Let’s first look at some benefits derived from blogging:
• Blogging can improve writing skills. According to Davi, Fydenberg, & Gulati (2007), blogging encourages students to evaluate their writing and critical thinking skills as their thoughts, ideas, and opinions will be available to a larger public audience.
• Maintaining a blog is a creative way to share information allowing the author to insert their own “voice” in the posts.
• Blogging as a long-term educational strategy can “facilitate the development of knowledge conversion, knowledge sharing, and effective instruction” with the encouragement of student participation and healthy and civil debates (Chhabra & Sharma, 2013, p. 4).
• Blogging is well-received and popular among students. The Brisbane Graduate School of Business at Queensland University of Technology experimented with MBA students recording their educational experiences via a blog. Research shows that most of the students involved were in favor of continuing the blog for the facilitation of both teaching and learning. Their blogs allowed them to engage in self-directed learning while maintaining interaction with their peers (Williams & Jacobs, 2004).
But what about the downside of blogging? With pros, surely there must be cons:
• “Blogs are easy to set up but difficult to maintain” (Chhabra & Sharma, 2013, p. 12) In order to maintain an effective blog, the author must submit frequents posts and replies which can be time-consuming. Is this an effective use of time for a busy adult managing daily life which may include a career and family?
• Blogs have privacy concerns. Any information provided is open to public viewing unless the blog is created in a Learning Management System with closed blogging capabilities.
• If a blog is open for comments, the comments must be read and monitored for spam, incorrect information, or offensive content. Again, this a time-consuming process.
• While blogs are a great way to share information, inaccuracies may occur. Anyone can create a blog without the benefit of an editor, leading to possible transfer of misinformation.
And how is a blog different from a discussion board for adult learners? The most prominent difference I see is privacy. Discussion boards are usually open to only class members while blogs are open to the public. And “unlike a blog, where posts appear in reverse chronological order, discussion groups are hierarchical, and the newer material generally appears at the bottom” (Davi, et al., p. 223).
So while there are definite advantages to maintaining a blog for learning such as sharing information with a larger audience than just classmates, there are disadvantages also including time demands and privacy concerns. Will blogging be a positive learning experience for me? Only time will tell!
rlm
Chhabra, R., & Sharma, V. (2013, March). Applications of blogging in problem based learning. Education and Information Technologies, 18, 3-13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10639-011-9168-6
Davi, A., Frydenberg, M., & Gulati, G. J. (2007, September). Blogging across the disciplines: Integrating technology to enhance liberal learning. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 3(3), 222-233. Retrieved from jolt.merlot.org
Williams, J. B., & Jacobs, J. (2004). Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 20(2) 232-247. Retrieved from ajet.org.au
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” Mahatma Gandhi
Wow! Robin you did amazing. Your blog is beautiful. I love your word cloud. I use them all the time.
ReplyDeleteIn your benefits section, your second bullet-point that explained that blogging is a “creative way to share information allowing the author to insert their own voice in the posts” is very impactful as an instructor. Roland, Johnson and Swain (2011) explain in their article, “Blogging” As an Educational Enhancement Tool for Improved Student Performance: A Pilot Study in Undergraduate Nursing Education, that bloggers feel a sense of empowerment when written work is published online. The article also explains that blogging provides learners to be more comfortable with the written word. As an instructor, we want students to have a voice in class and their opinion and thoughts matter. I think this is a great way to give those that usually don’t have that voice in class be able to express it.
I also agree with the research results conducted by the Brisbane Graduate School of Business at Queensland University of Technology that revealed students were in favor of continuing blogging. I am not sure if blogging is for me but I had the same experience with Twitter. I never really used it, understood it or thought I would use it but after I was exposed to it in a previous class, I have continued use. I could see how blogging would have the same effect on students that never had experience to it but once exposed they continued to keep it up.
Great post Robin. I think you have a very successful first blog!
