Web 2.0 Semantic Systems: Collaborative Learning in Science

The basic goal of education within a discipline is to transform a novice into an expert. This entails moving the novice toward the "semantic space " that the expert inhabits—the space of concepts, meanings, vocabularies, and other intellectual constructs that comprise the discipline. Metadata is significant to this goal in digitally mediated education environments. Encoding the experts ’ semantic space not only enables the sharing of semantics among discipline scientists, but also creates an environment that bridges the semantic gap between the common vocabulary of the novice and the granular descriptive language of the seasoned scientist (Greenberg, et al, 2005). Developments underlying the Semantic Web, where vocabularies are formalized in the Web Ontology Language (OWL), and Web 2.0 approaches of user-generated folksonomies provide an infrastructure for linking vocabulary systems and promoting group learning via metadata literacy. Group learning is a pedagogical approach to teaching that harnesses the phenomenon of “collective intelligence ” to increase learning by means of collaboration. Learning a new semantic system can be daunting for a novice, and yet it is integral to advance one’s knowledge in a discipline and retain interest. These ideas are key to the “BOT 2.0: Botany through Web 2.0, the Memex and Social Learning ” project (Bot 2.0).7