc. is about to
change the way how communities interact with each other. Most of the systems are being used on a
voluntary basis run and maintained by individuals who have a deep wish to transfer and share their
knowledge with others. This transfer and sharing, however, often takes place outside any educational setting
even though the main purpose of educational settings such as universities is to educate students through
sharing and transferring knowledge. Up to now social software tools are used very rarely in universities to
support teaching and training, and this is the case even though students are keen on using exactly these tools
in their spare time. This observation leads to the guiding research question for our work: How can social
software be used most effectively and efficiently in higher education? In order to find answers we conducted
four case studies at Graz University of Technology with more than 350 students involved.
1 INTRODUCTION
We are currently witnessing the overwhelming
success of all different types of social software, such
as WIKIs, Blogs etc. Most of these systems are
being used on a voluntary basis run and maintained
by individuals who have a deep wish to
communicate, transfer and share their knowledge
with others. Particularly among young people it
becomes more and more popular to distribute their
weblog address instead (or at least in addition) to
their phone number.
This new collaborative nature of communication
and knowledge transfer methods on the web is often
referred to as the Web 2.0 movement. The Web 2.0
is an ambiguous, even polymorph concept which is
understood by different people in different ways.
One interpretation is that Web2.0 is the web for the
people and not for the commerce (as it is the case
with “Web 1.0”).
To some, Web 2.0 refers to a perceived transition
of the internet from a collection of websites to a full-
fledged computing platform serving web
applications to end users. To others, Web 2.0 is a
social phenomenon and dues to an approach to
create web content; direct, honest and open
communication with respect to the market as a
conversation; reliance on community and
decentralization of authority; freedom to share and
transfer remix and license knowledge.
This transfer and sharing, however, often takes
place outside any educational setting even though
the main purpose of educational settings such as
universities is to educate students through sharing
and transferring knowledge. And the scientific
communities agrees that up to now there are very
few academic publications about the use of social
21
Puntschart I., Tochtermann K. and Dösinger G. (2006).
PITFALLS AND POTENTIALS OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE IN HIGHER EDUCATION.
In Proceedings of WEBIST 2006 - Second International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and
e-Government / e-Learning, pages 21-28
DOI: 10.5220/0001256100210028
Copyright
c
SciTePress
software tools for teaching and training at
universities. This observation leads to the guiding
research question for our research: How can social
software be used most effectively and efficiently in
higher education?
With the attribute “effectively” we take into
consideration that social software provides some
added-value to traditional face-to-face sharing and
transferring of knowledge. With the attribute
“efficiently” we emphasise that the use of such tools
should decrease and not increase the workload of the
lectures for both, students and lecturers in “higher
education”.
The purpose of this paper is to suggest answers
to the above question. To achieve this, the paper is
structured as follows. Section 2 introduces important
terms needed throughout this paper. In order to give
an exhaustive answer to our research question we
need a model for knowledge sharing and transfer
helping us to completely understand the problem
space. A first extension of such a model and its
application in two explorative case studies with
more than 140 students involved is described in
Section 3. Section 3 also identifies limitations of the
model. In order to overcome these limitations,
Section 4 introduces indicators based on the well
established design-based research approach. These
indicators are used to measure how the limitations of
the first extension model can be overcome. This
feeds directly into a further model extension which
is presented in Section 5. The paper closes with a
conclusion in Section 6.
2 DEFINITIONS OF TERMS
Higher education comprises communities (e.g.,
consisting of a group of students, or of a lecturer and
students etc.) in which knowledge is shared and
transferred. To have a common notion of these terms
throughout this paper, we provide some definitions
in this section.
The idea of communities in the context of
knowledge management is not new: Positive and
emotional associations as well as high expectations,
especially regarding communication and innovation,
have resulted in the foundation of communities as
informal groups of shared interests in many
organizations (Reinmann 2000).
According to a general definition a community is
„a group of people with a common characteristic or
interest living together within a larger society“
(MERRIAM-WEBSTER 2005).
Depending on the purpose of coming together,
communities of interest or communities of practice
(Preece 2000) are built.
The basic definition of Communities of Practice
was coined by Etienne Wenger (Wenger 1998): “In
a nutshell, a community of practice is a group of
people who share an interest in a domain of human
endeavour and engage in a process of collective
learning that creates bonds between them: a tribe, a
garage band, a group of engineers working on
similar problems. “ The three essential elements are
the domain, the community and the practice.
