Learning and research in the web 2 era: Opportunities for research

Researchers in the learning sciences have long recognized the potential of online spaces to support learning activities; however, the pervasiveness of social media construction typically associated with "Web 2.0" represents a new context for the research of learning and instruction. Wikis, for example, have popularized a social approach to constructing knowledge that was very difficult to achieve with previous technologies. Social networking applications like Facebook that interconnect people according to social or semantic relationships have become integral features of student life. Multi-user synchronous environments like Second Life provide rich, immersive experiences as well as new forms of online community. Such applications are blooming in every corner of society, influencing the ways in which people learn and exchange with one another. These four papers present distinct research applications of such technologies, illustrating how they influence not only our methods, but affect the very nature of our questions and theoretical perspectives.