Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?.

In Proceedings
of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010 (pp. 4001-4010).
Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?

Martin Ebner
Computing and Information Services / Division of Social Learning
Graz University of Technology
Graz, Austria
martin.ebner@tugraz.at

Walther Nagler
Computing and Information Services / Division of Social Learning
Graz University of Technology
Graz, Austria
walther.nagler@tugraz.at

Abstract: On base of a three years study about the Web2.0 competency among freshmen at Graz
University of Technology we discuss the question, whether Web2.0 has become common to
students of today or not. Following the principles of Moore’s Technology Adoption Life Cycle
and bearing Gartner’s Hype Cycle in mind we state that the times of early adopters are over.
Those Web2.0 applications that still are not established will not gain higher. The trends have been
corroborated but new ones are to come soon. Online mobility will rise with the increasing power
of multiple mobile devices as well as the importance of social networking on demand. This paper
outlines the progression of several common and uncommon Web2.0 applications in comparison
with the results of the study as well as postulates future trends on base of it.

Introduction
Since Mark Prensky’s article (2001) about “Digital Natives” and “Digital Immigrants” there is an ongoing
discussion about how the young generation is dealing with the World Wide Web. Without any doubt technology
influences our daily life and changes our behaviors. Since the introduction of Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2004) a
dramatically increase of user-generated content can be stated as well as the establishment of social networks and
social communities. It seems to be obvious that these technologies also influence the field of education – primarily
called e-Learning 2.0 (Downes, 2005) or ubiquitous learning (Zhan & Adipat, 2005).

Taking a look at different research studies as well as other popular media channels according to this subject of the
growing youth a lot of different terms occur: “Net-Generation” (Tapscott, 1997), “Digital Natives” (Prensky, 2001),
“Generation @” (Opaschowski, 1999) or “Homo Zapiens” (Pelevin & Bromfield, 2002). More or less they all
describe the same: There is an upcoming generation that cannot imagine living in a world without digital
technologies. Mobile phones, Internet access with high bandwidth or mobile and information about different topics
on the fly have already become very common. Oblinger (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005) (Oblinger, 2005) was talking
about different habits of this generation emerging such as multi-tasking and new ways of communicating with each
other. Similar Green & Hannon stated (2007), “That the use of digital technology has been completely normalized
by this generation and it is now fully integrated in their daily life”.

On the other hand it can be shown that most of such publications are lacking of solid data. Because of the short time
frame there are just a few extended studies on the behavior or skills of our youth. First studies (Conole, 2006)
(Bullen et al, 2008) (Margaryan, 2008) (Nagler & Ebner, 2009) gathered data through evaluations to carry out
whether freshmen and students of today differ from their older colleagues. All these studies agree more or less with
the summary of Schulmeister (2010) who concluded, that there is no significant change detectable as for today’s
student. Mainly it was shown that the World Wide Web has a great influence on the youth (JIM 2008, JIM 2009)
and is observed as a daily-life requisite. But dramatically rising use of Web 2.0 technologies and in consequence
IKT competencies could not have been detected yet.
 Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?. In Proceedings
of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010 (pp. 4001-4010).
Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Nevertheless, from a university point of view it is of highest interest, to find out the competences of the new
generation of students. The most interesting question is, whether it can be predicted that there is change in the
behavior of today’s students or it is simply a trend.

Figure 1: Hype cycle for emerging technologies, 2009 by Gartner (2009)

Figure 2: Technology adoption lifecycle by Moore taking the gap in between into account

