Abstract

Up to now e-Learning platforms have not lived up to our expectations for achieving pedagogical objectives. The reason is that only part of the pedagogical process was being transferred to the virtual world; such platforms served mainly as material delivery channels. Most students find them boring and un-motivating thus losing interest in their e-learning sessions fairly soon. Learning is a social activity involving communication, community formation, information exchange and resource sharing between teachers and students and it is imperative that these aspects are transferred to the virtual classroom. Traditional e-Learning platforms failed to address these aspects, creating an environment not conductive to learning. Students felt in isolation, cut-off from the rest of the class and unable to communicate and share resources information and experiences with the rest of the group. In this paper we present an innovative method to bridge this gap with the inclusion of Web 2.0 functionality in the e-learning development process. More specifically we propose an e-Learning development process as an extension of our SpiderWeb Model with the following phases: a) formulation, b) planning, c) analysis, d) page generation and testing and e) Student and faculty evaluation. The advent of the social web is deemed to be the way transfer the social activities of learning into the virtual environment. Our model incorporates Web2.0 functionality in the development process. The Web2.0 tools such as Weblogs, wikis and shared streaming applications are analyzed and evaluated so as to be used effectively in the pedagogical process.