A Preliminary Look at the Development on Websites of Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of websites of higher education institutions. It then discusses the impact of emergent Web 2.0 technologies and social media on the online communication and society, and presents a study focusing on trends and issues of the development on websites of higher education institutions. The results of the study in this chapter indicates that under the influence of Web 2.0 and social media, websites of higher education institutions have been developed on: building a strong sense of community via embedding social networking tools, endorsing open education via sharing multimedia resources, and enriching users’ experience via offering self-service. The study also indicates that in order to develop effective websites, authenticity and digital citizenship should be considered and managed by administrators and technologists of higher education institutions.