Title: Integrate social tagging to build an online collaborative learning community

Authors: Chih-Hsiung Tu; Cherng-Jyh Yen; Michael Blocher; Laura Sujo-Montes; Elizabeth Moore; Shadow Armfield; Karen Sealander

Addresses: Department of Educational Technology, College of Education, Northern Arizona University, P.O. Box 5774, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA ' Department of Educational Foundation & Leadership, Old Dominion University, 120 Education Building, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA ' Department of Educational Technology, College of Education, Northern Arizona University, P.O. Box 5774, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA ' Department of Educational Technology, College of Education, Northern Arizona University, P.O. Box 5774, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA ' Department of Educational Technology, College of Education, Northern Arizona University, P.O. Box 5774, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA ' Department of Educational Technology, College of Education, Northern Arizona University, P.O. Box 5774, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA ' Department of Educational Technology, College of Education, Northern Arizona University, P.O. Box 5774, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA

Abstract: Social tagging available in social media can potentially be integrated to build an effective online collaborative learning community. The purpose of this study is to understand the nature of social tagging for graduate students in an online learning program and how does their social tagging relate to building online collaborative learning communities and student engagement in distributed social bookmarking resources? The research questions are: how do students perceive building collaborative learning communities through social tagging in distributed learning resources? How do students build a collaborative learning community through social tagging in distributed learning resources? Mixed methods, survey, and tag analyses were utilised to collect the data from 44 online graduate students. This study concluded that the learners' social tagging nature is mainly using content tags rather than community-connected tags. Learners tagged to share with the general public to build communities of interests and passion, not with specific teammates or collaborators to build communities of purpose and practice. It suggests social tagging architecture as a social tagging literacy to support learners to build effective online collaborative learning communities.

Keywords: communities of practice; CoP; online communities; collaborative learning; social bookmarking; social tagging architecture; socio-cognitive learning; virtual communities; web based communities; graduate students; higher education; e-learning; electronic learning; online learning; student engagement; distributed learning resources.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIIE.2016.081551

International Journal of Innovation in Education, 2016 Vol.3 No.2/3, pp.156 - 171

Received: 03 May 2016
Accepted: 12 Oct 2016
Published online: 12 Jan 2017 *

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