E-learning 2.0: you are We-LCoME!

• Authors: Stefano Ferretti;Silvia Mirri;Ludovico Antonio Muratori;Marco Roccetti;Paola Salomoni
• Venue: W4A '08 Proceedings of the 2008 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A)
• Year: 2008

The Internet is turning into a participating community where consumers and producers of resources merge into "prosumers", dialectically sharing their knowledge, their interests and needs. This Web 2.0 archetype is now strongly impacting on e-learning methodologies and technologies, by enforcing the participation of students in creating and sharing materials and resources. Overcoming latent alarms introduced by the coming out of new complex tools, e-learning 2.0 represents a new challenge for accessibility. The production of accessible contents can now be turned from an impossible mission centrally managed by teachers and institutions to a joint work of people improving learning materials. In this context, we present an e-learning 2.0 tool, designed and developed to support users in editing educational resources and compounding multimedia contents through a collaborative work. Starting from a multimedia resource provided by the lecturer, an entire community can contribute in adding alternative contents and views, creating a multidimensional information structure. The resulting enriched resource can be tailored to a specific user by resorting to automatic adaptation mechanisms. This system can be used to transform the content production workflow, involving all the different actors (lecturers, learning technologists, student support services, staff developers and students) playing a role in improving accessibility and, more generally, effectiveness of learning materials.