Web 2.0 and user-created content

Students negotiating shifts in academic authority

Abstract

Web 2.0 technologies are able to support established student-centred pedagogies by enabling user-created content. However, user-created content generates some interesting challenges for educators, curriculum coordinators and designers—including issues such as academic integrity, public environments and shifting academic authority.

This paper looks at the question of how students responded to shifts in authority in the specific example of a podcasting activity using student-generated content. We report on themes that emerged from university medical students’ reflections on the learning activity: resistance to shifting academic authority, hybrid teacher/student approaches to content, and the perceived benefits of peer learning. The paper concludes with a discussion of how understandings of the process of content creation, as opposed to the end product, are key to perceptions of the educational value of user-created content.