A Community of Interest is a group of people
connected to each other by a need to solve common
problems, develop skills and share common
practices. A community of interest may contain
smaller subsets of people sharing information within
their respective communities of practice.
According to the way how communication takes
place we distinguish further between face-to-face
communities and virtual communities.
In Face-to-Face Communities the members
communicate in person in a common room of
perception while in Virtual Communities the
participants transfer and share knowledge
technology-enhanced using a Community-Platform.
In higher education all forms of communities
mentioned can be found. Students find together in
lectures where they engage in a process of collective
learning because they share a common interest.
While the lecture itself still in the majority of cases
is held face-to-face it is also possible and getting
more and more common to integrate community-
platforms for further exchange of documents,
comments etc.
The human communication, interaction and
cooperation within communities can be supported by
social software. In our notion social software
enables people to interact with each other using the
Internet. This interaction can be uni-directional or
bi-directional which leads us to the definition of
knowledge transfer and sharing:
In our notion Knowledge Transfer is the uni-
directional transfer of knowledge (i) from individual
A to individual B, (ii) from individual A to a
community {B, C, D,…}, (iii) from a community
{B, C, D,…} to individual A and (iv) from a
community {B
A
, C
A
, D
A
,…} to a community {B
B
,
C
B
, D
B
,…}. Note, that an individual A can be the
sender of a knowledge transfer and at the same time
be a member of the receiving community.
Knowlege Sharing is an extension of knowledge
transfer in the sense that knowledge flows in either
direction, from the sender to the receiver and vice
versa.
WEBIST 2006 - SOCIETY, E-BUSINESS AND E-GOVERNMENT
22
Note, that conceptually each individual A can be
represented by a community {A} with just one
community member. This is why the remainder of
the paper often talks about communities and not
individuals any more.
3 COMMUNITY-
COMMUNICATION-MODEL
The Community-Communication-Model (CCM)
(fig. 1) was created to demonstrate all theoretically
possible ways of knowledge transfer and sharing
within and between communities (Puntschart 2005).
{A}
r
t
u
s
F2F
F2F
n
qp
o
{B}A
A
B
B
B
A
A
B
{A}
r
t
u
s
F2F
F2F
n
qp
o
{B}A
A
B
B
B
A
A
B
… Member of Community
…Community
… Knowledge Transfer
…Knowledge Sharing
... Face-to Face Communication
... Technology-enhanced
Communication
A,B…
{A,B…}
F2F
… Member of Community
…Community
… Knowledge Transfer
…Knowledge Sharing
... Face-to Face Communication
... Technology-enhanced
Communication
A,B…
{A,B…}
F2F
Arrows 1-8 show all forms of knowledge transfer
and sharing within (arrows 1-4) and between (arrows
5-8) communities. These possibilities of transfer
according to the variables introduced above within
communities are:
1. A
A
Æ B
A
~ transfer between two members
within the same community
2. A
A
Æ {A} ~ transfer from one community
member to the entire community
3. {A} Æ A
A
~ transfer from the entire
community to one community member
4. {A} Æ {A} ~ transfer from the entire
community to itself
The possible ways of knowledge transfer and
sharing between different communities are:
5. A
A
Æ A
B,C,...
~ transfer from one
community member to member(s) of another
community
6. A
A
Æ {B, C,..} ~ transfer from one
community member to another community
7. {A} Æ A
B,C,...
~ transfer from one
community to member(s) of another community
8. {A} Æ {B, C,...} ~ transfer from one
community to another community
For example, arrow 1 represents the knowledge
transfer from one single member of the community
to another member of the community, e.g. if a
member posts a comment to a statement of another
person. Arrow 5 describes the same situation
between members of different communities. For
example, if a student looks in another forum to
which he/she joined in order to participate in the
discussion. (The model is described in detail in
Puntschart 2006).
3.1 Explorative Studies
In order to answer our guiding research question, we
conducted two consecutive case studies at Graz
University of Technology (TU Graz) using different
types of social software to support two lectures.
These studies are summarized to the extent which is
necessary to make this paper self-contained. A
detailed description of these studies to approve the
model can be found in (Puntschart 2005).
