Collaborative and Active eLearning: Contributing, Ranking and Tagging Web Resources in First Year Chemistry

Abstract

To enhance peer-to-peer and student-to-educator collaboration and to promote active eLearning, students and educators are invited to contribute, tag and vote on web-based resources via an application hosted on the eLearning site. These resources are organised according to the topics in the syllabus and hence are available in a succinct, week-by-week format as well as by common tags and by contributor. The resources are also feed to social networking sites to act as external resource libraries and to promote a sense of community and shared learning amongst the large and diverse groups taking our first year chemistry units. By encouraging our learners to contribute in this way and by utilising the large numbers of student in a positive way, the project also seeks to provide a manageable and reliable way of sourcing checking and ranking the vast amount of existing and ever-growing resources on the web.