Taking a closer look on analyses of trends it can be ascertained that new technologies commonly follow a distinct
progression; they are fast rising to an absolute maximum to go down rapidly alike and consolidate afterwards nearly
endlessly in the interest of society. Since 1995 the “Gartner Hype Cycle” (Fig. 1) annually describes the progression
of new technologies and points out the famous five phases – Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations,
Through of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment and Plateau of Productivity. Similar the famous “Technology
adoption lifecycle” of Moore (Meade & Rabelo, 2004) (Fig. 2) shows the different kind of users from innovators to
laggards. The notably thing about Moor’s lifecycle is, that he “… suggests that for discontinuous or disruptive
innovations, there is a gap or chasm between the first two adopter groups (innovators/early adopters), and the early
majority.” (Moore, 2002).
 Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?. In Proceedings
of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010 (pp. 4001-4010).
Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Bearing these phenomena in mind it must be seriously asked whether some technologies are simply hype driven by
some very motivated people or have they already turned out to be a mass phenomenon. With other words from a
university perspective it must be asked, what can be expected from today’s learners, what must be done by the
university to meet their needs and what is simply a technical bubble that will never overcome Moore’s chasm (Fig.
2). For this purpose Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) is carrying out studies since years (Nagler & Ebner,
2009) (Ebner et al, 2008) to investigate different research questions and to prepare TU Graz for the next generation
of learners. Therefore we address to the following questions:
• Which trends can be seen towards technological equipments?
• Which trends can be seen towards internet access at study home?
• Which trends can be seen towards communication behavior?
• Which trends can be seen towards the usage of e-learning platforms at secondary school level?
• Which trends can be seen towards Web2.0 competence?

The Study
Technology enhanced learning, briefly called e-learning had been exercised through multiple different initiatives
and projects at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) for many years since the late eighties. Because of several
partly political reasons the time for a change has definitely come in 2006. The Vice Rector for Academics, the
Office for Life Long Learning, the Institute of Information Systems and Computer Media (IICM) as well as the
Computer and Information Services (CIS) – all departments from TU Graz – decided to bundle those individual
activities for to become e-learning at TU Graz a centralised service. On the 1st of September 2006 the team “Social
Learning” (SL) was set into being as a new part of the CIS. The team quickly established and grew to a new division
of the CIS. Main focus of SL is to implement network based, communication oriented teaching and learning in a
meaningful didactical sustainable way. Especially for a university of technology it is a must to support them students
with latest technological, pedagogical and didactical teaching and learning possibilities. To meet the requirements of
this target it is (amongst others) essential to survey the status quo of today’s students according to their ability to
handle modern ways of communication and education.

For this reason SL has undertaken a freshmen survey since three years in series. At the beginning of a new study
year at the end of September new students had the opportunity to meet the so called “Welcome Days” lasting two
days where they were introduced to main facts and possibilities of their study life at TU Graz. In the course of their
university debut the students were asked to go through a paper pencil survey about their Web2.0 competences as
well as their technological equipment regarding computers and mobile devices with a view on their communication
behaviours using that equipment. By this year’s evaluation a sample of n=757 questionnaires had been analysed.
Together with n=821 collected in 2008 and n=578 from 2007 we can compare a total of 2156 data sets. That is quite
a good basis for an analysis of trends. On base of that analysis we can optimize the service and prepare future
learning in time. The following chapter describes the results of this year’s study and outlines trends and findings
considering all three years to answer the questions addressed in the introduction.

Results and Findings

Which Trends Can be Seen Towards Technological Equipments?

The first question covers the interest in the technological equipment to get an overview which devices are used by
students. Figure 3 displays the results. Multiple answers were possible. Due to a misleading question the results
according to the selections “Mobile + www” and “Mobile no www” cannot be compared within the three years.
There are some remarkable notices. First of all the decrease of simple iPods and MP3-players can be for sure
explained by the raise of iPhone, iPod touch and mobile smartphones which are able to play mp3 files as well as
videos. Besides a very constant laptop ownership (about 80% of our students independent of their chosen study)
Personal Computers (PC) are decreasing for more than 10%. The trend to mobility can also be seen in the fact that
mobile phones with Internet access are owned by about 40%. Together with iPhones (7%) and other mobile phones
with Wi-Fi (17%) about 65% (two third) of our students have the possibility to get mobile access to the Internet
using their phones. This is not only to be attributed to the fact that new mobiles technically are Internet compatible
 Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?. In Proceedings
of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010 (pp. 4001-4010).
Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
by default, because the number of those having smartphones more than doubled whereas the number of those having
mobiles with ordinary Internet access increases a bit – please note that 2007 th value for “Mobile + www” can not be
compared, because the selection “Mobile no www” had not been asked, as well as 2008th high value for “Mobile no
www” cannot be taken seriously because of misleading questioning – double answers were given. Anyway, the
trend according to their technological equipment definitely heads for more mobility and better equipped devices. We
can not state with significance that netbooks already have an effect on the distribution of laptops.

