School of Art, Design and Communication

RMIT University

Binary Blue

Blogs (web logs) are one of the fastest growing features of the World Wide Web.. At its simplest a blog is a personal web based space for writing managed by the author who compiles lists of links to personally interesting material interspersed with information and editorial.

Recent research conducted at the RMIT in the Faculty of Art, Design and Communication has explored the range of potential applications of blogging technology in education and training for student communication, learning content delivery, student mentoring, professional development, collaboration and knowledge management.

The focus of this article is on the use of blogs by students as learning journals. Blogs are able to integrate the personal aspect of a traditional learning journal or diary that documents a student’s journal through their leaning with the immediate publishing capability of the web.

A blog site was developed specifically for the research and groups of students from three learning contexts developed online learning journals as part of their studies. Qualitative interviews were conducted with participants using informal open ended questions.

Participants reported enthusiastically about the use of blogs for storage and safekeeping of learning, maintenance of study routines, encouragement to structured thinking and revision and the possibilities for transformation to meaningful knowledge from learned information.

The use of blogs as e-learning spaces is supported by this research which offer the possibility of a new tool to add to the more familiar forms of online communication and extends the body of evidence that support the use of learning journals as part of the education process.

A weblog (or blog) is a web-based space for writing where all the writing and editing of information is managed through a web browser and is immediately and publicly available on the Internet.

A blog site is managed by an individual who compiles lists of links to personally interesting material, interspersed with information and editorial. The user can instantly place their words and thoughts onto their own blog site through one of the many pieces of blogging software available.

Blogs can be a continually updated resource that grows over time with the accumulation of writing and other content. This archived information is accessed using a simple calendar that highlights the dates on which entries were made. Some sites have a basic text search engine to assist finding material of interest.

The main features of a blog as a publishing tool are:

The blog can be a record of an individual or a group: of their experiences, observations, advice, impressions, opinions, analysis, notes, and comments across a whole range of subjects – news, politics, travel, economics, journalism, computer programming.

There are a range of potential applications of blogging technology in education and training including for student and teacher communication, delivery of learning materials, the provision of mentoring to students, collaboration and professional development for teachers and knowledge management. The focus for this article is on the possibilities of blogs as learning journals in the virtual teaching and learning environment.

There is a large amount of evidence on the value of learning logs in education (Joyce, 2000) Learning journals, learning logs, thinking journals, reflective journals and visual learning logs have been used in education for some time. There is now quite a considerable body of theory supporting their use in learning, particularly for the adult learner (e.g. McGuinn and Hogarth, 2000).

In general, the learning journal is a way of documenting learning and collecting information for self-analysis and reflection. The writing style is often in the first person and informal; resembling natural speech. Students’ thoughts become visible and the student has to find ways of expressing and writing thoughts that are closely connected to their sense of themselves. Learning journals are often located in action research learning strategies (Cherry, 1998) so that the learning journal forms a part of the iterative action research learning loop.

Fulwiler, T. (1987) suggested though that there needs to be critical reflection in the journal, it is not sufficient to simply document or describe. The learner needs to articulate the connection between new information and what they already know.

The reader response journal or literature log has often been used for readers to comment and reflect on the texts they are reading. These logs, after time, are shared with other class participants. In some cases, a loose-leaf notebook is made accessible to the whole class – forming a collaborative journal. Hence the notion of logs being a shared learning activity is already established as pedagogical practice.

Learning journals provide a way of capturing part of what is in the mind of a learner and their responses to experience, in this case learning. The kind of language used is paramount for it is through language that we make sense of the world and our experiences of it. Dialogue with self and others may reveal how meaning is built:

"all interpretation involves making sense of things - deciding they "mean" something or other... though we use dress, gesture, touch and even smell to communicate meaning, the most sophisticated way we do is through language." (Jones, 1985).

 

In extending the practice of learning journals to blogging there is a similarity between blogs and a traditional learning journal, except that the former is electronically published - thus making it publicly available.

