Abstract

The rapid spread of the World Wide Web since the early 1990s and the more recent burgeoning of Web 2.0 technologies have had a fundamental impact on the ways in which knowledge is created and disseminated. This in turn has major implications for institutions whose core business is focused on the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Universities are only beginning to come to terms with this paradigm shift, and how it affects teaching, learning and research. Traditionally, knowledge in universities has been produced by individuals or small teams of specialists, and disseminated in specialised discipline-specific journals and books. This specialisation is an important part of the virtue of academic knowledge, as it allows for highly focused and in depth knowledge to develop. However, the emergence of the Web has provided fertile ground for a wider sharing of knowledge on the one hand, and a much more rapid dissemination of knowledge on the other. This paper will explore the impact of these changes on the conceptualisation of knowledge, and it will argue that this paradigm shift in knowledge requires universities to adapt to a diversification of the dissemination of knowledge. In short, universities need a presence across the knowledge continuum, rather than sticking to three course meals alone.