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

starts First Analysis Respons

e

Closing Analysi

s

Constructive criticism

analyzer critic

anal

yzer

analyzer

critic