Figure 3: Comparison of devices used by first year’s student at TU Graz between 2007 and 2009;
“Mobile no www” had not been asked in 2007 which effects a falsified high value for 2007 th “Mobile + www”
Selections “Netbook”, “MAC” and “iPhone” had not been asked in 2007th and 2008th survey

Which Trends Can be Seen Towards Internet Access at Study Home?

The next question concerns the Internet access of students at their study home. Looking at three years on data there
is a remarkable difference between modem access and access with high bandwidth (ADSL) (Fig. 4). Furthermore
Figure 4 shows that the mobile access is increasing constantly, from more than 15% in 2007 to nearly 35%
nowadays. 2008th fluctuation of the “ADSL” value can be taken as a result of the abnormal high value of “No
access” in that year which can be explained by a earlier time of questioning than in the other years; so students not
being Graz residents may not had established their Internet connection till then.

Figure 4: Comparison of Internet access at study home of first year’s student at TU Graz between 2007 and 2009
 Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?. In Proceedings
of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010 (pp. 4001-4010).
Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Due to the fact that the summary of all access possibilities is much higher than 100% it can be stated that there are a
couple of students with multiple access to the Internet. No access to the World Wide Web can be more or less
excluded – the student of today entering our university is connected to the Internet. So the trend according to
Internet access is pointing at a constantly increasing mobile one. This underlines and correlates very well with the
results from the research question about technological equipment. Furthermore we see that there is no peak or hype
towards any of the selections offered.

Which Trends Can be Seen Towards Communication Behavior?

Another very interesting question deals with the communication behavior of freshmen. The students had to specify
which ways they use for there digital communication and to what extent. They had to decide between “never”,
“rarely (several times in a month)”, “often (several times in a week)” and “daily” for each way of communication.
Because we were interested in the intensive use of communication ways, for the bars displayed in Figure 5 only the
“often” and “daily” hits were taken. In case the selection “rarely” would have been added to the figure, there would
be no significant difference to the shown results in relation but the portion of interest could not be presented
obviously. Furthermore it must be pointed out that the selection “Others” does not include the possibility of Short
Message Services (SMS) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service).

Figure 5: Comparison of communication behaviour of first year’s student at TU Graz between 2007 and 2009
Values similar to answers given for “often” plus “daily” use
Remarkable increase of selection “Others” in 2009th survey
Selections “Twitter” and “Weblog” had not been asked in 2007th and 2008th survey

The results are not very surprisingly except the one remarkable increase of selection “Others” and the very low use
of the microblogging platform Twitter. Email is used intensively by about 90% of the students consistently; nearly
100% use it in any way. Email still remains the main communication way. A slight increase regarding the use of the
instant messaging application Skype at the expense of other instant messaging tools can be assumed not least
because of a similar slight increase of “rarely” used VoIP technology (“rarely” parts are not shown in Fig. 5). So
there are no relevant changes according to those variants of communication ways; no hype trends but smooth
progressions with little significance.
 Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?. In Proceedings
of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010 (pp. 4001-4010).
Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
In contrast really unexpected is the result for the use of Twitter. Although the “Overall usage of Web2.0” (Fig. 7)
levels the low values for Twitter use to what we would have assumed it is a fact that about 60% stated, they even do
not know Twitter (Fig. 7). This is noteworthy insofar Twitter has gone through Gartner’s life cycle peak at the end
of June this year (Fig. 1) in correlation with the death of Michael Jackson. According to Gartner’s life cycle Twitter
should decline from now on, but still enjoys increasing popularity worldwide which can be seen easily at any
webpage traffic stat analysis site (such as alexa.com). Taking a look at new Twitter accounts and their user’s
behavior Gartner’s phase of disillusionment is already dawning (Sistrix, 2009).

