This paper draws upon the experience of an interdisciplinary research group in engaging undergraduate university students in the design and development of semantic web technologies. A flexible approach to participatory design challenged conventional distinctions between "designer" and "user" and allowed students to play a role in developing technological and pedagogical insights as well as their own domain knowledge. The use of semantic web technologies in particular facilitated student engagement with issues around the classification, structuring and representation of knowledge, the relationships between data and concepts, and data quality and standardisation. Through the presentation of two case examples of the development of semantic web tools, it is argued that this is an effective means by which student learning can be aligned with research activity and with models of learning as knowledge construction: not only in the subject domains of their study, but in relation to learning and learning technologies as well. (Contains 6 notes and 2 figures.)