The blog has the potential of being immediately public. Anyone else can visit - other students or the teacher - at any time. Reflective hardcopy journals are very private, thus generating a particular private discourse. Blogs on the other hand are not private: they are openly published. The writing style and discourse will be modified as a result yet the traces of learning will remain visible.

There are advantages to the public discourse, particularly from the point of view of shared learning experiences. Other students in the class, or other visitors, can read the logs, and in this respect, the learning is a shared experience or studying is a shared experience. Where students are able to observe others’ learning through reading each other’s learning journal blogs.

In order to gain more knowledge about the questions surrounding the application of blogs to educational settings and environments a blog site was built and students were invited to use the site.

The steps undertaken to achieve information regarding blogs as an elearning tool were:

The creation of experimental project blogs

Students were instructed on the use of blogs as learning journals

Semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain information about user satisfaction

The data was analyzed

 

A site was constructed specifically for the trial purpose. This site was created in a minimalist style, so that the students would feed back as much as possible about design, navigation and their use. For instance, there was no formatting facility, nor could documents be attached to the postings. A comments facility was installed. The interface of the blog is depicted in Figure 1 below.

The rolladex at the right hand side column in Figure 1 lists all the participating students. The central area is for the user to post items. Like a typical blog, these are ordered from the most current at the top. Each blog is stamped with the date and time that the blog was submitted to the site.

Figure 2 below shows the login page where the text content is entered.

Postings were able to be edited or deleted by the student and may be edited by the educator.

The students interviewed were using their blogs in one of three learning contexts:

Semi-structured guided interviews were conducted with 11 students from the blog trial, using informal, open-ended questions to gain feedback about their experience using blogs in an educational setting. The interviews aimed to uncover their perceptions and impressions from their experience, and to gain their suggestions and recommendations for future use.

Interview questions addressed the following issues:

Blog journals as a way of recording thoughts and learning in a personal yet public space

The structure of blogs in terms of chronology

Blog journals as a way of focusing ideas

Blog journals as a means of communicating with fellow students

Design of the blog

Establishment of a set of conventions

 

 

Students’ views on the use of blogs were overwhelmingly positive. Students spoke enthusiastically about various features of the blog in their learning process. They found the blog useful for storing and safekeeping their thoughts where many students considered the blog as a necessary adjunct or even an alternative to a paper-based notebook. The blog was particularly useful to students whose personal study routines lack order and routine. The blog served to keep their lecture notes for safekeeping: a central storage bank of information, which unlike their notebook, was simple to locate, easy to manage and access, and impossible to lose.

The chronology of the blog (the day-by-day linking of entries with dates) gave the students' notes an internal logic: an easy way to organise their information. This was a definite benefit for those students whose note-taking skills are not yet developed enough to a stage where they can manage and keep a useful set of paper notes. The students also spoke enthusiastically of the chance to track their learning progress through time. They liked the way they could watch their knowledge grow and looked forward to reviewing their learning record at the end of the year.

The most widely praised feature of the blogs was that the process of writing postings focused the students' thinking. It encouraged them to review and revise their learning. The students filtered the information from classes then recorded brief summaries onto their blogs. They recorded the things that seemed (subjectively) important to them – the things that were directly and immediately relevant to them – the things they wanted to remember for later.

The students definitely felt their notes were personal, yet at the same time were happy about it being viewed 'publicly' by other students and the teacher. They didn't consider their blogs to be intimate enough to be considered private. The students were clear that this was a public presentation of their personal learning. Many commented on the good experience being gained by writing publicly, even for this limited community. Many found the daily "flushing it out" and "pumping it back" process very rewarding: some felt the process forced them to improve their writing skills, and many students took pleasure in seeing their entries improve.

Even though the opportunity existed for the students to communicate with each other, none of the students utilized the 'Comment' function on the blog (see Figure 1). They were satisfied to simply display their learning to each other without addressing each other directly.