Melinda
Roland, E. J., Johnson, C., & Swain, D. (2011). “Blogging” As an Educational Enhancement Tool for Improved Student Performance: A Pilot Study in Undergraduate Nursing Education. New Review Of Information Networking, 16(2), 151-166. doi:10.1080/13614576.2011.619923
I like your list of pros and cons.
ReplyDeleteWhen I look at the application of a blog to a distance learning class the most meaningful use I see is to require students to create one and use it as a journal (Sidek and Yunus 2013) to reflect upon their weekly or modular readings. This would allow them to go more in depth than they would in a Discussion Board and I would require fewer comments from their fellow students than I do for discussion board posts.
The con you mentioned about maintaining it over a period of time is a good one to make. I am not sure many students would keep up with the task unless it was a requirement for the course. Possibly requiring that one be maintained for all students in a particular major over their course of time in the program would be helpful.
Emelia A. Rahman Sidek, and Melor Md.Yunus, (2013) Students’ Experiences on using Blog as Learning Journals. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 67, 135-143.
Robin, thanks for a thoughtful and well-presented point of view. I was particularly interested in your take on privacy being a major difference between blogging and discussion boards. I personally would think that a perceived lack of would be a hindrance to many students due to the authenticity of replies to blog post. I found an interesting study that you may want to look at that indicated that students who knew their blogs were available to the public, would treat the blog and replies differently (Goh, Quek, & Lee, 2010). While this study focused on Asian students and took into account the cultural differences between the east and west, it resonated with me as being a valid outlook. When I write for a class, the tone and nature of my writing is different than if I am writing for personal reasons. The degree of reflection and attention to clarity, veracity and on task responses are paramount in a scholarly response. In personal missives, I have been reduced to simply locating the most effective meme for the situation! I say all that to make the point that knowing, the context and audience of your blog readers, and being aware that there may be a lack of privacy ca have the effect of a student who is more reflective and thoughtful in their posts and replies. Blog posts, and responses to replies, can demonstrate what the student really has learned about the subject and hone literacy skills at the same time. If you know the world may be watching, I believe, most will try to put their best foot forward.
ReplyDeleteGoh, J.W.P., Quek, C. J., & Lee, O. K. (2010). An Investigation of Students' Perceptions of Learning Benefits of Weblogs in an East Asian Context: A Rasch Analysis. Educational Technology & Society, 13 (2), 90–101.
Thanks, Toni. I will check out that study. My experience with blogs is definitely only as a reader and even then they have not been for formal education. I agree that the author of the blog would most likely be careful and thougtful in posts and replies. I need to have more experience and learn about controlling the audience of educational blogs.
DeleteRobin
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ReplyDeleteRobin - I am in the process of developing a blogging exercise for a spring class that I will be offering online. I see that there are two main issues concerning this type of exercise: 1) the actual assignment parameters of the assignment, and 2) evaluation and feedback to the students. According to Cox and King (2011), providing feedback to the writer through the commenting feature of a blog requires care and sensitivity since an educators relationship to learners is infused with differences in power and authority (p. 93). I think I am trying to determine what the difference could be between a blog and a discussion board in terms of the feedback issue. I acknowledge that the blog is part of the "public" domain and the discussion board is private, but I don't see this difference to be an issue in terms of honest and constructive feedback. I would value your thoughts on this.
ReplyDeleteSource
Cox T.D. & King, K.P. (2011). The professor's guide to taming technology. Information Age Publishing:Charlotte, NC.
Tony,
DeleteI have no concerns regarding educators' feedback. I trust that they would be thoughtful and constructive. However, a shield of of anonymity in public forums and the ability of others outside the class to comment concerns me. I know I am being a skeptic, but unfortunately, I have read enough nasty comments on blogs and articles to make me so. In a closed discussion board comprised of only class members, I have no doubt that all comments would be constructive and on topic. However, given my lack of experience in writing blogs, I could be completely off-base here.