Bridging Past and Present: Marginalia as an Enhancement

to Moodle Discussion Forums

Cindy Xin & Geoffrey Glass

cxin@sfu.ca, geof@geof.net

Simon Fraser University

Canadian Moodle Moot, Edmonton, April 1 - 4, 2009

“A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted.” (p.3)

Vannevar Bush in AS WE MAY THINK, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945

Why Marginalia?

Why the Moodle forum?

A poll –

Have you used any Web annotation system?

Other web annotation systems

Annotea

Diigo

How Marginalia is different?

Discussion page

Summary page

What have we learned?

How is Marginalia used and for what purpose?

What kind of conversations or social interactions, if any, does Marginalia foster?

In what ways, if any, does it support re-visitation and reflection in online dialogue?

Research Questions

Observations from three online classesClass one: a fourth year undergraduate

class in philosophy

Class two: a graduate class in educational technology

Class three: a graduate class in e-learning research and practice

Quantitative usage analysis

Content analysis on conference posts and annotations

Semi-structured interviews

Methods

Usage

Results

Class Duration

# of Participants

# of Messages

# of Annotations

Philosophy

2 wks 11 25 84

Edtech 2 hrs 17 18 45

E-learning 2 wks 6 45 178

User experience – intuitive and unobtrusive

Results (cont’d)

Usefulness o to index and recallo to think and reflecto to clarify and explain, and o to share and communicate

Results (cont’d)

Private vs. public use

Results (cont’d)

From “thought graffiti” to “nods on the side”

Results (cont’d)

1.Marginalia makes interaction more conversational.

2.Reading becomes active, blurring the line with writing.

3.Past was revisited and brought into present. This creates a “rolling present.”

4.Marginalia creates a new temporal and spatial order in forums and offers new possibilities for social and intellectual engagement.

Discussion

The quote function

Different online pedagogies for utilizing Marginalia

Further development for specific research and pedagogical goals

Future Directions