Are tags from Mars and descriptors from Venus?

Are tags from Mars and descriptors from Venus? A study on the ecology of educational resource metadata ICWL 2009, Aachen Aug 19 2009 Presenter: Riina Vuorikari

Presentation • Introduction: purpose of metadata, context and method • Results and discussion: How do users tag and what do they click? What do expert indexers and repository managers think of tags? • Conclusions

Introduction: metadata for learning resources To describe resources. “Descriptor” used for indexing terms. Usefulness for searchability

Typical LOR =Learning Object LOR with tagging Repository

Metadata ecology • Describes the interrelation of conventional metadata (e.g. Learning Object Metadata) and social tags, and • their interactions with the environment – repository, – resources, – stakeholders (e.g. managers, metadata indexers and the whole community of users)

Learning Resource Exchange for schools Learning Resource Exchange - Riina Vuorikari http://lreforschools.eun.org Conventional search «From teachers to teachers» Tags in multiple languages Ratings and comments by the European Commission’s eContentplus Programme

Tagging to « keep found things found » and Learning Resource Exchange - Riina Vuorikari help to share with other users Add to Favourites Add a tag

Method • 234 users, 77 created bookmarks and tags. • Attention metadata captured on the portal (user, resource, tags). Details in Vuorikari and Koper, 2009.

Results: users and tags • Users interact differently with tags • 33% of users tag, • but 58% use tags for searching

Results: how do users tag? Average does not tell the whole truth! • 20% of resources generated more than half of all the bookmarks (80% had only one bookmark) • 20% of resources had more than half of tags associated with them them • 20% of tags have been applied 63% of the time

Results: how do users tag? • Users tag in multiple languages in a multilingual context, mostly – in their mother tongue and – in the language of the resource – e.g. about 30 to 50% of tags are in En • A medium correlation (r= 0.57) between the language of the content and the language of the tag

Results: “Thesaurus tags” 12

Results: “Thesaurus tags” • Characteristics: – 11.3% of distinct user-generated tags exist in the LRE multilingual Thesaurus – 30.6% of tag applications • Popular: – On average, these tags were reused 11.8 times (other tags 2.5 times) • Add properties to tags – e.g. relation to a concept in multilingual Thesaurus, – language • Add connections, e.g. all the other resources related to this thesaurus term

Results: what do users click? • Tagcloud was used in 22% of all search actions, users bookmarks 7% • 11% of distinct tags were used for retrieval purposes • 20% of distinct tags generated 80% of clicks

Results: Does the offer of tags by users match the demand? • The amount of clickstream (i.e. demand) on a tag compared to how many times it had been added by teachers (i.e. supply). • number above 1 means that the tag has generated more clickstream than tag applications = “attractive” tag • 21% of tags attractive and 24% equal supply and demand - demonstrates the flexibility of the system to adapt

Results: what do expert-indexers think of tags? • Indexers found user-generated tags often – factual and descriptive, similar to LOM – suitable (i.e. clear and unambiguous) as indexing keywords • Tags a source of non-descriptors to help retrieval, e.g. “efl” linked to Thesaurus terms “English language” + “foreign language”

Results: what do LOR owners think of tags? • 25% of tags in the Repository case study were deemed to add value to existing indexing • 75% somewhat redundant information e.g. – LOM 1.2: Title – LOM 1.3: the language of the resource (English) – LOM 5.2: resource type. Examples: photo, picture; exercises, games; simulations; quiz, web quest – LOM 5.7: the age group or the pupils being addresses (e.g. young learners)

Conclusions and future work • Numerous way of interplay exist between conventional metadata and social tags • Tags allow multiple ways to interact with the multilingual environment – repository (e.g. new emerging ways to navigate)

Interplay between descriptors and tags Tag Descriptor 20

Emerging possibilities • Tags create link-structures between users, resources, tags and thesaurus descriptors • These link-structures cross-references resources across languages, curricula, repositories, etc. • Can offer more flexible ways to access resources in a multilingual and cultural context 21

social bookmarks Metadata LOM tags folksonomy ecology multi-linguality social classification thanks! for your attention learning resources Tags user communities resource discovery questions? teachers social navigation social traces paths, trails http://lreforschools.eun.org

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Are tags from Mars and descriptors from Venus?

by Riina Vuorikari

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Are tags from Mars and descriptors from Venus? Presentation Transcript