Traditionally, the World Wide Web has been a one-way, publisher to reader, medium. The distinguishing feature of Web 2.0 is that it is a bidirectional medium, where content (text, image, audio or video) is contributed by people who interact with the website as well as people and organizations who manage the site – in other words, it is the “read/write web”.

There are many companies on the Internet offering attractive and useful applications services based on the Web 2.0 paradigm, including blogs, wikis, office systems, social bookmarking etc – and of course there are virtual worlds such as Second Life which transcend the definition of “Web 2.0”. These are increasingly being adopted by computer users within the University, for administrative, teaching, learning and research purposes.

This document offers guidance to staff within the University on some of the issues which need to be considered before using such services for University purposes. The document is intended to be helpful for all staff, including researchers, teaching staff and support staff. Note, however, that it focuses on issues specific to using external Web 2.0 services – issues which are common to Web 2.0 services regardless of whether they are internally or externally hosted are not specifically addressed.

The University’s use of Web 2.0 services is developing quickly, and the services themselves are changing and expanding even more rapidly. It is inevitable that the information herein will be far from a complete or comprehensive guide to the issues. You should therefore seek other relevant advice and use your own common sense as well as relying on this document.

After outlining some of the potential advantages of and concerns about using external Web 2.0 services, specific issues relating to the suitability of the service for your requirements are described. Detailed implications of current legislation and University regulations are discussed. The main concepts of Risk Analysis are presented, and a template Risk Assessment is presented for you to fill in. We believe that this University is leading the way in developing guidelines for using external Web 2.0 services. We will inevitably make mistakes, and it is important that you provide feedback if you find that the guidelines are inadequate, or if you have had experiences about which others should be warned.

Download pdf Guidelines for Using External Web 2.0 Services