The initial point for the enforcement of the
studies was the fact that TU Graz offers their
students a broad set of different IT systems: TUG
Online (https://online.tu-graz.ac.at/) for extensive
information about lectures, lecturers, administrative
issues etc. Another system is used for newsgroups
and yet another to provide course material. There is
no space for individual working environments for
the students to deposit their own working documents
and relevant literature. Also no social software tools
are offered to support the knowledge sharing within
and between the communities.
To overcome such a heterogeneous working
environment which obviously hinders knowledge
transfer and sharing a Knowledge Management
System was implemented for the lecture
“Introduction to Knowledge Management” attended
by about 140 Students and in the following summer
term in the lecture “eCommerce” with about 42
students. With this system an integrated IT
environment including a personal working space for
each student to store documents, links, etc. was
provided. In order to support knowledge sharing
several discussion forums linked to the topics of the
lecture were integrated. Within the system the
students had immediate access to all slides of the
lecture, links and literature, and also research tools
and references to scientific methods. In addition, a
Blog was used in the lecture. This blog, however,
Figure 1: Community-Communication Model.
PITFALLS AND POTENTIALS OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE IN HIGHER EDUCATION
23
was not a “traditional” personal Blog but a
community Blog for collecting specific links
classified into categories.
The discussion forums were being moderated by
four e-moderators consisting of the lecture team to
extend the discussion and guarantee quality of the
statements, help the students to keep the topic, and
to keep the netiquettes.
3.2 Preliminary Results
The analysis of the use of the CCM in these two
studies reveals that the CCM applies to all possible
ways of knowledge communication. According to
the practical impact the CCM provides helpful
guidance for the design of community environments.
(Puntschart 2006).
But much more important is that already during
these studies further important research questions
emerged: An additional insight is that the
moderation of the discussion forums and the Blog
implemented in the lecture is very time consuming
for the lecturer. To fulfil some of the typical tasks of
e-moderators, like conformity to the netiquette, or
keeping the members focused to the topic, the
lecturer has to read all statements. Having a lecture
with 180 students who post at least six statements
each means that the lecturer has to read more about
850 statements. Thus, the social software
environment was perceived more as a burden rather
than a relief. Referring to our initial research
question, the use of social software is not “efficient”.
Still, the tool is “effective” in the sense that students
had a one-stop-shop for the lecture offering all
relevant lecture material.
As a consequence a key question is how to
reduce the workload of e-moderators. In order to
find a solution for this problem we analyse the
differences between Wikis, Blogs and discussions
forums to find out why Wikis and Blogs work
without
e-moderators and why discussion forums do not:
In Blogs the communication is often based on
content such as links to further websites or
documents integrated in the statements. Something
similar was found for Wikis: Wikis focus on the
production of content in forms of statements that can
be commented or discussed. Discussion forums in
contrary support the communication separately from
the content which in our specific case relies in
background libraries of the knowledge management
system. Content in this context (in contrary to
communication) is not associated to certain
members of the group. Content consists of
documents, URLs and statements that are provided
to all community members.
As a conclusion, in our notion, one difference
between Wikis, Blogs and discussion forums lies in
the degree of integration between communication
and content. Whereas in Wikis and Blogs the degree
of integration is very high, in discussion forums the
degree of integration is low since these two parts are
often completely separated. This also explains the
high workload of the e-moderators during our case
study: Their main task was to connect
communication entries in the discussion forums with
the content in the background libraries.
Concerning the CCM and these insights our
research reveals that the model only focuses on
communication and knowledge transfer aspects but
does not take into consideration the role of what we
refer to as content (e.g., documents, Internet
resources etc.). Thus the CCM has to be extended to
cover all aspects which relate to content. This
extended model, the Community-Communication-
Content Model will be described in the following
Section.
Before doing this, we want to drop some figures
indicating how time-consuming the task of e-
moderators is to guide discussion forums. For this
purpose we differentiate between the tasks of a
system administrator and the tasks of an e-
moderator: The system administrators’ main tasks
are the to implement a system with adequate rights
and role concepts for the users, keep the system
running, maintain any technical problems or help the
community members use the system. The main tasks
of e-moderators are to motivate members or to keep
the discussion on the track (see Section 4).
