Word Cloud Tool

Feature Summary & Requirements

A Word Cloud activity invites learners to submit words to a central repository of words which is then returned to users as a word cloud, with the most commonly shared words represented by larger words.

Open

This is fundamentally a peer-to-peer activity, requiring learner engagement to function.

The Open edX Word Cloud XBlock allows staff to set a number of words for learners to submit a number of words as defined by the course creator, which returns a similar output to those above.

Other word cloud activities can go beyond this, for example analysing text submissions to return words most used in extracts or blog posts.

Word clouds are typically used as a low-stakes icebreaker activity, for learners to think about a subject and then see how their thoughts compare to the wider group, similarly to a poll, and to participate in co-creation of a resource. They allow simple trends to be exposed without necessarily requiring deep data analysis.

Word clouds are seldom used outside of teaching and academia. In my experience, corporate and customer training platforms seldom see the value of the activity, and regularly lean into more self-paced courses where peer-to-peer learning activities are limited due to not having learners accessing the course in the same time-bound frame.