Tagclouds and Distributed Cognition: Effect of Tagging Scaffolds on Students’ Reflection in Team Blogs

• In Event: Instructional Technology SIG Paper Session: Cognition, Metacognition, and Multimedia Design

Abstract

This article reports a research study about the effects of scaffolded tagging for team blogging on undergraduate students’ reflective thinking and distributed cognition as demonstrated by blog posts and tags. Thirty-nine students were randomly assigned in six groups and blogged for six weeks. Three groups were randomly selected to receive instructor-provided keywords as scaffolds for their tagging activity in the team blogs. Data analyses included comparing student-attached tags to the instructor-provided keyword scaffolds and then against each team’s aggregated concept maps. Results revealed that scaffolding in such situations might be counter-productive for student learning and tagclouds well represented students’ distributed cognition.

Authors

• Ying Xie, Northern Illinois University

• Shu-yuan Lin, Idaho State University