Studying tag vocabulary evolution of social tagging systems in learning object repositories

Panagiotis Zervas,Lina Pelliccione,Demetrios Sampson

doi:10.1186/s40561-016-0037-z

Abstract

In the field of Technology-enhanced Learning (TeL), social tagging has been applied to Learning Object Repositories (LORs) mainly as a means:(a) to offer an alternative way of classifying the Learning Objects (LOs) based on the tag vocabulary created by the end-users of the LOs, and (b) to facilitate the enhancement of LOs’ descriptions via collaborative tagging. However, in order to be able to understand how a social tagging system performs and whether it can deliver the aforementioned goals, it is important to be able to investigate the evolution of the tag vocabulary, which constitutes the core component of a social tagging system. Within this context, research has focused on different facets of social tagging systems such as the growth of the tag vocabulary, the frequency and reuse of tags, as well as the stability of the tag vocabulary but there are only sporadic studies for investigating these issues in the field of LORs. This paper aims to contribute in studying how social tagging systems perform in the context of LORs by investigating the evolution of the tag vocabulary in OpenScienceResources Repository, a science education domain specific repository with a rich dataset operating in Europe for 5 years.

Highlights

The emerging Web 2.0 applications have allowed for alternative ways of characterizing digital resources, which move from the expert-based descriptions following formal classification systems to a more informal user-based tagging (Hsu et al 2014; Derntl et al, 2011; Bi et al, 2009)
This paper aims to contribute in the under-researched aspect of studying how social tagging systems perform in the context of Learning Object Repositories (LORs) by (a) investigating the case of the OpenScienceResources Repository, a science education domain specific repository comprising diverse types of Learning Objects (LOs), with a rich dataset operating in Europe for 5 years and (b) adopting a wide range of metrics to study the behavior of the social tagging system and the evolution of the tag vocabulary, namely tag vocabulary growth, tag re-use, tag discrimination and tag entropy
In Research method, we present the research method used in our study, in which the data collection process from an existing LOR, namely the OSR Repository and the research methodology with specific metrics are introduced for investigating the evolution of the tag vocabulary

Summary

Introduction

The emerging Web 2.0 applications have allowed for alternative ways of characterizing digital resources, which move from the expert-based descriptions following formal classification systems to a more informal user-based tagging (Hsu et al 2014; Derntl et al, 2011; Bi et al, 2009). Despite the use of well-defined formal metadata for LOs, the users of the LOs (that is, teachers and students) are facing difficulties to discover and find suitable LOs from LORs (Hyon, 2011; Dahl & Vossen, 2008; Al-Khalifa & Davis, 2007) This has led to the investigation of other means for describing LOs such as social tagging (Bateman et al, 2007; Hammond et al, 2005). This could offer a personalized way for searching which is delivered by users’ tags and not by an externally defined classification system (Cho et al, 2011; Vuorikari et al, 2010) LOs are tagged by different users with an increased amount of tags that reflect “the wisdom of crowds” This could offer a mechanism to capture users’ contextual value of LOs (e.g., experiences from using the LO in teaching and learning practice), which could be different from creators’ anticipated contextual value (Zervas & Sampson, 2014; Trant, 2009; Dahl & Vossen, 2008)

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Conclusion