Results of the studies show that with an increase
of members the amount of time e-moderators spent
for supporting a community increases much faster
than the necessary time needed for administrative
purposes. To implement the system including
registering the students, uploading the material and
granting adequate access rights to the members took
about 2 hours during the design phase. During the
study, one task of the system administrator lasts
about 30 seconds on average. In total four students
needed administrative support since they forgot their
user identification and further three students were
granted with wrong rights. This amounts to a total
time spent by the administrator of 3.5 minutes.
To moderate a discussion includes posting initial
statements and motivating the members but also
keeping the discussion on track, which in turn
includes the reading of all statements. The time
spent for all e-moderators accumulates to about four
WEBIST 2006 - SOCIETY, E-BUSINESS AND E-GOVERNMENT
24
hours if we consider the following parameters of our
case study:
o Reading of each statement takes one
minute,
o Each student posts six statements with a
length of about 5 to 10 lines,
o 141 students participate in the lecture.
In addition, the e-moderator posted initial
statements, questions, motivating statements etc.
which also takes about one minute per statement. All
e-moderators posted a total of 70 statements, which
increases their workload by further 70 minutes.
Please note, that we do not include the time
e-moderators need for login and logout, navigating
to the forums, uploading course material and
background documents etc.
We found another interesting correlation
between the number of statements from students and
the number of statements from e-moderators: During
the first case study we offered our 141 students eight
different discussion forums. One e-moderator was
responsible for two forums. In the most active forum
the statements posted by the e-moderator amounted
to 15.45% of all statements. In contrast to this, in the
forum with the lowest activity the e-moderator’s
contributions were only 1.37% of all contributions.
These investigations indicate that the more active
an e-moderator is the more activity is generated in
the discussion forum. On the other hand, a high
degree of activity of an e-moderator is quite time-
consuming. If we look for alternatives which help
reduce the workload of the e-moderator, we should
take into account that the degree of activity within a
community must not be affected in a negative way.
We therefore need to find interventions which lead
to the same effects as e-moderator statements but at
the same time reduce the workload of e-moderators.
As mentioned above Social Software tools like
WIKIs and Blogs work without the help of e-
moderators. One reason for this lies in the tight
integration between content and communication
which lacks in discussion forums. With this in
background we develop the following research
hypothesis: An e-moderator can be substituted or
supported, if the social software does not only
support the knowledge sharing and transfer through
communication but through a tight connection
between content and communication.
In order to prove this hypothesis, we extend the
CCM and we prepare the ground for justificative
(and not just explorative) case studies. This is why
the next section introduces a corresponding
methodology.
4 METHODOLOGY
Existing research approaches in educational settings
are often not capable of creating sustained
innovation. The mostly quantitative approaches
turned out to be insufficient in methodology and
procedure to effect sustainable changes in higher
education and to provide concepts for practical
issues. An appropriate approach for the context of
innovation in higher education seemed to be Design-
Based Research traced back of Ann Brown and her
ideas to “design experiments” (Brown 1992).
“Design research is not defined by methodology.
All sorts of methods may be employed. What defines
design research is its purpose: sustained innovative
development” (Bereiter 2002).
The two main aims of Design-Based Research
are to understand how people learn, particularly
within educational settings and to design ways to
better ensure that learning will happen in these
settings.
Because this approach is still not very well
known, and thus sometimes doubted to be
scientifically proven Fischer et al. (Fischer 2003)
analysed the Design-Based Research Approach in
regard to the principles published by the National
Research Council. Some of these principals are
(National Research Council 2002):
· Pose significant questions that can be
investigated empirically
· Link research to relevant theory
· Replicate and generalize across studies
· Use methods that permit direct investigation
on the question
All of these principals are fulfilled in order to be
considered as empirical and proved that none of the
principles is being breached.
To answer the research questions concerning the
degree of integration between content and
communication in discussion forums, the necessity
of e-moderators and to develop a general concept for
knowledge transfer and sharing in communities in
higher education, we define systematic setting (or
categories) and tag them with indicators. For each
indicator a number of interventions was taken and
put into practice in two further case studies.
Examples of indicators, corresponding interventions
and expected results will now be presented.
The basis for defining indicators is a list of the
typical roles of e-moderators. Several authors (e.g.
