Comment on "tags" in BrightSpace Community

Mike.B.559

The following lists all the so-called "Popular Tags" available to me when making posts on the Community. As far as I can tell, they are also the ONLY tags available to me. Part of what makes a community a Community is involvement from its users and having to choose tags from this pre-prepared list is the opposite of this. How was this list generated? Were contributions solicited from the user base? Was this user base made up of backend support technologists or front end instructors from a range of disciplines? Because honestly, I find very little of value in the existing tags if they are intended to help me focus my search for relevant content.

Also, why are there no pedagogical tags (e.g. collaborative learning, teaching strategies, paired activities, activities with audio, grading with annotations, BYOD strategies, etc.).

Or subject area tags (e.g. languages, Japanese, math, STEM, chemistry etc.)?

Most of the tags name technologies, but pedagogy should lead technology rather than the other way around.

Finally, some comments about the existing list:

• what is the purpose of tags like Adventure and help?
• how useful are brightspace or BrightSpace Community in a BrightSpace Community?
• typo in tag: Quiz Question Libraary
• notably absent is a tag for User Experience (UX)

I understand the extra workload of moderating user-generated tags (e.g. someone creates a tag for video and someone else creates one for videos or video recording. Do we really need 3 of the same thing? Or someone uses profanity.). But personally, I would find the Community a more welcoming space if I could have the agency to add my own tags to a growing constellation of tags that reflect the actual needs of the community of users.

Tag List	Tag List (continued)	Tag List (continued)
APIs Adventure Announcements APIs Assignments Awards Brightspace Community Brightspace Data Sets Brightspace Learning Center Classic Content Classlist Completion and Progress Course Creator + Data Hub Discussions Documentation Email Gradebook Groups	HTML Dashboard Homepages Import Export Copy Components Insights Tool Instructional Design Intelligent Agents IPSIS Learning Groups Login LOR LTI Manager New Content Experience Notifications Org Unit and Structure Partners Pulse Quick Eval accessibility	brightspace help Quiz Quiz Question Libraary Release Conditions Roles and Permissions Rubrics SCORM Survey Training User Enrolment User Tool Virtual Classroom

Stefanie.B.518

HI @Mike.B.559,
There are some great questions here. I hope you'll forgive my list style response, I think it may help me to try to ensure I answer each one.

What tags can be used in Community?/ How was this list generated?

• Tags in Community Represent Brightspace Tools. We use this system to help Members find their way to lists of current, FAQs about the tools they use in Brightspace.
  • This also helps us understand where User Experience Challenges arise in our tools and where we need to focus our design, development and documentation efforts to better the experience in the future
• Popular Tags, truly only refer to those that are asked about more frequently- versus the complete list of tags which we haven't surfaced to our Members in an easy to review way. We're adding an article to Community Corner now so that Members can see the full list of tags
• 

How do members contribute to organizing content/inspire pedagogical categorization in Community?

• By asking questions- or offering feedback on how we can continue to improve Community or Brightspace, our Members help to shape this space!
• Most recently, we connected with Community Members in-person and through our Virtual Fusion Lab where we asked how we could better organize content in Community. The outcome of this effort was a reorganization of content and release of new Categories that are more reflective of key pedagogical considerations example Communication with Learners vs. Evaluation of Learners. You can find more about this very recent change (early September) here https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/22357-community-categorization
• One of the key aspects of inspiration for this research was actually your question on what "Customer Enablement" means which you posted here in Community. We're so grateful to you for keeping in touch with us and helping us to learn where we have areas for improvement.
• We are continuing to explore greater diversification in pedagogical categorization of content starting with a focus on Language Education- also inspired by your feedback! We just wrapped up our first Language Educator Event in Community- but don't have enough content yet to support a full category for this area.

Note: While Members don't have to tag their question with a Brightspace Tool, they do have to select a category to post their question to. (Note: regardless of which category is chosen, all questions are available for review under "Discussions" in the Navigation bar in Community-but users may choose to review only questions under key categories of interest to them)

What is the purpose of tags like Adventure and help?

• Adventure is a D2L Product.
• We offer a tag for this so that like other Brightspace Tools, we can connect our members with current, FAQs about products and tools they're using. This also helps to ensure our Product and Documentation Teams are closely monitoring and informed of questions that arise about these products and tools which helps us to iterate and improve upon them

How useful are brightspace or BrightSpace Community in a BrightSpace Community?

• We do have a tag for Brightspace Community- I think you used this tag for your question here and for exactly the reason we hope it will be used! When questions are tagged for Brightspace Community it helps that Team connect with the feedback and plan for how to improve based on that information.
• In this case, you've helped us find a new way to improve further- I'm not sure how the Brightspace Tag slipped by my radar- but I'd like to remove that tag. This means over then next few weeks I'll review each question tagged under Brightspace and re-tag it for the more specific tool(s) described in the question.

Typo in tag: Quiz Question Libraary

• Great catch- I've just updated that now

Notably absent is a tag for User Experience (UX)

• While we could insert a tag for UX, I think the risk here is that it becomes too broad for our Product Teams to action effectively. Typically, the identification of a UX opportunity to challenge is specific to one or more Brightspace Tools. By Tagging the question for the Tool it allows us to more specifically track the frequency in urgency of user experience challenges that might addressed by a Product Team within a sprint or scheduled on their Roadmap.