Effective Tagging Practices for Online Learning Environments: An Exploratory Study of Tag Approach and Accuracy

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v22i3.1471

Keywords:

social bookmarking, tagging, online knowledge base, higher education, folksonomy

Abstract

This exploratory study examines student tagging activity within a five-week social bookmarking unit. Students in six sections of a course were tasked with locating, tagging, and then highlighting and discussing course-related materials using Diigo, a social bookmarking tool. Three different tagging approaches were tested: dictionary only, freestyle only, and dictionary + freestyle. Analysis focused on accuracy and rates of student tagging, popularity of different tag types  Findings show that most students were able to tag with high rates of accuracy after a single brief lesson. The dictionary-only approach led to fewer tags overall as well as fewer single-use tags than freestyle tagging. It also resulted in students applying useful classes of tags, such as type of content, that did not emerge within the freestyle tag groups’ folksonomies. However, freestyle tagging was not without its merits, and provided opportunities for students to include tags that reflect relevant interests and more specific topics that were not addressed in the tag dictionary. The combined approach, if carefully taught and applied, appears to have the greatest potential for supporting student information literacy skills. 

References

Author1 (2016). Removed for blind review.

Authors (2017). Removed for blind review.

American Library Association (2015). Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Retrieved from: http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework.

Bagwell, D. P., & Vasudevan, C. (2017). United States Patent No. US9710437B2. I. B. M. Corp.

Bateman, S., Brooks, C., Mccalla, G., & Brusilovsky, P. (2007). Applying collaborative tagging to e-learning. Paper presented at the 16th International World Wide Web Conference. Retrieved from: http://www.wwwconference.org/www2007/workshops/paper_56.pdf

Buder, J., Schwind, C., Rudat, A., & Bodemer, D. (2015). Selective reading of large online forum discussions: The impact of rating visualizations on navigation and learning. Computers in Human Behavior, 44, 191-201. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.043

Cao, Y., Kovachev, D., Klamma, R., Jarke, M., & Lau, R. W. H. (2015). Tagging diversity in personal learning environments. Journal of Computers in Education, 2(1), 93-121. doi:http://doi.org/0.1007/s40692-015-0027-0

Chen, C. Y., Pedersen, S., & Murphy, K. L. (2011). Learners’ perceived information overload in online learning via computer-mediated communication. Research in Learning Technology, 19(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v19i2.10345

Colwell, J., & Gregory, K. (2016). Exploring How Secondary Pre-Service Teachers’ Use Online Social Bookmarking to Envision Literacy in the Disciplines. Reading Horizons, 55 (3). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol55/iss3/3

de Carvalho, C. R. M., Furtado, E. S., & Furtado, V. (2015). Does content categorization lead to knowledge building? An experiment in a social bookmarking service. Computers in Human Behavior, 51, 1177-1184. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.033

Farwell, T. M., & Waters, R. (2010). Exploring the use of social bookmarking technology in education: An analysis of students' experiences using a course-specific delicious. com account. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 6(2), 398-408. Retrieved from: http://jolt.merlot.org/vol6no2/waters_0610.htm

Frisch, J. K., Jackson, P. C., & Murray, M. C. (2013). WikiED: Using web 2.0 tools to teach content and critical thinking. Journal of College Science Teaching, 43(1), 70-80. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/43631724

Golder, S. A., & Huberman, B. A. (2006). Usage patterns of collaborative tagging systems. Journal of Information Science, 32(2), 198-208. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551506062337

Gorissen, P., van Bruggen, J., & Jochems, W. (2015). Comparing student and expert-based tagging of recorded lectures. Education and Information Technologies, 20(1), 161-181. doi:http://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-013-9271-y

Guy, M., & Tonkin, E. (2006). Tidying up tags. D-lib Magazine, 12(1), 1082-9873. Retrieved from: http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/aw/d-lib/dlib/january06/guy/01guy.html

Heckner, M., Mühlbacher, S., & Wolff, C. (2008). Tagging tagging. Analysing user keywords in scientific bibliography management systems. Journal of digital information, 9(2). Retrieved from: https://journals.tdl.org/jodi/index.php/jodi/article/view/246

Im, T., & Dennen, V. (2013). Building a collaborative knowledge base in Diigo: How links, tags, and comments support learning. In Proceedings of E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (pp. 794-797). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. Retrieved from: https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/114939/

