Social Web, & Annotation in E-Learn 2005 Rosta Farzan January 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  Annotation 1.Enhancing Online discussion through Web Annotation, Xin & Glass, Siimon Fraser University, Canada 2.Extending Annotations to Make Truly Valuable, Korica et al, Graz University of Technology, Austria 3.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

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

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

 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 Response Closing Analysi s Constructive criticism analyzercritic analyzer critic