0.2 Tagging, rating, and reviewing oer materials

The module “ Finding OER Materials You Can Start Using Now ,” showed how quickly you can find OER materials. In this module, “Tagging, Rating, and Reviewing OER Materials,” we’ll talk about ways you can begin contributing to OER Commons by using tags as well as rating and reviewing materials.

The what, why, and how of tags

In general, tags classify content the way you want to organize it. Tags are dynamic and created by the people who use a site as opposed to being a pre-defined set of keywords created by the owners of the site. So, a tag is a keyword created by a person who uses a site. Some examples of sites that use tagging are:

• Flickr , for sharing photos
• YouTube for sharing videos
• del.icio.us for sharing bookmarks
• OER Commons for sharing instructional materials.

What all these sites have in common are people sharing content in an open community setting. To keep track of their own and others’ content, users classify content of interest by using tags.

The creation of tags give users of a site the ability to participate in classifying and organizing content the way they want to. Because tags come from the people who use the site, tagging is considered a bottom up classification scheme as opposed to top down (an existing pre-defined set of keywords from the site’s administrators).

OER Commons uses a bottom up classification scheme as well as a top down one. The bottom up classification scheme (tags) enables you to create and assign keywords, making them immediately searchable. In the top down classification scheme, keywords are created and assigned by the site’s administrators (in this case, OER Commons). The benefit to bottom up is that it gives users the flexibility to create their own way to classify the materials; top down provides a standardized set of keywords. To learn more, read The Hive Mind: Folksonomies and User-Based Tagging .

Tagging items is one of the ways to become an active contributor in the open source movement, which is defined as a distributed, participatory, and collaborative environment. Why would you want to actively participate in OER Commons? With so many ways to teach and learn, your perspective lends a unique dimension to OER. Others can learn from your OER process.

When you create tags, you are sharing the way you classify items, which can be useful to others who are searching for the items.

Here’s one example of how tagging can help you as an educator or learner:

One person using a lesson plan about the Spanish influenza of 1918 might assign a tag such as flu, while another might assign a tag such as pandemic. Once assigned by users, tags are tied to the given resource, and become a searchable way to find that resource as well as other resources that are tagged or associated with the same labels. These new tags provide additional context for the item and help make it more findable. Your perspectives give others a new lens into seeing the content from a different angle and in turn, may give new ideas on how to use (or re-use) it.