By: Katrin Weller, Ramona Dornstader, Raimonds Freimanis, Raphael N. Klein, and Maredith Perez (2010)
Department of Information Science Heinrich-Heine-University Dusseldorf
In: Proceedings of the WebSci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-Line, April 26-27th, 2010, Raleigh, NC: US.
This paper presents a summary of the results of three surveys, questioning different groups of users on their usage of social software tools in academic settings. The first survey addressed students across various disciplines, the second one addressed only students in information science and related disciplines, and the third one addressed researchers and university teachers across several disciplines. The different studies had slightly different foci (and thus did not comprise the same set of questions), but all considered aspects such of ‘which Web 2.0 services are known?’ and ‘how are they used?’ In this paper, the different survey results related to use of social software are summed up and compared
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From the Conclusion:
Wikipedia is the Web 2.0 application that currently plays the most important role for academic life. It is comprehensively known both to students and academic staff and has caught up with the popularity of Google. Furthermore, it is highly used in academic contexts, students and teachers/researchers use it as an information resource. But this usage is rather of passive nature. Only less than one fifth of students in Survey A have ever edited a Wiki page and 21% of academic wiki users in Survey C describe themselves as passive users.
Other Web 2.0 achievements seem to play a minor role in academic work. Those services which serve entertainment purposes (like social networking, YouTube or Flickr) are widely known to students. Academic staff participants furthermore had a considerable awareness for weblogs, vod- or podcasts, and Twitter. But they mainly use these tools in their leisure time and none of the services is of high or very high significance for more than 50% of those who use these tools. Social bookmarking services and social tagging are not very widely known.
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