Williams, Jeremy B. and Joanne Jacobs. “Exploring the Use of Blogs as Learning Spaces in the Higher Education Sector.” Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. 20.2. (2004): 232-247.
In this article, Jeremy Williams and Joanne Jacobs cover a brief historic overview of the development of blog and blog technology, their use in the corporate sphere and ultimate expansion into the academic world. The article also includes the results of a survey they gave to their MBA students at the Brisbane Graduate School of Business at Queensland University of Technology. Written in 2004, their somewhat simple conclusion is “that blogging has the potential to be a transformational technology for teaching and learning” (232) but the article is useful for other reasons.
When initially including the use of blogs in an MBA course, Williams and Jacobs didn’t really tell their students what their goals or rationale were for having this blogging option in their curriculum. In hindsight, they viewed this as a mistake for only about half the class participated “actively” in contributing to the blog. The instructors were surprised to find that the students who “lurked” considered their lurking a valid form of participation, even though they didn’t contribute to the content. These are important things to consider when setting up blogs as an assessment tool in any higher education course.
Williams and Jacobs declare that “universities ought to give strong consideration to the setting up blog facilities within their learning management system (LMS).” The fact that blogging tools have now been added to Blackboard’s more recent versions indicates that other people and indeed the creators of LMS’s have agreed.
Granted, the article may be a little out of date, since some LMS’s have already adopted blogs into their tools and features. However, the survey questions reveal in what ways the blog can best contribute to the learning experiences in higher ed courses: in facilitating learning, facilitating reflection, increasing peer-to-peer student interaction and functioning as a learning tool. Any instructor who is considering using blogs in their courses should review this article to see the ways in which Williams and Jacobs believe they can improve using blogs in future courses. Instructors can then design their courses to use blogs to their best advantage.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I find "lurking" an interesting concept in blogging. Could it be connected to a certain personality type? (the shy ones lurk, the outspoken ones comment)?
Diane,
When I took an online graduate-level class in communications last year, we used the blog feature inside the LMS, which was Bb 9. Our posts were used to record reflective journal entries rather than discussions. What do you think is the highest and best use for blogs?
BTW- When I clicked on the link to the article, I got an ERROR 404 message.
See you in class,
Nancy
Was much more said about lurking? Lurking is absolutely a form of particpation. Content contribution is only one of the conditions of contributing to the textual conditions of an online text-- those page hits have impact alone.
As for the topic of "lurking," it is interesting, but this article only mentioned in passing sort of to indicate something that came as a surprise to the instructors who were evaluating the survey results.
I'm sure some could cite multiple reasons as to why people lurk-- it may not be just due to shyness. Might be an interesting topic of further study.
Post a Comment