This document discusses a study that investigated the use of blogs as learning journals in an undergraduate module. The study analyzed 905 comments from 79 personal blogs to code for reflection, propositional stance, and affective tone. The results showed that 21% of comments were reflective, 40% were supportive, 37% were trivial, and 21% challenged ideas. While blogs provided a naturally supportive environment and evidence of reflection, only 20% of comments were truly reflective. Future work could investigate manipulating blog prompts to encourage behaviors and examining perceptions and literacy development. Care is needed to realize theoretical benefits and avoid assuming technology alone enhances learning.

1. Engage, reflect, achieve: the blog as a learning
tool in an undergraduate module
Hazel Hall & Brian Davison, 2007

2. The rise of the blog people
• Online diary
– Entries displayed newest first
– Readers can leave comments
• 55,000,000 (28 March 2007)
• 86,800,000 (17 June 2007)
www.technorati.com
• eg Guardian.com 
• BBC 

3. Why blog?
• Motivations
1. To provide commentary and opinions
2. To express deeply felt emotions
3. To articulate ideas through writing
4. To form and maintain community forums
5. To document one’s life online
Nardi et al., 2004

4. Blogs as online learning journals
• Journals
– Provide time to reflect
– Document development over time
• Blogs
– Expose ideas to external challenge
– Protect the authority of the author
• The ideal constructivist tool?

5. Aims of investigation
• Lack of empirical evidence for benefits of blogs
• Beware of the “access fallacy”
• Aims
– How can blogs encourage interaction?
– What is the effect on peer learning and peer support?
– Do blogs provide comparable benefits to journals?

6. Research context
• 3rd year UG module, “Information Delivery”
– Blogs appropriate to content
– Large proportion of international students
– Private learning journal used previously
• Assessment task
– 1 blog entry per week
– 2 comments on other blogs
– Weekly schedule – late posts lost marks
– “Blog hints” provided each week

7. Research design
• Corpus: 79 personal blogs plus comments
• Unit of analysis: level 1 comments (905)
• Content analysis on three dimensions:
– Reflection
– Propositional stance
– Affective tone

8. Coding scheme
Dimension Categories
Reflection Reflective
Unreflective
Content-free
Propositional stance Agree
Mixed
Disagree
Affective tone Positive
Even
Negative

9. Uncombined results
Dimension Categories Proportion
Reflection Reflective 21%
Unreflective 36%
Content-free 43%
Propositional stance Agree 31%
Mixed 63%
Disagree 6%
Affective tone Positive 46%
Even 50%
Negative 4%

10. Combining categories
Categories (A/R/P) Group
Positive / Content-free / ? Supportive: 358 = 40%
Positive / Unreflective / ?
Even / Content-free / ? Trivial: 334 = 37%
Even / Unreflective / ?
? / Reflective / ? Reflective: 189 = 21 %
Negative / Content-free / ? Destructive: 21 = 2%
Negative / Unreflective / ?

11. Relative value of reflective comments
Support
Increasing value
of contribution
Challenge

12. Distribution of reflective comments
Positive 13% 16% 2%
Support
Even 16% 36% 12%
Negative 0% 2% 3%
Agree Mixed Disagree
Challenge

13. Conclusions
• Blogs provide a naturally supportive environment
– Encouragement
– Peer support / learning
– Improves on traditional learning journal
• Study provides evidence of reflection
– Does not endorse enthusiasm of technophiles
– Only comments were analysed – 20% were reflective

14. Possible future work
• Manipulate blog hints to encourage specific
behaviours
• Examine main blog entries for reflection
• Investigate students’ perceptions
• Conduct similar study to examine effects on
development of literacy and analytical skills
• Use social exchange theory (Molm, 2001) to analyse
patterns of interaction (Jun-Aug, 2007)

15. Immediate implications
• Deep understanding of tool characteristics
required to realise theoretical benefits
• WebCT
– “blog” does not have characteristics discussed here
– ePortfolio tool provides partial support
• Beware the “access fallacy”

16. Coding for reflection
Premise reflection
Reflection Content reflection Process reflection
Non-reflection Introspection Thoughtful action
Habitual action
Categories of reflective and non-reflective behaviour
(adapted from Kember et al. (1999, p. 25)).

17. References
• Kember, D., Jones, A., Loke, A., McKay, J., Sinclair, K., Tse, H., Webb, C.,
Wong, F., Wong, M. and Yeung, E. (1999). Determining the level of
reflective thinking from students’ written journals using a coding scheme
based on the work of Mezirow. International Journal of Lifelong Education,
18(1), 18–30.
• Nardi, B., Schiano, D.J., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004). Why we blog.
Communications of the ACM, 47(12), 41-46.
• Molm, L. D. (2001). Theories of social exchange and exchange networks. In
G. Ritzer & B. Smart (Eds.), Handbook of social theory (pp. 260-272).
London: Sage.
• Technorati (n.d.) Technorati. Retrieved March 28, 2007 from
http://www.technorati.com