Another even more astonishing fact is the booming increase of other communication ways. One of the main findings
of the survey is the enormous increase of social communities in general and of Facebook in particular. Because
today’s social community platforms offer a lot of different possibilities to contact and communicate with each other
the peak of “Others” can be argued by that. For there is no general decrease according to the rest of the
communication behavior we assume that young students communicate more and like to use multiple ways to do so.
Future studies will show whether social communities will have the power to displace traditional ways of
communication just like email and instant messaging or not.

Which Trends Can be Seen Towards the Usage of E-learning Platforms at Secondary School Level?

The next question addresses the use of e-learning platforms in schools and in general. The students had to state their
usage of e-learning platforms. In comparison to last years surveys (2007 and 2008) there is no significant difference.
The usage of e-learning platforms at secondary schools is still no widespread standard. Even the free and open e-
learning platform software Moodle did not cause a hype of e-learning platforms used in secondary schools, although
it is a fact that in case a school uses an e-learning platform it is no other than Moodle. Academic homepages are still
more popular than e-learning platforms at all. There is little use of non academic e-learning platforms. Figure 6
displays the results.

Figure 6: Usage of e-learning platforms of first year’s student at TU Graz in 2009

Which Trends Can be Seen Towards Web2.0 Competence?

The most interesting question of the survey covers the Web2.0 competences of the young students. For the several
Web2.0 applications they first had to state whether they actually know about it or not. In case they do know they had
to give precise answers about their usage. They could choose between “unknown”, “passive (just reading)” or
“active (writing and uploading)” usage as well as a usage for learning purposes. Figure 7 and Figure 8 display the
results of this question. The pattern “in use” in Figure 7 comprise “passive”, “active” and “for learning”.
Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?. In Proceedings
of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010 (pp. 4001-4010).
Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

Figure 7: Overall usage of Web2.0 of first year’s student at TU Graz in 2009.

Figure 8: Usage of Web2.0 in details of first year’s student at TU Graz in 2009.

 Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?. In Proceedings
of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010 (pp. 4001-4010).
Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
In general we can say that Web2.0 applications are more used than in the two years of the study before (Ebner et al,
2008) (Nagler & Ebner, 2009). The active usage has declined a bit whereas the passive use strongly increased. That
means that the awareness level of Web2.0 applications has been strengthened but was no sufficient reason for more
intensive usage. Overall Wikipedia and YouTube are still the most used Web2.0 application in that context closely
followed by social communities. Rather uncommon media sharing-, microblogging- as well as social bookmarking-
platforms are of least interest to our new students although they are even better known than higher ranked
applications.

If a look is taken at the passive use at all we found out that YouTube is used most frequently (65%) followed by
weblogs (33%) and podcasts (video as well as audio, each 30%). For the first time we can state that Wikipedia is
more often used for learning efforts than Youtube in a passive way and that Wikipedia is passive more used than
other wikis at all. Flickr doubled its passive usage (25%) as well as the one of the RSS technology did. There is a
tiny pleasant increase according to the usage for learning purposes whereas the diversity in that category suffers a
bit. Only Wikipedia is used by 66% (44% in 2008)) of the polled students for learning efforts; other wikis and
YouTube hardly reached a 7% but such as videopods and audiopods they doubled in a year. All other applications
are to be neglected for learning efforts. Nevertheless this again is a signal for teachers that Wikipedia should be
taken serious for common search and knowledge acquisition as well as online media sharing slowly gains in
importance.

As mentioned before there is an outstanding raise of social communities to be noticed with Facebook strongly
booming. To indicate values, studiVZ which is still the most popular community in Austria (and German speaking
countries as well) hiked from 70% in 2008 to 80% this year, Facebook rockets from 16% last year to incredible
67%, MySpace gained to 55% from 45% as well as Xing from 5% to 12% which is interesting for people assumed
to be not involved into the working environment so much yet. Even other communities enjoy a doubling up to 8%. If
a closer look is done we find out that Facebook is actively used in nearly the same amount as studiVZ already. With
50% and 55% they leave the other Web2.0 applications far behind. Only MySpace with 27% and YouTube with
26% of active usage have appreciable results, which is as much as a passive usage of Wikipedia (26%). Compared to
the Austrian wide active usage of Facebook which ranks about 10% (Wiese 2009) we can state that on the one hand
Facebook currently hypes among the young generation and on the other it seems to be established among the general
population. So the most frequently active usage of Web2.0 applications are social communities by far.

