Abstract:

Since 2004 the term Web 2.0 has been associated with many new developments on the Internet and new resources for e-learning. In this paper we describe the use of one of the most characteristic features of Web 2.0, social tagging, in the teaching and learning process of several courses in the degree in Actuarial Sciences at the University of Málaga.
Within an experimental project for adapting the pedagogical strategies to the forthcoming new European Space for Higher Education, we have developed a pedagogical strategy based on a series of learning activities -many of them performed outside the traditional classroom- designed to acquire the cognoscitive and professional skills demanded by the profession of actuary.
Although ours are not distance-learning courses, we use a Web based platform (Moodle) for the integral management of the courses, from learning material delivering to assessment. In this context we introduced several Web 2.0 resources, including social tagging and tag clouds.
In each course every student has to complete a number of learning activities, choosing from several categories (individual practical cases, individual tests, group practical cases, … ). All the activities can be tagged in several ways. First, the student can assign a ‘content and/or skill’ tag to each activity. The results of this tagging are displayed in a tag cloud, which helps the students choose activities along the course in order to get a comprehensive acquisition of skills and contents. Besides, we have also included the possibility of assigning a level of difficulty tag, selecting between three levels (introductory, intermediate, and advanced), and a temporal dedication tag, indicating the hours of work needed to complete the activity. The average levels of both indicators are shown in two graphical displays, which complement the tag cloud.
Our approach is based on gathering the students’ interactions and activities, representing them semantically, and exploiting this information in order to allow a better selection and sequencing of learning activities according to students’ perceptions. With this collaborative tagging system, students can better organize and more efficiently perform the learning activities of our courses. On the other hand, teachers obtain a better image about the students’ comprehension of the course contents and skills based on their collaborative tagging activities, from which both learners and teachers may benefit.
Finally, one of the results of the proposed strategy is a significant improvement of the general motivation level of our students and their involvement in the courses development. In addition, we carried out a survey that confirms this subjective perceptions.

Keywords:

web 2, 0, social tagging, actuarial, e-learning.