DIIGO: COLLABORATIVE SOCIAL BOOKMARKING INTEGRATION IN AN INTERACTIVE COURSE

The aim of the phytopharmacy course is to present in a scientific and objective way, the risk assessment and the procedures used in both the industries and the public services to hand out authorizations such as pesticides registration. Those products are a source of discussions and controversies in our society. Since most of the topics covered during the lessons are directly linked to those problems, the professor invites field experts so they can illustrate the lesson instead of giving a classical ex cathedra course. The idea is to present the problem in a professional context in order to sensitize the students to this issue. This way of giving lessons should motivate the students and show them how this course will help in "real life". But in fact, students are not really active during the talks and only a few of them take part in the discussions. To solve this problem, the professor has introduced a new learning activity including collaborative preparation of the topic with Diigo, a social bookmarking website. This experiment was conducted in a Master class of Bio Engineering Sciences at Gembloux Agro Bio Tech (University of Liege, Belgium). From results based on surveys of students, through this activity the professor acts not only on the motivation but also on his relationship with his students.