Implications of writing, reading, and tagging on the web for reflection support in informal learning

Abstract

The use of tags as user generated meta-data as well as the visualisation in tag clouds has recently received a lot of attention in research and practice. This paper focuses on supporting reflection of learners by using different presentation approaches of user-generated meta-data for reflection support. Previous research has shown that implicit interest expression can be a valuable source for reflection support. Visualising implicit or "tacit" interest in tag clouds could help learners to understand the connections of their content related activities to the tags that are assigned to the content. For grounding this potential in the social practice of using tags in teams and small communities, we conducted a three month experiment. This experiment focused on the social practices of using tags explicitly and implicitly. In this paper we analyse the data of the experiment with regard to social navigation of teams and small communities, relations of implicit and explicit interest in tags, and usages of tags on different participation levels. The findings on these dimensions of the social practice of using and sharing tags in groups help to develop a better view on the requirements of providing reflection support. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.