The Impact of the Read/Write Web on Learner Agency

This article scopes some of the key political elements in the higher educational use of the read/write web, or Web2.0 as it is commonly known. It investigates ways in which these tools can be used to enhance deliberative democracy, the associations between individuals and their capability for decision-making. The structuring of spaces in which individual users can come together to make decisions and act is a critical theme, and one which impacts upon the agency, access and participation, and associations that are afforded by those contexts. Where differences exist between students and/or their tutor(s), the read/write web affords tools for representing such variation. Herewith the voices of both learners and tutors are evaluated, in order to argue that the read/write web can be used positively to acknowledge difference and promote agency.