Introduction screen
Title:Take the social bookmarking challenge
Introduction:This activity is a fitness challenge that will rate your total responses in terms of High fitness, Potential fitness and Low fitness. The questions reflect typical issues and challenges of using social bookmarking services or tools. Tips are given under ‘More info’ to help you to make a more confident response.
At the end you'll get a Summary of any issues you still need to resolve in order to increase the fit between you and blogs or wikis. Print the Summary to save a record.
Students’ needs and interests
1. Will your students engage with the tools and features of a social bookmarking service?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
Are you using social bookmarking tools because you think it will be useful or because your students think it will be useful? You may only intend to use social bookmarking services for your own use or amongst your teaching peers. If this is the case then the worthiness of the tool is much easier to assess. However, when incorporating social bookmarking services into student learning activities it may be prudent to trial these services before widely adopting their use so as to gauge student adoption and engagement. Different cohorts, course types or student demographics may have a significant impact on the usefulness of social bookmarking services.
2. Will your students find the concept of social bookmarking and tagging too abstract or difficult to understand in the time you have?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
The suitability of social bookmarking will partly depend on the ICT skills of students. Bookmarking services are most easily implemented when the student group has experience in searching/surfing the web, are comfortable with online interaction, and have previous experience with other online tools such as RSS feeds and blogs.
These skills are certainly not essential to start using bookmarking services. However, you need to allow time for students to learn the tools so they can engage with learning activities without the technology distracting them. With an adequate support structure in place students of all skill levels can have some involvement with social bookmarking services. Start simple and work up through tasks that delve deeper into the more complex tools on offer. Adopt a flexible approach so that students can function at shallow and deep levels within the service without being excluded from a learning activity.
3. Do any students have special needs that your chosen social bookmarking service will need to support?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
If you have any students with special needs it may be useful to perform an accessibility assessment of the website. Consider issues such as page layout, colour and contrast, navigation, use of screen readers, etc. In some cases special adaptive software or devices may be needed to allow students with disabilities to interact with social bookmarking services.
Enhancing learning outcomes
4. Are you sure that the use of social bookmarking services will enhance student ability to achieve competencies/outcomes?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
Are you using a technology for its own sake? There is always the risk of assuming that a technology will contribute to student success. Research points to its positives and case studies highlight successes. However, without careful alignment between course competencies and outcomes the value of a useful technology may be lost.
5. Have you determined which features or tools of social bookmarking services best align with your learning activities?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
Social bookmarking services offer a wide range of tools and features. Just because they are on offer does not mean using them will enhance student learning. Be specific about which features and tools students need to be familiar with and map their use to relevant outcomes. Saving bookmarks online is an obvious feature that you and students are likely to use, however, subscribing to other users bookmarks via an RSS feed may be unnecessarily complex for a given learning activity.
Delivery context
6. Will the duration of the training program prevent long-term use of social bookmarking overmany weeks or months?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
If you intend to use social bookmarking services for a one-off activity you may have to limit students to some of the more basic features such as creating bookmarks and searching the site’s global tags. The more powerful features of social bookmarking services such as creating groups, searching personal tags, discovering like-minded users and developing a learning community takes time. Students need to be using a bookmarking service over a long period of time throughout much of their learning activities to truly leverage these more powerful features.
7. Will students only be able to use social bookmarking skills during formal learning times or only for specific training activities?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
As with all web-based tools, social bookmarking services allow students to access the service at any time. Trainers see the benefits of learning social bookmarking skills as empowering students to form their own resource-sharing networks and develop online skills that they can use in the workplace or for further study. If using social bookmarking provides no value beyond the immediate context then is it worth the time to learn and integrate the tool?
These issues need to be considered when evaluating the usefulness of social bookmarking services to your students.
Policy matters
8. Is there adequate technical support for you and students to effectively engage with social bookmarking services?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
Although social bookmarking services are not especially complex or difficult to use they still assume a moderate level of technical competence. If you and students don’t have the required level of competence will there need to be support structures in place to provide assistance? When and where will this support be provided? What is the turn-around time for a support request? Are there other staff or students who may be able to provide some level of support? What online support does the bookmarking service offer? A reliable support system needs to be in place before incorporating a new technology such as social bookmarking services into learning activities.
9. Is online access to the social bookmarking service reliable?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
Reliability must be measured both internally and externally. Is your organisation’s internal Internet connection reliable or is it routinely unavailable? If a significant part of a learning activity hinges upon Internet access any lack of service can be very disruptive.
