Self-Reported Learning Effects of a Tagging Activity Carried out in a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) by Secondary-School Pupils

Abstract

This paper reports on the use of a Web 2.0 artifact by sixteen 14/15 year-old pupils in a formal learning context. The gathered data provides a first appreciation of how the participants saw the action of tagging resources as affecting five dimensions of their learning experience: satisfaction, feeling of learning, effects on recall, effects on understanding and sense of personalization of the learning sequence. Based on these self-reported judgments, a discussion is opened on the mere decision to divert highly complex Web 2.0 tools into "ordinary" learning tools. The study also raises side questions about how pupils give an account of their learning experience and how they balance, or not, content and process aspects is such a description.