Berge, 1992; 1994; 2005, Brochet, 1989; Feenberg,
1989; Morris, 1993; Paulsen, 1995) have attempted
to list the many roles or functions of the e-moderator
which include: assistant, consultant, contextualizer,
PITFALLS AND POTENTIALS OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE IN HIGHER EDUCATION
25
Figure 2: Community-Communication-Content Model.
coordinator, editor, entertainer, expert, explainer,
facilitator, filter, goal setter, helper, intermediary,
leader, lecturer, manager, marketer, mediator,
meeting chairperson, mentor, observer, participant,
promoter, provocateur, tutor etc. As this list of roles
is very long, we select the following tasks of e-
moderators.
· keeping members focused to topic
· motivation of participants to communicate
· complying with the netiquette
· acquirement of new members
· elimination of members
· definition of community-aim
· motivation of members to integrate content
· providing and referencing literature
· implementing new communication tools
The main selection criterion is the affinity of the
task to our application context. We assign all these
tasks to four categories or systematic settings – the
community, the communication, the content and the
integration of content and community.
And finally, we define measurable indicators for
each systematic setting. For example the task
“motivation of members to communicate” belongs
to the category “communication”. The indicator to
measure this task is the number of statements made
by each member. The systematic settings with
respect to WHAT can change are the
1. change of community over time
2. change of communication over time
3. change of content over time
4. change of the degree of integration between
content and communication over time
The indicators that belong to the systematic
settings covering all tasks of e-moderators are.
1.) change of community
Indicators for the change of the community are
the size of the community at different points in time
and also the constitution of the members of a
community. The size is characterized by the number
of participants whereas the constitution is reflected
by the participants themselves. Within this context,
the task of the e-moderators is the acquisition of new
and the elimination of existing members.
2.) change of communication
Possible changes of the communication due to
the way how members communicate and the
content of the communication for example if
objective and purpose change. Another indicator is
the extent of entries. Within this context, tasks of e-
moderators include the integration of new
communication tools, the definition of a new
community objective, keeping the members focused
to the topic and the motivation of participants to
communicate.
3.) change of content
Concerning the content the number of documents
and the quality of documents can vary. In the
beginning of a discussion to a certain topic rather
basic literature or links will be used. In an advanced
discussion rather specific content will be added. The
tasks of e-moderators are to motivate the community
members to integrate new content, to provide
relevant literature and to continuously leverage the
level of knowledge concerning the topic.
4.) integration of content and community
The integration of content and community is the
most important setting because characterises the
difference between Wikis, Blogs and discussion
forums. The only task an e-moderator can do in this
case is to recommend literature not knowing if these
references are agreed or not.
In a next step each indicator is measured in order
to conclude which tasks of e-moderators can be
substituted or supported. All these interventions are
implemented in two case studies at TU Graz.
5 COMMUNITY-
COMMUNICATION-CONTENT
MODEL
According to the results of the studies, this section
extends the Community-Communication-Model by
the dimension “content”.
The extended model, the Community-
Communication-Content Model (C²CM) (Fig. 2) is
based on the CCM.
CONTENT{A}
r
tu
s
F2F
F2F
n
qp
o
{B}A
A
B
B
B
A
A
B
CONTENT{A}
r
tu
s
F2F
F2F
n
qp
o
{B}A
A
B
B
B
A
A
B
Up to now the factor content has not been
considered in our model. In order to integrate
content we consider it to be useful to distinguish
between internal and external content: internal
content is already integrated in the repository of the
WEBIST 2006 - SOCIETY, E-BUSINESS AND E-GOVERNMENT
26
social software tool, external content can be found
outside the social software in the Internet (e.g., links
or documents), in libraries, magazines or
proceedings but can be integrated to the repository
(e.g. by referring to the content with a URL).
Additionally, this model supports the different
ways of knowledge communication – electronically,
supported with artefacts or face-to-face. This shows
that the C²CM does not only include virtual
communities but also Face-to-Face Communities.
5.1 Justificative Case Studies
Two further case studies were conducted to verify
the C²CM and to take measures for the indicators
presented in Section 4. The objective was to figure
out how the tasks e-moderators can be reduced or e-
moderators can even be substituted.
During the design phase of the two case studies
all interventions were defined and the resulting rules
for communication were reported to the students.
During the case studies there were no actions taken
by e-moderators. They neither participated by
posting any statements nor by uploading documents.
