A Study on the Usage of Web 2.0 Applications by Basic Medical Science Students, in the Light of e-Learning Implementation

Web 2.0 represents the changing face of people’s activities on the Web, from a mere place to access information towards a much “cool” place to create / write / share / collaborate / network with their intellectual involvement. Web 2.0 is changing all aspects of academic life including practice and training of medicine. When American University of Antigua integrates to the e-learning Systems, there was a need to study the present student population before implementing the facilities, about their usage of Web 2.0 applications for learning and research purposes. This dissertation is based on a survey for analyzing the awareness of the students about Web 2.0 applications and their expectations during integration of e-learning technologies. Major finding are wikis, instant messaging, media sharing, social networking and VoIP show high usage by major group of students, where very less usage of podcasts, social book marking, blogs, feeds is found. More students mainly want wikis, forums to be integrated to in elearning system along with media/file sharing, streaming, chat rooms, blogs and book marking