E-learning 2.0: you are We-LCoME! Stefano Ferretti Department of Computer Science University of Bologna Via Mura Anteo Zamboni 7 40127 Bologna (BO), Italy sferrett@cs.unibo.it Silvia Mirri Department of Computer Science University of Bologna Via Mura Anteo Zamboni 7 40127 Bologna (BO), Italy mirri@cs.unibo.it Ludovico Antonio Muratori Polo Scientifico Didattico di Cesena University of Bologna Via Sacchi, 3 47023 Cesena (FC), Italy muratori@criad.unibo.it Marco Roccetti Department of Computer Science University of Bologna Via Mura Anteo Zamboni 7 40127 Bologna (BO), Italy roccetti@cs.unibo.it Paola Salomoni Department of Computer Science University of Bologna Via Mura Anteo Zamboni 7 40127 Bologna (BO), Italy salomoni@cs.unibo.it ABSTRACT 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. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.1 [Multimedia Information Systems]: Evaluation/methodology; H.5.1 [Hypertext/Hypermedia]: User issues; K.3.1 [Computer Uses in Education]: Collaborative learning; K.4.2 [Social Issues]: Assistive technologies for persons with disabilities. General Terms Human Factors. Keywords Accessibility, Web 2.0, E-learning 2.0, Multimedia Editing. 1. INTRODUCTION E-learning 2.0 has lighted a new torch over processes and roles in acquiring knowledge. An heterogeneous community of teachers and learners can dialectically share and improve their knowledge, lit up by Web 2.0 facilities and massive multimedia employment. This trend has a particularly strong impact on e-learning, finally offering new tools and methodologies to effectively work as in an on line community of practice, articulated and promoted by people [5]. Rather than being composed, organized and packaged in static learning objects, new evolving e-learning contents can be dynamically created, aggregated, classified, syndicated and shared by students. The traditional way pursued by e-learning has been overcome by the wide use of Web 2.0 applications, from blog to podcast, from wiki to media sharing. From the accessibility point of view, e-learning 2.0 and its related novel Internet technologies represent a pitfall challenge [14]. On one hand, dangers for accessibility are embedded in every innovation and the complexity of collaborative 2.0 tools effectively represents a risk of exclusion for people with disabilities. On the other hand, the participation of people to the creation and management of contents is recognized as a great potential for e-learning accessibility. Usually, accessibility of e-learning contents is made possible by the activity of the lecturer and learning technologists, working together to enrich, transform and standardize resources originally designed without taking in account their accessibility. New e-learning 2.0 methodologies and tools could be easily used to make accessible e-learning in practice, by supporting processes Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. W4A2008, April 21–22, 2008, Beijing, China. Co-Located with the 17th International World Wide Web Conference. Copyright 2008 ACM 1-59593-590-8/06/0010 ...$5.00. 116