Are tags fromMars and

descriptors fromVenus?

A study on the ecologyof educational resource

metadata

ICWL 2009, AachenAug 19 2009

Presenter: Riina Vuorikari

Presentation

• Introduction: purpose of metadata,context and method

• Results and discussion: How do userstag and what do they click? What doexpert indexers and repositorymanagers think of tags?

• Conclusions

Introduction: metadata forlearning resources

To describe resources.“Descriptor” used forindexing terms.

Usefulness for searchability

Typical LOR=Learning Object

RepositoryLOR with tagging

Metadata ecology

• Describes the interrelation ofconventional metadata (e.g. Learning ObjectMetadata) and social tags, and

• their interactions with the environment– repository,– resources,– stakeholders (e.g. managers, metadata

indexers and the whole community ofusers)

Learning Resource Exchange - Riina VuorikariLearning Resource Exchange for schoolshttp://lreforschools.eun.org

Conventionalsearch

«Fromteachers toteachers»

Tags inmultiple

languages

Ratings andcomments

by the EuropeanCommission’seContentplusProgramme

Learning Resource Exchange - Riina VuorikariTagging to « keep found things found » andhelp to share with other users

Add toFavourites

Add a tag

Method• 234 users, 77 created bookmarks and

tags.• Attention metadata captured on the

portal (user, resource, tags). Details inVuorikari and Koper, 2009.

Results:users and tags

• Users interactdifferently withtags

• 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 tagsassociated with them them

• 20% of tags have been applied 63% of thetime

Results: how do users tag?

• Users tag in multiple languages in amultilingual 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) betweenthe language of the content and thelanguage of the tag

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Results: “Thesaurus tags”

Results: “Thesaurus tags”• Characteristics:

– 11.3% of distinct user-generated tags exist in theLRE 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 resourcesrelated to this thesaurus term

Results: what do users click?

• Tagcloud was used in 22% of all searchactions, users bookmarks 7%

• 11% of distinct tags were used forretrieval purposes

• 20% of distinct tags generated 80% ofclicks

Results: Does the offer of tagsby users match the demand?

• The amount of clickstream (i.e. demand) on atag compared to how many times it had beenadded by teachers (i.e. supply).

• number above 1 means that the tag hasgenerated more clickstream than tagapplications = “attractive” tag

• 21% of tags attractive and 24% equal supplyand demand - demonstrates the flexibility ofthe system to adapt

Results: what do expert-indexersthink of tags?

• Indexers found user-generated tagsoften– factual and descriptive, similar to LOM– suitable (i.e. clear and unambiguous) as

indexing keywords

• Tags a source of non-descriptors to helpretrieval, e.g. “efl” linked to Thesaurus terms“English language” + “foreign language”

Results: what do LOR ownersthink of tags?

• 25% of tags in the Repository casestudy were deemed to add value toexisting indexing

• 75% somewhat redundant informatione.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 existbetween conventional metadata andsocial tags

• Tags allow multiple ways to interact withthe multilingual environment– repository (e.g. new emerging ways

to navigate)

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Interplay between descriptorsand tags

Descriptor

Tag

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Emerging possibilities

• Tags create link-structures between users,resources, tags and thesaurus descriptors

• These link-structures cross-referencesresources across languages, curricula,repositories, etc.

• Can offer more flexible ways to accessresources in a multilingual and culturalcontext

social bookmarksMetadata LOM tags folksonomy

ecologymulti-linguality social classification

thanks! for your attentionlearning resources Tags

user communitiesresource discovery

questions?teachers social navigation

social tracespaths, trails

http://lreforschools.eun.org