This step ensures that we can analyse to which
degree an intervention can support e-moderators.
Case Study 2 (CS2) is realized in the lecture
“Introduction to knowledge management” (92
students) and Case Study 3 (CS3) in the lecture
“Basics of knowledge management”, (20 students)
using again our knowledge management system. To
cover all ways of knowledge transfer and sharing in
CS3 the forums are designed in the way that there is
one superior discussion forum during the entire
semester and specific forums linked to each topic of
the lecture. After a certain period of time (six weeks
in our case) the discussion of the specific forums
continues in the superior forum at a higher level of
knowledge among the students. With this design all
arrows of the C²CM are covered and confirm the
importance of the model as supporting tool for the
design and use of discussion forums in lectures.
The importance of communication in this context
lies in the support by lecturers to select relevant
content. This was another reason for us to integrate
communities in lectures and connect content and
communication with one another. Often time lacks
for discussion in lectures and using social software
tools a discussion that has to be finished can be
continued later.
One specific intervention to integrate content and
communication is for example the duty of students
to add literature references which are related to their
statements. The students can select from a couple of
possibilities: they can either reference documents
and links that are already offered to this topic by the
lecture team, they can upload files and links
themselves and reference these or they can reference
content that was found outside the system in the
internet, in libraries etc.
To figure out if the students make use of the
content and if relevant literature is provided by the
lecture team several interventions were taken. We
designed different constellations consisting of
discussion forums and background libraries
containing the content. The purpose was to gain
insights about which constellation has which effect
on the discussion. For example, one forum is
designed as a mix of several documents and links to
topics to be discussed in the forum. Another forum
provides only basic literature to see, if the discussion
ends once the students have reached a certain degree
of knowledge about the topic or if the students add
more advanced literature to continue the discussion
at a higher level. Another forum offers only
advanced literature to see if the discussion maybe
even does not started because the students are
overstrained or if the students integrated basic
literature.
What all forums have in common is that there is
no literature uploaded by e-moderators during the
semester. These interventions are taken to see which
forums are likely to stimulate the discussion. We try
to offer a broad set of interesting forums, technical
and organizational ones, as we had made good
experiences in our first case studies. The forums are
limited with a number of 20 members – this is about
the number of interested students each topic. And
additionally each student can discuss in the forum
he/she is interested in. As all these forums are
obligatory forums additional volunteer forums to
free topics are offered to further the discussion
without any pressure and duty to communicate.
The measurement of the indicators provides first
indications that the requirement to connect
discussion entries with content helps the students to
stay on a thematic track. Our results also show that
through this intervention the number of entries from
an e-moderator can easily be reduced by about 50%
without risking that the discussions delve into
tangential areas (Puntschart 2006). If this trend
remains (what we expect), we can conclude that
social software can be used efficiently in educational
setting. Its effectiveness is guaranteed through the
many possibilities which such tools offer (c.f.
Section 3).
PITFALLS AND POTENTIALS OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE IN HIGHER EDUCATION
27
6 CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK
In the context of higher education the adequate use
of social software tools is of great importance. The
use of such tools must fit to the situation of each
side, the lecturer and the students. There is a clear
evidence that social software tools have the potential
to increase the workload of the lectures. This is
particularly true if their role as e-moderator requires
many interactions in order to keep the community on
a given thematic track. However, if content is better
integrated into the communication patterns, this
integration can substitute or at least support the e-
moderator.
We are currently working on a guideline helping
lecturers to assess which social software type (e.g,
social networking, social bookmarking etc.) can be
best used for which type of course in universities.
This guideline will also include a catalog of
interventions which will trigger the same effects
which are triggered by e-moderator statements
(Puntschart 2006). The application of such
intervention will help to reduce the workload of the
e-moderators.
A further aim is to find the way back to
traditional universities where discussion was part of
studying like the Socratic Dialogues. The new
teaching form – the Web 2.0 teaching – combines
well tried dialogues integrated with relevant content
using new media. The lecturers become reachable
for students still keeping distance but
communication can be furthered without loosing
time.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Know-Center is funded by the Austrian
Competence Center program Kplus under the
auspices of the Austrian Ministry of Transport,
Innovation and Technology (http://www.ffg.at) and
by the State of Styria.
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