The Interfolio Blog

I've been reading a lot this week on the impact of the social web on higher education. There are certainly a lot of really interesting ideas and people out there thinking about where we're headed in this space, so I wanted to call out a couple of articles I found particularly interesting:

The first is from Trent Batson for Campus Technology in a piece entitled "Why is Web 2.0 Important to Higher Education?"

In it, Trent says "Culturally speaking, with the advent of Web 2.0, the 'traditional classroom' with one speaker and many listeners is now an oddity, a throwback, a form that should represent 15 percent of undergraduate interaction with faculty, not 85 percent as it does now. With so many ways to create knowledge now very rapidly and collaboratively, we are freed from the necessity of a singular approach to teaching."

Another interesting post came from the blog Academic Evolution entitled "Microblogging immediacy trumps Google for search, research" which included a quote on academic adoption of microblogging: "...I realize that microblogging is so far beyond the ponder-polish-publish and procrastination model of traditional scholarship that few established academics will allow themselves to catch on to the vitality of Twitter as a research, discovery, and publishing tool for every idea and purpose."

There is no question that these are significant trends that are not going away and will have a significant impact upon higher education.  What will the classroom experience will look like in 5 years or in 10 years?