Presentation & Objectives

Relevance and Motivation

Web Science Education is a core component of the broader web science community. An emerging community of scholars is essential for a healthy development of our discipline. The scope of web science education research extends from the evolving web science curriculum, through to the manifestation of web science in education as MOOCs. This workshop will provide an opportunity to trace the interconnected links between these areas offering a forum for theorists and practitioners alike. Alongside the web science observatory work has begun on a MOOC observatory which will be able to showcase outputs from the workshop and plan for future research collaborations.

This highly interactive workshop aims to build on sound foundations established over the past seven years. In that time Web Science education has evolved from ambition, doctoral programmes and summer schools to undergraduate programs and MOOCs. Web Science is now integrated into interdisciplinary education programs, working across disciplines including economics, sociology, social policy, statistics, psychology, geography, education, mathematics, politics and of course computer science. In some cases it is recognised as Web Science but sometimes is has emerged as an evolution of its home discipline – for example as Digital Sociology or Computer Assisted Archeology. Programs are available on the five continents, in several languages. The community of web science learners has grown and evolved accordingly.

The workshop will allow participants to present experiences, insights, good practice and ideas.

Themes for this half-day workshop include:

• The structure of concepts of web science education;
• The nature of MOOCs as Web Science;
• Interdisciplinary in Web Science Education;
• Objectives and potential for the MOOC observatory, Experiences of web science learners, educators, pedagogy;
• The future of Web Science Education