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A Tag Based Learning Remix
We attempt to crack the class participation nut by mandating participation in an online self-organizing space. Our aggregation mechanism is based on the tags participants provide for their contributions. This post describes our underlying concept and the variety of technologies we employ.
Sections: Education Emerging Practice
Topics: delicious infrastructure LearningRemix MT syndication tagging wordpress
A perennial classroom issue is student participation. Even if students are enthusiastic, limited time dictates that only a few will be heard in any single session. Limited participation limits instructors' opportunities to find out what students know and inhibits the potential discovery of useful information for everybody. This post outlines a web-based learning remix project at Michigan's Ross School of Business that is designed to remove classroom limits on student participation. The system operates according to a few simple pinciples:
- Require that everyone participate.
- Move the vast majority of class participation online.
- Structure online participation so that it is self-organizing.
We believe our system achieves the first and second goals and makes good progress on the third. On the input side, each student makes fifteen tagged (informally categorized) microcontributions per week by bookmarking sites in del.icio.us and making blog posts in WordPress Multi-User. Multiple times each day, reBlog and the Movable Type publishing platform gather, remix, and present the student contributions based on the tags students supplied.
On the input side, a significant reason for choosing both WordPress and del.icio.us is that, out-of-the-box they allow users to create new tags on the fly or re-use existing ones. Further, both platforms output standards-compliant html and RSS feeds, reducing the need to do extensive idiosyncratic API coding on either. Finally, both platforms have large and active developer bases, making it easy to get answers to questions as one does the necessary minor API wrangling.
On the output side, reBlog's main advantage is that, in combination with Movable Type, it creates permanent, archivable, and searchable entries from the students' RSS feeds instead of just temporarily caching and redisplaying them like Tim Appnel's Feeds.App. Both the student remix and the instructor's content are managed by the Movable Type system. Using a blog publishing system for the instructor's content facilitates adding it to the remix.
One of the things we are most excited about in the remix approach is that it allows us to see how students are attending to externally and internally generated items as well as letting them suggest their own. The frequency of posting about given items and the frequency with which tags are used gives some hints as to the central topics that are of concern to students. Through Movable Type reBlog plug-in, searches on the blog site bring up links to external resources as well as internal blog posts, depending on the resource's origin.
You can see the remix interface as of September 10, 2005 presented in this screenshot:
The site as it stands is clearly in its formative stages. Changes to the interface and architecture will be driven by the need to present the remix in its most easily comprehended guise. I have many plans, and I welcome any suggestions in this regard.
Acknowledgements
James Farmer has generously supplied hosting and technical know-how for WordPress Multi-User. Mike Frumin of Eyebeam Research, the originators of reBlog, provided significance in modifications I made to that software. Members of the sixapart pronet mailing list have also been very helpful, and Anil Dash has contributed the contents of the pronet RSS feed for the class's perusal.
Bud posted this on September 10, 2005
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