Social bookmarking services are external services. Their reliability is outside of your control. You will need to experiment with the service to gauge how often the site or a feature of the site is unavailable. Perhaps it becomes very slow during peak-use times. Perhaps the service intends to adopt a pay-for-use strategy in the near future. Thankfully there are many excellent, free social bookmarking services to choose from, most of which offer the ability to export and import bookmarks which would allow for simple migration from one service to another.
10. Should student bookmarks be public for all users to see?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
All popular social bookmarking services allow users to make their bookmarks either public, for all users to see, or private, so that only they can view them. Having public bookmarks contributes to the collective power of social bookmarking services but also invites other users to view students’ shared bookmarks and add them to their network/friends.
If you are planning to encourage students to create public bookmarks consider addressing responsible use of such public, online environments and the potential impact of friends, relatives or future employers viewing their bookmarks.
Be sure to familiarise yourself and students with any organisational policies regarding the use of Internet resources.
11. Is it likely that students will be distracted by inappropriate or disruptive content?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
Most social bookmarking services are public online spaces with little or no mediation of content. Therefore the bookmarks available to users include sites that are pornographic, racist, sexist, illegal etc. In addition to content provided by other users, many social bookmarking services include links to sponsor websites or other forms of advertising that can draw students away from the intended purpose of using the service.
You may need to evaluate the potential risk for negative exposure to students, teachers and your organisation through the use of social bookmarking services. Is it likely that inappropriate use or misconduct will occur? If so it would be wise to develop a code of conduct before students participate in learning activities using social bookmarking services. This may be as simple as agreeing with your students the purpose of your social bookmarking community, tag names and what is appropriate or inappropriate to add to specific tags.
12. Are you able to abide by the social bookmarking service’s ‘Terms of use’?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
Although not particularly restrictive, all social bookmarking services have some form of terms of use, terms of services or conditions. If you are asking students to sign-up to a particular service you may be indirectly forcing them to accept these terms. Be sure you are familiar with the terms and assist students in understanding their rights and responsibilities.
13. Will you need to develop rules for how students will use the social bookmarking service so that personal use is restricted or denied?
Yes
No
Not sure
More info
If your students aren’t able to manage personal use as well as training uses of a web service then will there be a potential conflict of interest? Or will this mean students will be open to distractions, or that your job to monitor activity will be too unwieldy? In adult training contexts, facilitators are careful not to restrict the personal use of a service freely available on the Internet. This is often regarded as stifling student initiatives or impinging on students’ rights. You may need strategies in place to help students to manage ‘personal’ and ‘learning’ sites, tags and friends.
Profile matches
Students’ needs and interests
1. Will your students engage with the tools and features of a social bookmarking service?
Yes=High
No=Low
Not sure=Potential
2. Will your students find the concept of social bookmarking and tagging too abstract or difficult to understand in the time you have?
Yes=Low
No=High
Not sure=Potential
3. Do any students have special needs that your chosen social bookmarking service will need to support?
Yes=Potential
No=High
Not sure=Potential
4. Are you sure that the use of social bookmarking services will enhance student ability to achieve competencies/outcomes?
Yes=High
No=Low
Not sure=Potential
5. Have you determined which features or tools of social bookmarking services best align with your learning activities?
Yes=High
No=Low
Not sure=Potential
Delivery context
6. Will the duration of the training program prevent long-term use of social bookmarking overmany weeks or months?
Yes=Low
No=High
Not sure=Potential
7. Will students only be able to use social bookmarking skills during formal learning times or only for specific training activities?
Yes=Low
No=High
Not sure=Potential
Policy matters
8. Is there adequate technical support for you and students to effectively engage with social bookmarking services?
Yes=High
No=Low
Not sure=Potential
9. Is online access to the social bookmarking service reliable?
Yes=High
No=Low
Not sure=Potential
10. Should student bookmarks be public for all users to see?
Yes=High
No=Low
Not sure=Potential
11. Is it likely that students will be distracted by inappropriate or disruptive content?
Yes=High
No=Low
Not sure=Potential
12. Are you able to abide by the social bookmarking service’s ‘Terms of use’?
Yes=High
No=Low
Not sure=Potential
13. Will you need to develop rules for how students will use the social bookmarking service so that personal use is restricted or denied?
Yes=Low
No=High
Not sure=Potential
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