Kear, K., Jones, A., Holden, G., & Curcher, M. (2016). Social technologies for online learning: theoretical and contextual issues. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 31(1), 42-53. doi: http:// https://doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2016.1140570

Kiu, C. C., & Lim, E. L. (2017). Social bookmarking systems to enhance students' learning process. In Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Conference on Science in Information Technology (ICSITech), (pp. 413-417). Chicago, IL: IEEE. doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSITech.2017.8257148

Klašnja-Milićević, A., Ivanović, M., Vesin, B., & Budimac, Z. (2018). Enhancing e-learning systems with personalized recommendation based on collaborative tagging techniques. Applied Intelligence, 48(6), 1519-1535. doi:http://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-017-1051-8

Klašnja-Milićević, A., Vesin, B., & Ivanović, M. (2018). Social tagging strategy for enhancing e-learning experience. Computers & Education, 118, 166-181. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2017.12.002

Leonardi, P. M. (2017). The social media revolution: Sharing and learning in the age of leaky knowledge. Information and Organization, 27(1), 47-59. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infoandorg.2017.01.004

Lin, C.-S., & Chen, Y.-F. (2012). Examining social tagging behaviour and the construction of an online folksonomy from the perspectives of cultural capital and social capital. Journal of INformation Science, 38(6), 540-557. doi:http://doi.org/10.1177/0165551512459826

Mamykina, L., Miller, A. D., Grevet, C., Medynskiy, Y., Terry, M. A., Mynatt, E. D., & Davidson, P. R. (2011). Examining the impact of collaborative tagging on sensemaking in nutrition management. Paper presented at the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979037

Neier, S., & Zayer, L. T. (2015). Students’ perceptions and experiences of social media in higher education. Journal of Marketing Education, 37(3), 133-143.doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0273475315583748

Panke, S., & Gaiser, B. (2009). “With my head up in the clouds” Using social tagging to organize knowledge. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 23(3), 318-349. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651909333275

Phoebe, C. M. H., Wei‐Chung, C., Kai‐Ying, C., Chia‐Chi, L., & Shing, Y. (2016). Do medical professionals tag images differently from non‐medical professionals? An implication of retrieving user‐generated images of everyday medical situations. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 53(1), 1-5. doi: http://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.2016.14505301097

Pomerantz, J. (2015). Metadata. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Saeed, N., Yang, Y., & Sinnappan, S. (2009). Emerging Web technologies in higher education: A case of incorporating blogs, podcasts and social bookmarks in a Web programming course based on students' learning styles and technology preferences. Educational Technology & Society, 12(4), 98-109.Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/jeductechsoci.12.4.98

Schellens, T., Van Keer, H., De Wever, B., & Valcke, M. (2009). Tagging thinking types in asynchronous discussion groups: Effects on critical thinking. Interactive Learning Environments, 17(1), 77-94.doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820701651757

Sera, L. (2015). #SocialBookmarking: An overview and primer for use in pharmacy education. Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning, 7(3), 342-347. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cptl.2014.12.006

Sinclair, J., & Cardew-Hall, M. (2008). The folksonomy tag cloud: when is it useful? Journal of Information Science, 34(1), 15-29. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551506078083

Taha, N., Wood, J., & Cox, A. (2016). Social bookmarking pedagogies in higher education: A comparative study. In Professional Development and Workplace Learning: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1420-1433): IGI Global.

Wheeler, S., Yeomans, P., & Wheeler, D. (2008). The good, the bad and the wiki: Evaluating student‐generated content for collaborative learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(6), 987-995. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00799.x

Wood, J., Liuzzo Scorpo, A., Taylor, S., Rahman, M., Bell, E., & Matthews-Jones, L. (2014). Making historians digitally: Social bookmarking and inquiry-based learning in history in higher education in the UK. In Inquiry-Based Learning for the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences: A Conceptual and Practical Resource for Educators (pp. 393-412): Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Zervas, P., Sampson, D., & Pelliccione, L. (2016). Studying tag vocabulary evolution of social tagging systems in learning object repositories. Smart Learning Environments, 3(1), 14. doi: http://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-016-0037-z

Downloads

Published

2018-09-01

Issue

Section

2018 OLC Conference Special Issue