Public defence of Riina Vuorikari November 13 2009, Heerlen, NL

• Background: different ways to organise the world around us• Human-made• Self-organisation

• Context of the dissertation & the problem statement

• Hypothesis & structure of the study • Lessons learned

Presentation outline

Cataloguing and metadata

Stigmergy

Context of the dissertation

Discovering learning resources across language boundaries is challenging!

Main problem: the resource & its metadata description are made in a different context from where the

resource is discovered and/or actually used

Problem statement

Learning resources from

different countries and

in different languages do not cross-reference via hyperlinks!

Problem statement

Add a rating

New kid on the block - tagging

Add a tag

New patterns emerge

Social

tags

make

digital

trails

visible!

by Stiphy

The self-organisation aspect of a social tagging system on a learning resource portal helps users discover learning resources more efficiently.

User-generated tags make the system, which operates in a multilingual context, more robust and flexible.

Hypothesis

Setting the scene

Trilogy of empirical studies

What happens when users tag in multiple languages?

Are learning resources used across contexts?

2. Metadata ecology more robust and flexibile system

1. Ecology of social search more efficient users

3. Tags connect con-tent across contexts more flexibility

Structure of studies

Spanish resource

Tag «interactive»

Tags create link-structures beween

content in different languages

Finnish resource

Slovakian resource

Austria

Hungary

Finland

Resource that «Travels well»

Tags create link-structures beween

users in different countries

This opens novel ways for better cross-language discovery of learning resources, paving the way for

recommender systems, social navigation and ranking in this domain

Outcome

I would like to thank everyone involved in this research, especially...