ASK - LOST 2.0: A Web - based Tool for Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources

ASK – LOST 2.0: A Web – based Tool for Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources [Best Short Paper Award] Alexandros Kalamatianos, Panayiotis Zervas, Demetrios Samspon e-mail: {alkal, pzervas, sampson}@iti.gr This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial License . To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

Outline Digital Educational Resources The emergence of Web 2.0 Digital Educational Resources in the age of Web 2.0 Social Tagging: Definition Advantages of Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources Disadvantages of Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources: Tools Tools for Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources Paper Contribution ASK-LOST 2.0 Main Objectives Architecture Main Functionalities Summary Conclusion and Future Work

Digital Educational Resources In the context of Technology Enhanced Learning digital educational resources, in the form of learning objects, are used to support a wide range of educational activities. Typically, digital educational resources are organized according to formal descriptions from centrally designed and agreed classification system using metadata, such as IEEE Learning Object Metadata (IEEE LOM).

The emergence of Web 2.0 Web 2.0 refers to the range of web applications that enable interaction, collaboration and sharing between users [2]. Emerging Web 2.0 applications and user participation in content generation has led to an enormous increase in the digital resources available on the web today. As a result, both the discovery of new resources and the retrieval of known ones on the World Wide Web, become an increasingly complex problem. [2] O’ Reilly T. (2005). What is Web 2.0 http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Digital Educational Resources in the age of Web 2.0 Although, traditional classification methods have been providing many benefits and opportunities for innovative searching or browsing and interoperability, it has long been recognized that traditional centrally controlled vocabularies are not always adequate for online resource discovery. [3] Consequently, the issue of characterizing digital resources tends to move from the formal description based on centrally agreed classification systems, for example metadata such as IEEE LOM, to a less formal user-based tagging. [3] Macgregor G. and McCulloch E. (2006). Collaborative tagging as a knowledge organization and resource discovery tool, (ISSN 0024-2535), 55(5).

Social Tagging: Definition The act of adding keywords , also known as tags, to any type of digital resource by users (rather than resources’ authors) is referred to as Social Tagging. The term of social tagging has emerged for those applications that encourage groups of individuals to openly share their private descriptions (or tags) of digital resources with other users, either by using a collection of tags created by the individual for his/her personal use (refereed to as folksonomy ) or by using a collective vocabulary (refereed to as collabulary ) [4] [4] Anderson P. (2007). What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education. JISC Technology & Standards Watch. Available at: http :// www . jisc . ac . uk / media / documents / techwatch / tsw 0701 b . pdf

Advantages of Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources (1/3) Individual users (teachers and/or learners) are able to provide and use terms that are meaningful to them and create in this way a personal collection of tags , which facilitate the searching and retrieval of already used and known resources. These tags pay attention to any individual user’s intention which reflect their personal way of organizing and locating learning objects.

Advantages of Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources (2/3) Groups of users with common vocabularies can act as a human filter for each other, by sharing these tags with other users. A community based vocabulary can be produced as a result of identifying the most popular tags within a community of users. This will eliminate description elements which are redundant and/or irrelevant to the community.

Advantages of Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources (3/3) Social tagging favors the formation of social networks around educational tags. These networks can reflect the interests and expertise of users contributing to further tag development. The analysis of user generated tags can enrich peer interaction and peer awareness of digital educational content and/or activity.

Disadvantages of Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources (1/2) The use of tags with personal meaning from different users can create difficulties in the process of re-using digital educational resources. Vague tags due to spelling errors and synonym tags can create difficulties in the process of searching and retrieving resources that has been characterized according to these tags.

Disadvantages of Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources (2/2) The lack of standards for the structure of tags (e.g. singular vs. plural, capitalization, etc.) can cause additionally problems in the search and retrieval of appropriate digital educational resources. Overall, social tags are not connected to each other by a reference structure, which in formal systems is used to link related terms and narrower or broader terms.

Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources: Tools During last years, a number of tools for facilitating social tagging of digital educational resources have been developed. We can referred to Connotea and CiteULike , which provide social bookmarking services for facilitating users to store, organize, share and discover links to academic scientific and research paper. Furthermore the EU-project MELT , using CELEBRATE ’s learning object repository, allows users to add their own tags and provides social networking services amongst.

Tools for Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources (1/2) The scope of the first seven functionalities, which are presented, is to promote the advantages of social tagging. On the other hand Autosuggested Tagging, which is a technique that provides suggested values to a text field, has as a target to reduce the disadvantages of social tagging.    Autosuggested Tagging    Social Networking Connection  Browse via Tag Cloud    Search  Rate    Comment    Creation of user’s Personal Collection  [Only URL]  [Only URL] Submit MELT CiteULike Connotea   Tagging 

Tools for Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources (2/2) However, the lack of functionality which facilitates the submission of any type of digital educational resources (i.e. image, video, text etc.) can reduce the usage of these tools. Moreover, the creation of a community based vocabulary which is based on the most popular tags within the community of users is a critical issue. Thus, enabling functionalities for reducing the amount of vague tags, which affect the process of re-using digital educational resources, are required.

