4.1.5.1. Formally contrasting web knowledge entrepreneurship
In the following section the situation at the investigated universities regarding the approbation of internet based innovations is contrasted. As for the formal cross-case analysis at the beginning of the chapter, it has to be pointed out that a comparison between the institutions is not aimed at as they are too different [i]. The following innovations are reviewed as they are assessed to represent opportunities to improve access, practices, and knowledge about the institution: Wireless internet access, innovative knowledge media, Wikipedia presence, and other stakeholder empowering aspects.

Wireless Internet – Access to Knowledge
One of the most fundamental opportunities provided by universities is the free connection of its members to the internet. This opportunity has recently been amplified by offering wireless internet access through standardized IEEE 802.1 hotspots, enabling members to connect with their individual machines.

This innovation has been identified and assessed positively by all universities in the sample (table 4.4.). There are however differences in the degree and mode of access provision. The FU has made wireless internet provision a strategic project and has reached a coverage of all the university locations except the botanical garden. At the UPC and the UOC provision of wireless access is advanced more on a need basis based on entrepreneurial agents identifying the beneficial opportunity and realizing the bureaucratic steps. At the LSE provision has been limited to the social hotspots – the library, the lobbies and the gastronomic areas.

Another interesting dissimilarity is the philosophy and subsequent method regulating eligibility to the internet service. Three different modes are present in the sample: The LSE and the FU provide the most secure but also most exclusive mode of access. Only registered university members gain access by providing their assigned username and password. At the UOC a semi-open approach is taken by allowing official visitor to access the web using a ‘public’ account for which information is provided through service personnel. The UPC provides truly anonymous access to the www through their wireless hotspots. An interesting discussion of how this kind of practice promotes a society deploying architectures of ‘technology of control’ or ‘technology of access’ has been developed by Lawrence Lessig (1999).

Innovative knowledge media
The observations in this section make up the heart of knowledge entrepreneurial review of the practices to appropriate internet based innovations. The conditions of the universities are compared looking at the use of e-learning, mailing lists, online video and audio content, as well as more advanced services such as blogging, wikis, virtual worlds and the provision of services for mobile devices. Table 4.5. shows the information provided by the universities.

E-learning is the most obvious item in this list and the results are highly diverse (see chapter 3 LSE section 3.1.7.1, FU section 3.2.7.1, UPC section 3.3.9., UOC section 3.4.7.1.). With reference to the percentage stated but also for the actual exploitation of the value e-learning can add to the learning process. The UPC has probably given the most conservative estimate by stating that about 20% of its courses have an e-learning component. At the FU the use of the e-learning platform almost doubles yearly in the most recent periods (2004:261; 2005:438; 2006:1006). In the winter semester 2006/2007 a bit less than 25% of the 4203 courses listed in the register used the e-learning platform (see footnote 42). The LSE has reached a relatively high 50% utilization of its platform; again here we have to understand that a main usage of the tool is to provide access to the electronic versions of the articles on the courses reading list. It goes without saying that the UOC is offering 100% of its courses using e-learning.

Mailing lists are the most popular tool for coordination, knowledge sharing and discourse amongst a community of interest (like a event organisation committee) or a community of practice (like meteorologists). All universities investigated offer mailing lists to its members. The LSE has only ten mailing lists developed but these seem to be of high relevance as there are nearly two thousand subscribers. At the FU the fact that the main mailing list service is run by the computer science department underlines the polycentric architecture. Almost 300 lists are hosted, but as the creation of a list is possible for all universities members in an automated fashion (and without restrictions on quantity) there are many short-term lists dealing only with one semester or for a thematic exchange. As the resources necessary to run such a service are next to nothing, the FU approach is considered best practice as it provides this opportunity to use a knowledge medium freely. At the UPC about 400 mailing lists active and many of them are embedded in the universities open source project collaboration platform LA Farga. The UOC is using mailing lists only sparsely and their creation is handled by IT specialists on request. It prefers forums as mode of communication. At UOC a non-standard self-developed solution is used which integrates very well with the virtual campus, but makes participation from non UOC members impossible.

When it comes to more advanced uses of the internet for knowledge services an even more heterogeneous picture is obtained. The LSE provides several hundreds of video content using a celebrated best practice system (UCISA, 2007), while the UPC is not offering this kind of media and the UOC has about 24 hours of content. A more homogenous but not more positive picture is painted when looking at audio content. Even though podcasts [ii] are technologically quite simple and the value added of making a lecture available over the internet is substantive the practice is still only conducted by individually motivated faculty – none of them identified at the institutions investigated. The same is true for video conferencing. The cost of adding video conferencing capability to a computer with internet connection are negligible, as is the technological complexity. Nevertheless only the LSE offers video conferencing as an institutionalized service. Surely the is quite a number of unreported cases where video conferencing is implemented individually.

Wikis (Alier, Forthcoming; Augar, Raitman, & Zhou, 2004; Leuf & Cunningham, 2001) and blogs are perhaps the most interesting internet based opportunities to creatively destruct knowledge practices, because both practices are highly empowering (enable simple publication of arguments and knowledge claims). At the LSE both technology have been positively assessed by the CTL but first user acceptance tests have shown that most users do not embrace the associated practices yet [iii]. The CTL is offering both instruments on demand and there is a growing but still small number of early adopters who exploit the technology. No wiki service has been identified at the FU but it is the only institution that has an open and institutionalized (branded) blog service for all teaching and learning members [iv]. The service was just launched in March 2007 so the amount of 76 created blogs seems to indicate good user acceptance. The CeDiS is offering initial trainings and documents which certainly contributes to the good acceptance. At the UPC we find just the opposite scenario. Because the new wiki of the e-learning platform was developed by a UPC professor, wikis are featured in all e-learning courses, while blogs are only present as individual initiatives. The usage of the wikis is however pretty much limited to a handful of courses. At the UOC both services have been assessed positively and beta tests are being conducted with 6 courses using a wiki and 5 courses using blogs.

Virtual worlds are being discussed as opportunities for innovative scenarios for knowledge construction and deep learning (Alier, Senges, & Deluna, Forthcoming) and all universities investigated have identified the possibility. None of them, except UOC, has actually taken steps to implement any projects in this regard. While there are more than 200 universities present in the virtual world SecondLife but most of them are American institutions. At the UOC a community of interest has been setup and after political negotiations it has been decided to join the big American New Media Consortium . Furthermore UOC is offering a summer course on Second Life with a substantial part of the course also being activities in the virtual world.

Last but not least the universities were asked to report any additional internet innovation appropriation initiatives and three of them reported to work on services for mobile devices. The LSE is the most advanced in this regard. It already offers email access over mobile phones. The UPC and UOC are offering Blackberry mobile email services to the higher management. And the UOC has one service that enables to check course grades per SMS.

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[i] And maybe more importantly, the datasets are not normalized (or based on a standard). The data has been obtained from a mail survey with IT professionals in the organisation.

[16] Based on data provided for 2006/2007 at http://www.cms.fu-berlin.de/lms/allgemein/Semesterstatistiken/Wintersemester_2006_2007/index.html
[17] http://listserv.lse.ac.uk/archives/index.html on 15.5.2007
[18] As identified at the Computer Science department server
[ii] The recording of ‘events’ such as lectures in mp3 format and the publication thereof in an RSS feed.
[iii] And those who de have other places they use for these services
[iv] It is unclear why the administrative staff is excluded. http://blogs.fu-berlin.de/

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