Social Web, & Annotation in E-Learn 2005

Rosta FarzanJanuary 12, 2006

List of papers Social Web

1. Discovering the Complex Effect of Navigation Cues in an E-Learning Environment, Dron, University of Brighton, UK

2. A Succession of Eyes: Building an E-Learning City, Dron, UK

3. The Use of Blogs in Teaching, Knowledge Management, and Performance Improvement, Want et al, San Diego State University, USA

Annotation1. Enhancing Online discussion through Web Annotation,

Xin & Glass, Siimon Fraser University, Canada2. Extending Annotations to Make Truly Valuable, Korica et

al, Graz University of Technology, Austria3. Scripted Anchored Discussion of eLectures, Trahasch &

Lauer

Social Web

Discovering the complex effect of navigation cues …

Experiment Determining the effect of visual social

navigation cues on user behavior Position Font-size Word-length

Subjects 203 users Students & teachers of University of

Brighton

Experiment

Result Position

Strong correlation between list position and chances of being clicked

Font size Single item with large

font size has strong chance of being clicked

Word length No strong correlation

A Succession of Eyes: Building an E-Learning City

Describes Dwellings Virtual city for learners Supports self-organizing mechanism Interactive collaborative web browsing Bookmark database Content management systems

Dwellings & City metaphor

Users ~ dwellers Represented by avatars

Links ~ dwellings Collection of links ~ street Demo

http://dwellings.cofind.net/conf/

Social Navigation in Dwellings

Real-time Real time chatting with other users See other users who are login to the

system at the same time History-rich information

Leave graffiti on the buildings Leave footprint as you move View footprints left by others

Identify popular sites

Study

Pilot study Improve design and further development Two hour period Six graduate students studying

communication technologies Data collection

Observe activity of students Analyze usage logs Questionnaire

Result

Effect of social navigation Two streets attracted most of the

activities Students were attracted by presence of

others Mentioned as the most important factor

determining where to move High usage of “Who is here now” link

No clear influence of presence of footprints

The use of blogs in teaching, … Usefulness of blogs

Learning tool Facilitate critical thinking Promote discussion Support individual/group learning in

classroom settings Knowledge Construction tool

Supported by archiving & hyper-linking How ideas connect & evolve over time Self-organization of information

Collaborative knowledge construction Leaving comments

Usefulness of blogs

Knowledge Management tool Klogs

Gathering and sharing information or knowledge

Informal knowledge management Bottom up

Performance Improvement tool Blogs improve critical thinking Proactive thinking enhance collective

ability of an organization

Annotation

Enhancing Online Discussion through Web Annotation

Develop web annotation & highlighting Integrated into Moodle discussion forums

Study how annotation facilitate discussion

Demo http://www.geof.net/code/annotation

Evaluation Future work

How are the annotation functions used? What purpose? What context?

How do annotation affect behavior of others?

What is the role of annotations in ongoing discussion?

How annotations help users? Do users revisit annotations?

How?

Extending Annotation to Make them Truly Valuable

Annotation as a tool for collaboration Private annotations Public annotations Group annotations

Group Work space Attached to a unit of material

HTML page, PPT slide, a paragraph, a figure, a picture, a table, …

Users Username, password, group name Can belong to more than one group

Annotation as Work Space

Workspace Information

Comment, links, or documents inserted by others

Question Questions asked by members related to the

attached unit Answers to the questions

Discussion Discussion forum

Scripted Anchored Discussions of eLectures

Recording live lectures as educational modules for e-learning Less expensive & more flexible Tool

AOF (Authoring on the Fly) Problem

Limited interaction of learners Solution

Scripted anchored discussion

Scripted anchored discussion

Exchanging structured comments anchored in documents (synchronously or asynchronously) Defines actions

Replace spontaneous intervention of instructors

Sentence opener (prompt) Type of contribution

Question, Comment, New topic Order of contribution

Representation

Non-deterministic finite state machine

startsFirst

AnalysisRespons

e

Closing Analysi

s

Constructive criticism

analyzer critic

an

aly

zer

analyzer

critic