Although a prominent element of 'traditional' blogs in general, communicating was the least used and least praised feature of the trial blog. A number of students used to public aspect of the blog to check where other students "were at". They wanted to see what other students were learning, but also to gauge their own progress compared to others. Even though the blogs were not used to display personal information directly, it seems that the blogs were an important part of getting to know each other in terms of knowledge and learning skills.

Across the three learning contexts the students shared a similarly positive experience of the blog as a learning tool. The students used their blog for a similar purpose: as a storehouse of vital snippets of information gleaned from their lectures and their own scrawled notes. The blog helped to make meaningful knowledge from learned information.

The blog had a clear set of rules. Unlike some other blogs on the web, theirs was not an intimate web space that exteriorises personality by revealing the bloggers' likes, dislikes and interests. There were no links or commentary on links. The blog was not a place for intimate or even informal communication. While reading others' blogs was important to the group, commenting on each others' was not. The blog acted as a closed circuit where a certain group dynamic was established with its own set of rules, even though this group was spread (unevenly) across three campuses and some had never met in person.

While the students had no wish to use their blog to generate or discuss new ideas, the blog served to display their personal perspectives and insights. All the students were very conscious of the performance aspect of the blog and thought carefully about the way they displayed their knowledge. The blog was somewhere between public and private, notebook and essay.

It is clear that blogs have potential in educational settings, not only to track students' learning curves, but as a learning tool for writing and study skills. The design of the blog was felt to be satisfactory by the trial group.

The findings of this trial support the view of Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker (2002) who wrote in their excellent essay 'Blogging thoughts' that:

From a junior scholar's point of view, blogging can be an excellent method for developing and sustaining a confident and clear voice of one's own and the ability to formulate and stand by opinions.…Writing in a blog one is forced to confront one's own writing and opinions and to see them reflected in the words of others.

 

Although the student’s were comfortable with the basic design and navigation, improvements could be made that include:

The blog is still an essentially computer based application. This means the standard input is by using the Browser form. However, as pointed out by the students using a PDA (Palm Pilot), this allowed him much more flexibility. He could enter his thoughts immediately after the lecture (when he didn’t have access to a computer). He could enter his posting from the convenience of transport, or at a café, or in his bedroom. Then, when convenient, he could cradle the PDA, link it to the Internet and post the item to the blog.

Irrespective of where the trial students were learning, their experience and appreciation of blogs was very similar.

In the Radio course, students were given time out to post their blogs. In the Communications course, they were encouraged to post their blogs after class when they had a spare moment. Both these were very subject-related experiences. In the case of the university student, he was commenting on his learning as a whole.

Yet despite these differences, they all agreed that it focused their thinking. It encouraged them to review and revise their learning. The students filtered the information from classes then recorded brief summaries onto their blogs. They recorded the things that seemed (subjectively) important to them – the things that were directly and immediately relevant to them – the things they wanted to remember for later.

This suggests that the experience from the trial may be replicated across many different learning environments and discipline areas.

The trial validated the theoretical notion that the writing for a blog would be highly self-conscious – because it is a publishing or as some of the students put it, public "performance".

This seriously tempers the way in which postings are made. They are not anonymous. They know other students, and certainly the teacher, will be reading their postings. Therefore, there is more care about the way they say things, how they collect their thoughts and summarise their understanding. As noted, (and paper-based reflective journals have been used in this way in the past), this has great effect on writing experiences and therefore an improvement in their general literacy skills.

Traditionally, the learning journal has been used as a tool to improve the student’s level of English literacy. The blog takes this one step further: publication. As the students commented, this forced them to adopt a much more careful mode of expression.

