TUTORIAL SESSION

Social Tagging of Open Science Resources and Its Usage in Formal and Informal Learning

Mr. Denis Kozlov
University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
denis.kozlov@jyu.fi

Abstract

Tagging is a powerful tool to improve searching and finding in social communities for learning, education and training. However, only very few mature solutions can be found in the market – the tutorial aims at enabling participants to experience and validate the use of social tags in particular for open educational resources for science education.
The tutorial has the following objectives:
• To get familiarized with the notion of open educational resources
• To get insight into social tagging in general and its applicability to open educational resources
• To get familiarized with real high quality open educational resources that are used in informal and formal learning processes at the prominent European museums and science centers
• To have some hands-on tagging of open educational / open science resources
• To test the current functionality of the social tagging system of open science resources
The tutorial will be based on the results of the European project “Open Science Resources” funded by the European Commission (http://www.openscienceresources.eu). One of the main objectives of the project is to develop a sophisticated portal to access the finest digital collections in European science centers and museums, to follow educational pathways connecting objects tagged with semantic metadata and to enrich the contents provided with social tags. The OSR portal/repository includes numerous educational materials, such as images of exhibits and scientific instruments, animations, videos, lesson plans, student projects and educational pathways with guidelines for interactive museum visit experiences.

Timeline

1. Introduction into open educational and open science resources - 10 min. - Power Point presentation
2. Introduction into social tagging - 10 min - Power Point presentation
3. Introduction into the OSR portal for open science resources
• Content of the portal (open science resources, educational pathways, metadata, social tags, community of the users)
• Main functionality of the portal
30 min - Online demonstration
4. Testing of the online version of the OSR social tagging system - 40 min - Online testing
5. Testing of the mobile version of the OSR social tagging system - 40 min - Online testing by means of participants’ mobile devices (mobile phones, smart phones, iPhones, iPads, etc.)
6. Evaluation of the OSR tagging system in the form of oral discussion and paper-based questionnaire(s) - 40 min - White board, paper-based questionnaire(s)
7. Conclusions and wrapping-up - 10 min - White board

Background Knowledge Expected of the Participants

• No real background knowledge is expected from the participants.
• Basic understanding of social tagging and/or open educational resources might be desirable, but not obligatory.