Screenshot of the LSBU YouTube Channel

Things have been quiet on my blog over the past few weeks as I have been extremely busy at work and one of the projects the web team here have been working on is the launch of the YouTube channel for London South Bank University (LSBU).

What makes our University channel different from every other University channel out there you ask? Simple, our channel is “probably the first” University YouTube channel to ensure every video uploaded also has captioning incorporated that makes use of YouTube’s captioning system, you can turn the captioning on or off and even use the inbuilt google translate engine to view the captions in a language of your choice. Matt Cutts goes into detail about the YouTube Translation functionality in his blog.

Let me know what you think of the channel. It has around 10 videos up at the moment and I will be hoping to build on these over the next few months. The University is slowly but surely making it’s debut into the social media realm and the web team here intend to make the best use of Web 2.0 . Only a month ago I created the LSBU Twitter page and without any publicity we have already managed to pull in nearly 200 followers. In the grand scheme of things, these may just be baby steps but the web team here have a lot planned to ensure that the University embraces the latest social media technologies.

Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World

Launched on the 12th of May, the report finds that universities and colleges are generally falling behind their students in the use of these technologies and challenges them, and the major educational agencies, to take account of, and capitalise on, these trends.

The study reveals how web activities have replaced TV in the daily diary of a typical teenager. With primary school children and adults also increasingly adopting such technologies, becoming regular users themselves, this trend is only like to accelerate. It is therefore vital the HE community and other parts of the education system re-evaluate their evolution in order to meet such fast-paced change.

The report also evidences how Web 2.0, the Social Web, is having a profound effect on behaviour, particularly, but not exclusively, among young people whose medium it is. With today’s teenagers and primary school children so well-versed in technologies that enable instant communication, collaboration, information creation, participation and sharing, it is clear how students are very often more advanced than their tutors in their use of these technologies.

Indeed, young people inhabit the Web 2.0 world with enviable ease and it leads them to a strong sense of community and their own ability to be creators of information which is world-wide in its reach. It also leads them in their studies to a desire for instant answers and a casual approach to critical evaluation, plagiarism and information ownership – key issues which demand attention from HE and other parts of the education system.

The report evaluates the challenges for universities and their staff in keeping pace with, and capitalising on, these trends and argues there are very strong drivers for change. The report makes 21 far-reaching recommendations to UK universities and colleges as well as to strategic educational bodies aimed at ensuring that HE continues to provide an up-to-date, challenging and relevant experience for students.

Download the CLEX Higher Education in a Web2.0 world (PDF – 1.57MB)