The use of a group blog to actively support learning activities

Abstract

Despite the widespread use of blogs in higher education, there remains a lack of knowledge and consensus about the use and value of blogging in higher education, particularly when used for long periods. This article investigates the use of a group blog to assist traditional teaching activities and foster collaborative learning through the development of a sense of community. It describes how the blog project was implemented and the experiences of administrators and students in using the blog providing insights to educators. To assess students’ experience, a survey was administered to a sample of 135 undergraduate and graduate students. The results show that students find blogging a useful learning tool and that blogs can effectively be used to support learning activities for longer than one semester based on the blog visitors’ statistics and feedback. However, its capacity to build and sustain a sense of community was not as strong as expected. Students were more positive about the use of the blog as an information and promotional tool to share marketing news and information and publicize the degree, rather than for community building. Findings suggest that although the majority of students thought the system was helpful for sharing discipline-related knowledge and information, they are reluctant to participate in a regular and active way by posting – a resistance that applies also to teachers. Nevertheless, the findings also indicate that students’ participation levels can be successfully increased by means of the grading system.

Active learning interventions and student perceptions

“…In other words, doingand doing togethershould lead to the activation of Biggs' higher level cognitive processes and improved, indeed authentic, learning. Finally, drawing on Duarte (2015), students were encouraged to facilitate their doing together by using their preferred platforms and ICTs (e.g. Blackboard, WhatsApp, Facebook, e-mail).…”

Blogging as a Tool for Real-Time Learning in Medical Microbiology

“…The blogs should be seen as a testament to students’ abilities to explore subject information and creatively document relevant contemporary events in a study discipline beyond the limits of the curriculum. While this is also possible with journal and seminar preparation and presentation, blogging has the added potential to encourage interaction while it is being developed between blogging groups ( Ferdig and Trammel, 2004 ; Duarte, 2015 ).…”

“…As the blog contributed to the students’ final grade, the blogging exercise was always completed. Reluctance to blog ( Duarte, 2015 ) by some, led to shabby blogs that were populated close to the deadline. The challenge of discerning fair and equitable work in groupwork ( Luca and McLoughlin, 2005b ) was not difficult with blogs, as it usually is with other group assignments, as every blog post is accompanied by a time-stamp against the contributor’s name.…”

“…Undergraduates perceive blogs as an exciting way to share their “newly learned scholarly knowledge” from a single portal with their networks ( Lowe et al, 2016 ), while also reaping social benefits of networking, such as the gratification in social enhancement, recognition, and appreciation ( Srivastava et al, 2019 ). Educators from a variety of fields have used blogs for collaboration and enhancing learning – for example, marketing blogs, ICT, and industry project development ( Luca and McLoughlin, 2005a ; Duarte, 2015 ).…”

New technology, changing pedagogies? Exploring the concept of remote teaching placement supervision

“…This appeared to be timely, considering growing evidence of the widespread use of a diverse range of technology across the HE landscape, whether this be to engage learners by means of blogging to support learning activities (Duarte, 2015), to capture lessons to enable play back for learners (Ford, Burns, Mitch, & Gomez, 2012), use of mobile devices (Dale & Pymm, 2009) to social media (Nkhoma et al, 2015). Whilst the structures of HE institutions do not automatically lend themselves to the implementation of such educational technologies (Habib & Johannesen, 2014), modern-day learners have been described as 'digital natives' (Prensky, 2001) describing their ability to use and adapt to technology.…”