You are on Facebook, scrolling through your newsfeed. One friend shares a link to an interesting video. You watch and ‘like’ it. A more political friend shares yet another article ranting against Republicans. You decide to hide posts from this friend. You see that your mom has shared the latest family portrait from the summer family gathering and you help her out by tagging everyone in the picture that she missed.

Your activities on Facebook, and those of your friends, are all examples of user response. Interactions such as tagging photos, commenting on existing wall posts, and ‘liking’ content are several examples of feedback mechanisms created by users that occur daily in online informal settings. By providing feedback you are contributing to the content generated by others and thereby generating content of your own. User-generated content on the web is constantly changing and evolving as multiple web users contribute, provide feedback, and build upon the original content in one way or another.

User-Generated Content in Social Media Contexts

PHOTOSHARING PLATFORMS:

Instagram, Imgur, Pinterest, Picasa, Flickr

MICROBLOGGING:

Twitter, Tumblr

NETWORKING:

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn

SHARING INTERESTS:

Reddit, Scribed, Stumbleupon, Digg, YouTube, Goodreads

OPEN/INFORMATIONAL/REVIEWS:

Blogs, Wikis, Yelo, Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon

User response can be defined as information generated by users in response to another source. We encounter user-generated content all the time. Facebook statuses, Tweets, blog posts, YouTube videos and photos on Instagram are all generated by the users of these websites. In this quest you will consider how the user-generated model that you encounter in a social setting can also be applied to an academic setting.

Informal but Valuable Feedback:

As you progress through your academic career, feedback from professors and other students is an invaluable part of the learning process. Just as faculty members confer and receive professional feedback from their colleagues, students gain feedback from others in their class through group projects and seminars. Students may receive informal feedback and help from other students through an online forum like Yahoo! Answers, or they might look to homework help sites for assistance in their assignments. Since anyone can contribute, it is important to discern the quality of feedback on websites.

Some websites are established as reputable on their subject. Newegg, for example, a popular site for the computer savvy to purchase computer parts, provides plenty of feedback on the products of their site. Some of the feedback originates from technology experts, while other reviews are written by users of the products. Consider the value of both kinds of feedback. While the technology professionals can provide expert information, everyday users who are not interested in selling a product might provide more honest and reliable feedback.

Let’s look at an example where informal feedback between students contributes to a student’s learning process. Khan Academy is an educational site where students from across the globe can access free resources, including tutorials and supplemental materials, in a variety of subject areas (math, science, history, etc). The discussion forums on Khan Academy are an active space where students provide feedback to each other by answering each other’s questions on tricky homework materials.

Visit the Khan Academy Community Forum. You will notice that this page includes questions from students from all over the globe. These students are reaching out to the Internet, looking for homework help, not only from the professionals at Khan academy, but also from fellow students. Online networks enable these kinds of interactions to occur in all different fields of study.

Determining the value of content produced on the web by users like us enables us to use this information effectively and incorporate it as is appropriate to our context. Because social media is so pervasive, it is in our best interest to use these resources to our advantage whenever we can. There is much content of value to be found in the informal setting of the Web, but it is also important to discern the quality of the feedback.

1. Explore the Khan Academy's Community Forum more closely. Review the current forum posts. Now, see if there are any forum rules. What is the flag feature for? How does this contribute to the overall quality of the website? Both Khan Academy experts and other students using the site can provide feedback. What advantages and disadvantages do you see in the feedback of these two kinds of users?

2. Visit Goodreads and type the title King, Kaiser, Tsar by Catrine Clay into the search box. Now look at the reviews posted by users. Some reviews will not be beneficial, but some will. Find a review that is useful, and explain why it is useful (e.g. who is the reviewer, how is the review written, what makes the post of high quality).