"We shape our tools and then our tools shape us." – Marshall McLuhan
You've probably heard the term "Web 2.0." The
idea was that the changes in how the internet worked over the last 8
years were profound enough to warrant a whole new version. While the
term has come to embody a whole host of ideas, for our purposes, I'm
going to focus on one main idea: the shift from one to many to many to
many.
At the beginning of the web, pages were
published and static. The web surfer could read or look at multimedia.
The early web was a book, magazine or television experience, delivered
via the computer. There was one publisher and many readers. It was
profound because there could be many publishers which massively
expanded the total content. Soon the content was searchable. It was a
good start.
The expanding "Web 2.0"
insight is that the web, unlike previous mass media, does not have to
be one way communication. The website does not have to just publish, it
can be a conversation. Site visitors can leave comments, upload
pictures, or edit the content on the website, and these new features
provide a mass media experience entirely different than anything that
has come before it.
The idea of allowing
anyone to edit a website, enabled by a simple software tool called
"wiki," lead to the explosive growth of Wikipedia. Turns out thousands
of people around the world wanted to donate their time and expertise to
a repository of human knowledge. Wikipedia was the first to let them.
We
are social animals, and it didn't take long for this preference to come
to front. Comments were better if we could see the person behind them.
Pictures were more interesting with a little back story. Interacting
with the content of the site quickly became interacting with the people
of the site. "Social networking" sites were the logical extreme of this
shift back to our foundational values.
Sites like Facebook and
Twitter prioritized the human and the social – people came first, with
their individual content second. Neither Facebook nor Twitter have any
of their own content. People do not connect to Twitter, they connect to
other people using Twitter. These sites, and many others, are
successful because they skipped the publishing model entirely and went
right to a connecting and aggregating model. These sites don't produce,
they collect content from the users and manage the delivery of that
content through the network.
The difference
of these approaches is the difference between an expert publisher, and
an old style telephone operator working the switchboard. Amazingly
enough, it is now the "telephone operator" business models that are
worth billions and the "expert" business models that are in trouble.
Web 1.0: The "expert" publisher
Web 2.0: The connector and content aggregation
As the competition for
attention heats up, and social sites experience explosive growth, firms
that have a publishing model, like the New York Times, are desperately
trying to figure out how they can make their offering more social.
To
make a website "social" is to add functionality that allows site
visitors to actively interact with each other, to move from viewer to
participant. Site owners see social features as a way to get users to
stick around longer – because people are more interesting than content.
The desire to add "social" to a core
function of an institution is not new to higher education. Student
Unions were some of the first institutional efforts to make college
more social. Students wanted to connect with each other, and, when it
happened, this connection created belonging, engagement, collaboration,
enhanced learning, and community. Student affairs, through student
activities specifically, has long stressed providing students with
opportunities to interact and socialize.
Based on the incredible investment of universities in social
architecture: in quads, residence halls and lounges, it's ironic that
most universities still do not see the internet as cost effective
social venue, despite the countless examples online.
People want to socialize with their peers, both in person and online.
Facebook's massive growth rate, and continued use, within college
networks proves a
profound need and opportunity was (and is) there. Universities just
couldn't see how to extend the old value and investment into connecting
and learning, to the new field.
It is still a challenge. Universities are following along the same
trends of the internet as a whole, with a bit of a lag. College
websites are still mostly "web 1.0": characterized by static content,
controlled by a centralized office. Curriculum and learning is still
centralized and controlled in learning managment systems like
Blackboard. Where there are discussion features in Blackboard, the
content stays centralized with the class and is lost at the end of the
term. Where there are blogs on university websites, they tend to be
written by selected and edited "brand ambassadors" – an attempt to put
a real face on a preferred message.
This year, often led by the
admissions department, it has become fashionable for schools to use
social media links on their sites. The thinking, however, is still
mostly in the 1.0 paradigm: "follow the school on twitter" or "become a
fan of the university on Facebook." In this paradigm, the university is
still the focus, a one to many publisher.
Based on competition
and financial pressures, businesses based on publishing models are
scrambling to decentralize, lower cost structures, and move their
models towards connecting and aggregating. When will the paradigm shift
for the University?
When will the goal of university
technology efforts be to connect the students to each other, rather than
connecting the students to the school?
These kind of institutional paradigm shifts – from one to many, to many to many – won't come from just one department. These shifts have to bubble up from many places. Do you think the university can catch up?
