Special issue 2011, Volume 27: Call for articles

Assessing students' Web 2.0 activities in higher education

Articles are invited for a forthcoming special issue of AJET to be published in 2011, entitled Assessing students' Web 2.0 activities in higher education, edited by Dr Judy Sheard (Monash University) and Dr Jenny Waycott (The University of Melbourne). To be announced in AJET Editorial 26(7) and emailings to various listservers and society news bulletins, Assessing students' Web 2.0 activities will be AJET's second special issue.

A recent article published in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology noted that while there are many published case studies demonstrating the use of Web 2.0 (social web) technologies in higher education, these rarely contain details about how students' activities have been assessed (Gray et al, 2010). To date, little attention has been given in the peer-reviewed literature to issues relating to the assessment of students' social web activities - and the unique challenges and opportunities that this form of assessment may create for academic integrity, standards, and assessment practices.

Assessment activities using Web 2.0 technologies can differ substantially from the sorts of assignments that students and staff may be used to. Student authoring in a social web environment may involve, for instance, collaborative authoring, informal styles of writing, and creating or engaging with different forms of media. Web 2.0 activities include blogging/microblogging, audio/video podcasting, social bookmarking, social networking, virtual world activities, and collaborative wiki writing.

Using Web 2.0 technologies, students' work may be published in an open forum for other students to view and comment on, or for an external audience to read and respond to. Questions about appropriate assessment practices and academic standards in this environment need to be interrogated to ensure academics are aware of the complex issues and challenges involved in using these new forms of assessment and learning activities in higher education.

This special issue will bring together papers that identify opportunities, issues, challenges, and examples of good practice in the assessment of students' Web 2.0 activities in higher education settings. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Rich descriptions of case studies demonstrating how Web 2.0 technologies have been used in assessment activities in university teaching and learning settings.
• Pedagogical rationales for assessing creative, personal, or unique student work in Web 2.0 activities.
• Methods of assessment of students' collaborative writing or social web activities, including metrics, criteria, and rubrics.
• ICT management strategies for formative feedback, peer review processes, and student/staff workload in regard to Web 2.0 assessment activities.
• Policy and practice issues in protecting student (and staff) moral rights, copyright, personal identity, and safety in Web 2.0 activities.
• The student experience of assessment in a social web environment.

Time schedule

Submission and review process

The Guest editors will review these abstracts and identify 10-12 abstracts that would be suitable to be submitted as full papers (5,000-7,000 words) for this special issue. We will invite papers that cover a broad spectrum of social web assessment activities and demonstrations of different social web technologies used in a range of learning and teaching settings. Each full paper will be peer blind reviewed by at least three reviewers, who will assess the paper's suitability for inclusion in the special issue, based on:

• The content of the paper (i.e., whether the paper reports research and/or theoretical discussion that addresses opportunities and challenges, and/or extends our understanding of what constitutes good practice in the assessment of students' social web activities).
• The quality of the writing.
• The structure of the paper.
• The research design.
• The relevance of the work to the special issue.

Guest Editors

Reference