It is important to set the ground rules. As the trial demonstrates these will be set consciously or unconsciously. In this trial, no apparent rules were set other than "here’s some time to post your blog" and "here’s some idea of the things you should write". Other than that, students took their lead from each other. They viewed what each other wrote, and then copied or modified. But, they also set certain limits on what they could write and do. Most importantly not commenting on what each had said. To them, this was a line not to be stepped over. They respected each other’s personal space, and did not feel they could transgress this by commenting on what someone else had written.

Had the subject coordinator explained at the beginning that the students should comment on what others were saying, it is likely the students would have accepted this, and come up with another set of rules. We can only speculate here, but these ‘rules’ are very transitory and it’s likely that as time went on, comments would have been posted.

While the potential for (as in bulletin board and chat sites) for defamatory and derogatory comments exists these aberrations did not arise during the course of this study. Should such events occur we would follow generally accepted ethical and legal rules on such matters.

Most public blogs do have rules that prohibit breaching the normal publishing laws of obscenity, blasphemy and defamation. People who transgress are denied access. There are two aspects that militate against a substantial transgression.

Taking a more positive attitude to this, it’s important that students are aware and comply with the standard publishing rules of copyright and defamation. It adds to their level of knowledge and engagement with the real world if they are encouraged to accept this degree of responsibility.

Another area of concern about the openness of student blogs is copyright. That is, where the students load another person’s information (text, photos, graphics etc) on their blog. The standard laws regarding the acknowledgment of third party material apply. The student therefore needs to be clearly informed about copyright issues, as with any publishing enterprise.

Educators are always looking for interesting and innovative ways in which to improve the communications skills of their students and in communicating with their students. This is even more important when the students are studying online.

Research is indicating that the numbers of students who drop out from online courses is high. There are many justifications made for this, not the least being that some of the click-through online materials are just too boring or pedagogically unsound. (Islam, 2002). It means that online teachers have to experiment continuously with new forms and styles of teaching and communicating.

Blogs open up another whole world of doing things that may bring new learning habits and a more eager and committed clientele. The differences between blogs and more familiar forms of online communication in elearning, that is bulletin boards and chat, were supported by this study.

The social and peer contact and learning between students in face to face training is very difficult to replicate online. Emails correspondence has been utilized to a high degree. Posting comments and suggestions on a bulletin board has also been tried with various degrees of effectiveness. Chat has also been used with moderate success. Blogs present a form of communication where each individual student has a greater sense of control and this could potential lead to greater student satisfaction in online contexts.

This study has demonstrated the ability of blogs to integrate the personal aspect of a journal or diary that documents the student’s journey through the learning with the immediate publishing capability of the web creating the ability to have a collaborative, public discourse on the reflections of learners. This has the effect of sharpening the journal communication as it resides in the public domain for other students to read and ponder its information.

Laurie Armstrong and Dr Marsha Berry – School of Art, Design and Communication, RMIT University

Reece Lamshed – Binary Blue

Cherry, N. (1998). Action Research: A Pathway to Action, Knowledge and Learning. RMIT Publishing.

Fulwiler, T. (1987). The Journal Book. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Islam, K. (2002). Is E-learning Floundering? E-Learning 2002. http://www.elearningmag.com/elearning/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=18563 Accessed 25/5/03

Jones, P. (1985). Theory and Method in Sociology: a Guide for the Beginner. London: Bell and Hyman.

Joyce, M. Double Entry Journals and Learning Logs. Wessex Grid for Learning. http://wsgfl.westsussex.gov.uk/curriculum/ict/strat/skills/log1.htm Accessed 25/5/03

McGuinn, N. and Hogarth, S. (2000). Learning Logs. The University of York Department of Educational Studies. http://www.escalate.ac.uk/exchange/Learning%20Logs/ Accessed 25/5/03

Mortensen, T. and Walker, J. (2002) Blogging Thoughts: Personal Publication as an Online Research Tool. In Researching ICT’s in Context. University of Oslo: Intermedia Report.

This research was made possible through the support and funding of the TAFE Frontiers.