Using Blogs to Facilitate Online Discussion Shiang-Kwei Wang New York Institute of Technology USA
[email protected] Hui-Yin Hsu New York Institute of Technology USA
[email protected] Sarah McPherson New York Institute of Technology USA
[email protected]
Abstract: Originally, blogs served as personal journaling tools. Recently blogs are more often applied to form online communities and thus expanded to more extensive uses in education. Little has been learned about the learners’ perceptions of using blog to facilitate online discussion, nor of strategies for facilitating collaboration on blogs. This study investigates the effects of blogging on pre-service teachers’ awareness of diversity in a literacy/reading context, and shares our experiences of facilitating the collaborative contributions of blogs.
Need for the Study The Web has become an essential mediu m in the classroom because it supports asynchronous and synchronous communication, carries multimedia elements, and is easy to use. More and more applications are developed to increase the flexibility of web technology. For example, b logs have lured more and more users to share their thoughts in an informal way. The number of professional blogs has surged; however, research on how blogs could be integrated into learning, and their effects on learning, is scarce (Williams & Jacobs, 2004). This study investigates how educators can incorporate blogs to facilitate collaborative knowledge exchange in online learning environments. This presentation will discuss the pros and cons of collaborating via blogs, participants’ perception of using blog to facilitate online discussion, as well as strategies for facilitating discussions within a blog site.
Literature Review Blogs in Education The origin of blogs (or Web logs) is that of personal online journals; however, blogs can be interactive, and can be used to facilitate collaboration on the Web (Godwin-Jones, 2003). There has been a growing interest in using blogs within various learning environments. For instance, K-12 teachers help students establish personal blogs to write reflections (Kajder & Bull, 2004). Students might also use blogs as resource centers (Oravec, 2002) or teaching and learning aids in a higher-education context (Williams & Jacobs, 2004). Dickey (2004) studied the impact of using blogs on learner perceptions of isolation and alienation and found that blogs supported the formation of an online community. Additionally, Herring, et al. (2004) analyzed 203 blogs and pointed out that blogs can serve as interactive knowledge-sharing tools. The greatest merit of b logs is that they enable the members of a community to exchange thoughts on a public channel immediately without requiring prior knowledge of HTML language, which reduces the potential users’ cognitive load significantly. Blogs allow users to archive articles and comments contributed by the community, and to share these resources and findings with people outside the community who are interested in the given topic. These features provide educators with opportunities to use blogs in the classroom. Using Blogs to Increase Pre-Service Teachers’ Awareness of Reading and Diversity The Revised Standards of Reading Professionals (IRA, 2004) specifically addressed the challenge that the changing demographics has proposed a more culturally and linguistically diverse educational context ; therefore, there is a need to provide pre-service teachers opportunities to be aware of the diversity issues in a reading education
ELEARN 2006 Proceedings - Page 998
context. To help teacher educators achieve the goal, we encouraged pre-service teachers to share their reflections and thoughts on a blog site as a supplementary activity. This was based on two reasons: 1) Online discussion tool can serve as a strong equalizer because face-to-face discussions tend to be dominated by few participants to determine the topics (Warschauer, 1996); 2) Because of time restriction, the instructor does not have enough time to cover most reading and diversity issues during the class. Therefore, in this study, the goal in using blogs is to provide pre-service teachers a channel to exchange knowledge and reflections about phenomena, problems, issues, and concerns in a diverse classroom, as well as to provide a review of strategies that teachers use to resolve these problems. Our research questions are: (1)What are pre-service teachers’ perceptions of using a blog to facilitate online discussion? (2) What factors affect pre-service teachers’ motivation to participate in b log activities? and (3) What strategies are necessary to successfully integrate blog use as a learning aid in the classroom?
Methods and Data Collection This research was conducted as part of a reading methods course taught during the fall semester of 2005 within a four-year teacher-preparation program. Twenty-four pre -service teachers participated in this study. They were placed in local K-12 schools , and spent 20 hours for this participatory field experience and required to share their reflections on the blog (http://readinganddiversity.blogspot.com). They were required to address issues related to diversity in the class they were observing, reading difficulties that students encountered, and strategies that cooperating teachers employed to solve their problems . Participants were required to post their reflections to the blog and to post at least two comments each week. This study employs mix-methodology. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from three sources: (1) At the end of the semester, a survey were distributed to measure participants’ attitudes toward using blogs. (2) At the end of the semester, a focus group interview was conducted to investigate students’ perceptions on their blogging experience and their conceptual change toward teaching reading in a diverse learning environment. (3) Pre service teachers’ posts and comments on the blog were analyzed to determine their interests and frequency online participation. The impact of blogging on pre-service teachers’ awareness of reading and diversity through collaborative efforts and reflective practices are discussed on a separate paper (Hsu & Wang, 2006).
Data Analysis Descriptive analysis was employed to described means and standard deviation of the survey. The analysis of the open-ended responses on the survey and focus group responses followed Miles and Huberman’s (1994) analysis model including transcribing, identifying themes, and revising results based on member’s checking.
Findings Blog survey Fifty nine percent of the pre-service teachers logged on to the reading and diversity blog at least twice a week . Thirteen percent of the pre-service teachers logged on to the blog everyday while 16% rarely d id so (log on to the blog only two times a month). Thirty three percent reported that reading peers’ feedback and 25% that commenting on peers’ reflections were their favorite activities about this blogging experience. The survey also indicated these pre-service teachers’ familiarity with online media. Most rely on television (ranked 1 by 58%), next word of mouth (ranked 1 by 50%), then radio (ranked 1 by 46%) and finally online newspaper (ranked 1 by 38%). They imply that online media are not the primary sources they use on a daily basis, which may affect their proficiency and frequency in using the blog for collaborative learning and reflective practices. Focus group interview and open-ended questions The focus group interview provided more promising explanations for participants’ motivations in using the blog. Three main themes emerged from the focus group response and open ended questions: (1) blog allows them to share knowledge and experiences as well as express their feelings and thoughts , (2) blogging enables them to be aware of their peers’ opinions and confronting perspectives (on reading and diversity issues), (3) blogging facilitates and deepen their reflective pratices (on planning literacy instruction that capitalize on students’ culturally and linguistically differences), (4) blogging bridges the disconnection between theory and practice (by bringing together field observations, participatory field experience, in-service teachers’ experience and guidance), and (5)
ELEARN 2006 Proceedings - Page 999
blogging provides a learning environment where there’s no restraint on time to think over the discussion topics compared to in-class discussion. Participants also identified possible reasons affecting their motivation on blogging: (1) unfamiliarity with the blogging experience including technical issues (vs. familiarity with the Blackboard learning environment) (2) privacy issues , (3) time consuming issues since blogging involves great amount of reading, writing, responding, and thinking other than the required participation time in class and work to be done. Blog content The number of their weekly comments was found to correlate with their final grades (r=.511, p