But there are some more remarkable results. Although Twitter is apparently minimal used for communication efforts
(Fig. 5) the overall usage of Twitter has powerfully increased to 20% from 2% in 2008. From that point of few the
hype cycle of Twitter can be comprehended but remains controversial. QR-codes still are not booming as generally
predicted as well as rather specific tools like the international very popular bookmarking platform “del.icio.us” or
“locr” for media sharing with geotagging mainly used in German speaking countries (compare Schulmeister, 2009).
So after three years of investigation for some of the applications questioned we slightly can predict that there will be
no hype in future among our students. Furthermore trends have been approved such as the steady increase of
videopods, audiopods and weblogs in general or the elapsed hype of virtual realities.

Discussion and Conclusion

It is a fact that TU Graz offers its teachers and students a lot of different possibilities to execute a technology
enhanced driven teaching and learning with focus on Web2.0 using multiple devices at the classroom or outside
(Ebner et al, 2010). To optimize these services and prepare for future ones annual surveys among freshmen take
place. In summary we can state that today’s students are not only very well equipped and have increasing mobile
access to the Internet but the general tendency clearly indicates more mobility and more smart devices like mobiles
with WLAN account of rather simple devices like ordinary mobiles or iPods without video functionality as well as
MP3 players. The trend to more mobility can also be seen if a look is taken on the internet access at student’s home.
Secondly there is a very distinct trend to social communities over the last three years. Whereas virtual worlds like
“Second Life” have definitely never really boomed yet among the polled students although those realities are well
know by a majority. Exemplarily QR-codes (Falas & Kashani, 2007) neither have reached common popularity in
Austria yet nor are known among this year’s freshmen. This means in general that although some technologies
follow the typical lifecycle by Gartner and enjoy high approval in one part of the world, it may bomb in another part
and will not break Moore’s chasm to reach the phase of majority.
 Originally published in: Ebner, M. & Nagler, W. (2010). Has Web2.0 Reached the Educated Top?. In Proceedings
of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010 (pp. 4001-4010).
Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

The general booming of Facebook can be affirmed exceedingly for freshmen of TU Graz as well. But it is not only
Facebook that takes it all, all surveyed social communities (studiVZ, MySpace, Xing as well as others) gain a high
increase. The growing is a constantly one except for Facebook that has quadrupled within one year. It does not seem
that Facebook already peaked out or even has reached the climax; according to Gartner’s hype cycle there is a little
delay (Nitz, 2009) (Anderegg, 2009). But there is another effect the strongly intensified sympathy for Facebook
evokes. We can document a very high increase of using “other communication ways” than those asked by name. In
context with the outstanding rise of Facebook we can assume that communication using social communities has
become very popular and is therefore breaking new grounds. Nevertheless there is no significant decrease of using
standardized ways of communication like email, instant messaging or newsgroups. Because Facebook has been
clever enough to open its platform for other common Web2.0 applications and makes it easy to integrate them
individually a further side effect of the boom is that people slowly get used to work with those Web2.0
achievements like microblogging or smart media sharing habits as well as embedding items from different sources
following mashup philosophy (Kulathuramaiyer & Maurer, 2007). This means that students get used to online
editing practices more and more; the acceptance of Web2.0 is strengthened, the way for an online desktop working
environment is being paved, cloud computing seems to switch from concept to practice. University teaching should
take care about those results and work with social communities in an educated way. There are several publications
telling us how to do so (Ebner & Maurer, 2009).

The survey approves common trends in communication and Web2.0 behaviour. Popular Web2.0 applications and
habits have been established, too specific ones will not in future; some are constantly used, some pass through a
hype cycle currently. The way of communicating seems to be in flux as well as the way of using mobile devices. If a
university takes care of its students this study again outlines the importance for universities not only to pay attention
to those facts and progresses but to integrate them into every day teaching and learning life for to reach the Plateau
of Productivity.

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