Bringing Web 2.0 to web lectures

At many universities, web lectures have become an integral part of the e-learning portfolio over the last few years. While many aspects of the technology involved, like automatic recording techniques or innovative interfaces for replay, have evolved at a rapid pace, web lecturing has remained independent of other important developments such as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is an emerging trend that among other things aims at integrating user generated data from different systems in order to enhance the user experience. This article discusses the benefits web lecturing could gain from a Web 2.0 perspective. It also introduces a prototypical interface for the virtPresenter lecture viewer that enriches web lectures by Web 2.0 features, such as a specialized player that can be integrated in blog or wiki sites and multi-medial links that can be used to reference arbitrary passages of a web lecture from an external blog, wiki, forum or other websites. The article also describes how authentication can be realized transparently when the system is used in conjunction with a learning management system or social platforms and how usage data is gathered to realize social navigation features. It concludes with a brief discussion of user acceptance of the stand-alone version of the interface and the embed-player.