Paper Contribution The building a leaning object repository, which will consists of digital educational resources submitted and annotated by end – users, creates the need for the development of a web – based tool suitable for this purpose. We present ASK – Learning Objects Social Tagging 2.0 (ASK-LOST 2.0), a web – based tool that aims to support so the process of social tagging of any type of digital educational resources by offering facilities for authoring and management of tags and resources as a facilitator to social learning networking.

ASK – LOST 2.0 Main objectives To facilitate the development of learning object repositories populated with digital educational resources submitted and annotated by individual end users. To enable the creation of personal collections of digital educational resources for individual users and access to personal vocabularies created by user’s tags. To facilitate the building social networking between users, aiming to enrich user’s interaction and awareness around the available digital educational resources. To support the search and retrieval of these digital educational resources.

ASK – LOST 2.0 System Architecture

ASK – LOST 2.0 Main Functionalities (1/5) Submit and tag digital educational resources: The user can submit and characterize according to his/her selected tags any kind of digital educational resource.

ASK – LOST 2.0 Main Functionalities (2/5) Guided Tagging: The user can show his previous tags that he has used to tag other resources (Your Tags) . He can also show tags from the user who firstly have filled in tags for this resource and the tags that are popular among other users regarding this item (Popular Tags) . Furthermore Autosuggested Tagging is delivered.

ASK – LOST 2.0 Main Functionalities (3/5) Creation of user’s personal digital education resources collection: The user can save to his/her personal list digital educational resources uploaded by other users and browse the tags that these users have used.

ASK – LOST 2.0 Main Functionalities (4/5) Browse digital educational resources via tag cloud: The user can search and browse digital educational resources by using a tag cloud produced by the tags that all users of the tool have offered. Search, rate and comment digital educational resources: The user can search available digital educational resources tagged by others users and provide his/her ratings and comments.

ASK – LOST 2.0 Main Functionalities (5/5) Social networking support: The user has the capability to create watchlist, which includes other users, so as to be able to monitor the tags that these users are using as well as the digital educational resources that they are submitting to the tool.

ASK – LOST 2.0 Summary (1/2) 4 th Objective: Facilities for building social networking between users, aiming to enrich user’s interaction and awareness around the available digital educational resources Social Networking Connection Search Rate Comment 3 rd Objective: Facilities for search and retrieval of these digital educational resources. Browse via Tag Cloud Guided Tagging 2 nd Objective: The creation of personal collections of digital educational resources for every user and access to personal vocabularies created by user’s tags Creation of user’s personal collection 1 st Objective: The development of learning object repository with any type of digital educational resources submitted and annotated by end users Submit and Tag ASK – LOST 2.0

ASK – LOST 2.0 Summary (2/2)     Social Networking Connection   Browse via Tag Cloud     Search   Rate     Comment     Create user’s Personal Collection     Tagging  [Any Type]  [Only URL]  [Only URL] Submit ASK-LOST 2.0 MELT CiteULike Connotea The ASK-LOST 2.0 delivers all the appropriate functionalities which are related with the main objectives and the advantages of social tagging. Guided Tagging is our contribution in order to reduce the disadvantages of social tagging, facilitating the process of re-using digital educational resources.  Guided Tagging

Conclusions and Future Work In this paper We presented ASK – LOST 2.0, a web-based tool for supporting the process of social tagging of digital educational resources by offering facilities for authoring and management of tags and resources. Future Work ASK-LOST 2.0 will be used in the framework of OpenScienceResources Project, enabling science education teachers and students to add tags to science education digital resources offered by European Science Centers in formal and non-formal educational setting. Research experiments will be desinged to assess and validate ASK-LOST 2.0 within this context of use.

Contact Details Alexandros Kalamatianos, Panayiotis Zervas, Demetrios Samspon email: {alkal, pzervas, sampson}@iti.gr http://www.ask4research.info Informatics and Telematics Institute, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Megaro ARKAT, 357-359 Mesogeion Av., GR-15231, Chalandri, Athens and Department of Technology Education and Digital Systems, University of Piraeus 150, Androutsou Street, Piraeus, GR-18534 Greece

ASK - LOST 2.0: A Web - based Tool for Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources

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ASK - LOST 2.0: A Web - based Tool for Social Tagging of Digital Educational Resources