Implications of Writing, Reading, and Tagging on the Web for Reflection Support in Informal Learning

Abstract

The use of tags as user generated meta-data as well as the visualisation in tag clouds has recently received a lot of attention in research and practice. This paper focuses on supporting reflection of learners by using different presentation approaches of user-generated meta-data for reflection support. Previous research has shown that implicit interest expression can be a valuable source for reflection support. Visualising implicit or "tacit" interest in tag clouds could help learners to understand the connections of their content related activities to the tags that are assigned to the content. For grounding this potential in the social practice of using tags in teams and small communities, we conducted a three month experiment. This experiment focused on the social practices of using tags explicitly and implicitly. In this paper we analyse the data of the experiment with regard to social navigation of teams and small communities, relations of implicit and explicit interest in tags, and usages of tags on different participation levels. The findings on these dimensions of the social practice of using and sharing tags in groups help to develop a better view on the requirements of providing reflection support.

Ecology of social search for learning resources

“…Although not all users contribute (40 per cent), most still benefit from them (60 per cent): the community browsing was used in 21 per cent of all searches and explicit Interest indicators supported users when playing resources (31 per cent). Our finding points to the same direction as Glahn et al (2008) who found that accessing of tagged resources is independent from the contribution level of a participant. However, we did not find that all participants use tags similarly while searching or accessing tagged resources: we observed different search preferences by users.…”

“…21% of all search actions took advantage of these features, and they supported 31% of plays. Our finding points to the same direction as Glahn et al, (2008) who found that accessing of tagged resources is independent from the contribution level of a participant. However, we did not find that all participants use tags similarly while searching or accessing tagged resources: we observed different search preferences by users.…”

Assessment Strategies for Reflective Learning in the Workplace: A Pragmatic Approach

“…One strand of research has focused on visual interaction footprints of users of online systems, an approach allowing stakeholders to see select areas of online activity in real time. Researchers have gauged learners’ reflection using indicators of their activity in an online community (Glahn et al, 2007), their implicit and explicit use of tagged resources (Glahn et al, 2008a), and their use of social bookmarking (Glahn et al, 2008b). Others have used data collection apps to gather data in real time through multiple choice, sliding scale, or open-ended questions on learners’ phones (see Roessger et al, 2017).…”

Social Tagging to Enhance Collaborative Learning

“…Glahn, Specht and Koper suggest using tagging for educational issues, mainly for reflection activities [5]. Within the distributed cognition framework, Fu studies the interactions between the internal and external representations of concepts, tags and documents when a user is engaged in iterative explore-and-comprehend cycles [3].…”