This week’s discussion, along with Konrad’s post, reminded me of a paper that I wrote about 2 years ago. I was first introduced to blogs then and I wanted to investigate its potentials for teaching writing. I did a mini literature review then. In this post, I’ll share the conclusions I reached in that paper. I’ll provide a reference list at the end for those interested in reading more for themselves. The list of references include those articles used in the whole paper, not just in the part below.

Using Blogs in the Universtiy Writing Classroom

A careful and deeper look at the reviewed studies will enable us detect some interwoven threads of findings and interpretations.  These threads sometimes overlap and intersect throughout the five studies covered in this review.  The threads are going public and performance, interaction, feedback and motivation, and improved learning and writing.  

 Thread 1: Going public and performance

            Although the students in Wu’s (2005) study were encouraged to invite their friends and families to visit and comment on their weblogs, the majority of them refrained.  Lack of self-confidence and the desire to protect their privacy were among the reasons they gave.  However, Holmes (2005) reports the use of weblogs as a public area that outside audience can look at as the first purpose of weblogs use in classroom.  Additionally, Du and Wagner (2005) found out that weblogs, as a public space, increased students’ creativity in writing. 

Two researchers have made some suggestions to utilize the public nature of weblogs in the EFL classroom.  Wu (2005) suggests using a class blog rather than separate personal blogs to overcome the students’ lack of confidence discussed above.  This class blog can enhance interaction and, consequently, develop students’ confidence.  The second suggestion is generated by Pinkman (2005) who suggests opening the class blogs for outside audience in order to ensure more authenticity.  Her suggestion, though not very convenient for a formal learning environment, can be explained in the light of her research design: a small-scale action research with a few students participating in a supplementary weblogging activity.  This design could have influenced the researcher’s findings and, therefore, suggestions.

 Thread 2: Interaction

            The public nature of weblogs cannot be separated from the opportunities of interaction they provide.  Holmes (2005) found out that weblogs may be used by students to generate and maintain discussion and to exchange ideas.  This discussion fosters students’ interest and involvement in learning (Du & Wagner, 2005) in addition to motivating them to do better (Pinkman, 2005).  This interaction-based motivation positively affects students’ academic performance as Wang and Fang (2005) have illustrated.  One of their basic findings is that learning accelerates with more interaction.  This interaction is interwoven with feedback and motivation, which is the third thread of findings.

 Thread 3: Feedback and motivation

            The interactivity weblogs provides can take the form of feedback and comments.  Students in Pinkman’s (2005) study were highly motivated to write and post on weblogs because of the comments they received from either their peers or teacher.  This finding was seconded by Wang and Fang’s (2005) study that learning becomes faster when the learners are supported by their peers’ feedback.  The researchers explain that positive feedback helps learners become independent, which, in turn, motivates them to learn faster and develop.  Feedback, however, does not have to be positive to improve learning as long as it is constructive and motivating for better performance.

            The above mentioned benefits of interaction and feedback made Pinkman (2005) suggest using various systems when teachers integrate weblogs in their courses to ensure commenting.  She suggests making commenting mandatory (maybe as part of the grading system) and assigning partners so that no student may be left without feedback on his/her weblog entries.

 Thread 4: Improved learning and writing

            The public nature of weblogs, with its built-in chances for interaction and feedback, has helped many learners to improve their overall learning performance and writing skills particularly (see sequence of threads in Table 3).  According to Du and Wagner (2005), when students assess each other’s work on the blog, they reflect on their own work, comparing it to their peers’.  This reflection helps them self-evaluate their own work (Wang & Fang, 2005).  Wu (2005) provides a feasible explanation for this.  The students in his study reported seeking help from English resources to better express themselves (Wu, p. 5).  Holmes (2005) backs this explanation as she found out that one function of weblogs in the writing classroom is to link students to web-based resources.  This finding makes it easier for us to understand Pinkman’s (2005) finding that one of the advantages of using weblogs in the EFL class is to improve writing skills, enhance grammar practice, and learn new vocabulary.  The possible outcome of this development is not just better writing, but better overall performance, either in exams or course work (Du & Wagner, 2005).

Hence, this review of research has yielded four major findings: weblogs enable students to improve their writing because of their public nature, interaction through weblogs help students become better academically, feedback on weblog entries increases students’ motivation to write better, and writing and overall performance develop with the use of weblogs.  

References

Campbell, A. P. (2003). The experience of computer supported cooperative learning using weblogs in the university classroom: A phenomenological case study. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Sheffield, UK. Retrieved April 25, 2006 from http://www8.ocn.ne.jp/~apc33/meddissertation.pdf.

Du, H. S. & Wagner, C. (2005). Learning with weblogs: An empirical investigation. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’05) – Track 1. Retrieved April 30, 2006 from http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2005.387

Forster, P. W. & Tam, T. (2004). Blogging in an MBA classroom : Personal experiences. Proceedings of the Second Teaching and Learning Symposium, Hong Kong (May 17, 2004). Retrieved April 25, 2006 from http://hdl.handle.net/1783.1/1728 

Holmes, A. J. (2005). Weblogs in the post-secondary writing classroom: A study of purposes. Unpublished master’s thesis, North Carolina State University, North Carolina. Retrieved April 26, 2006 from http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink.jsp?id=3865

Pinkman, K. (2005). Using blogs in the foreign language classroom: Encouraging learner independence. The JALT CALL Journal (1), 1, 12-24. Retrieved May 10, 2006 from http://jaltcall.org/journal/articles/1_1_Pinkman.pdf.

Wang, J. & Fang, Y. (2005). Benefits of cooperative learning in weblog networks. Proceedings of The Third International Conference on Multimedia Language Education of APAMALL 2005. Retrieved May 13, 2006 from www.allbest.org/2005/english-program.htm

Williams, J. B. & Jacobs, J. (2004). Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education. Australian Journal of Educational Technology (20), 2, 232-47. Retrieved April 26, 2006 from http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet20/res/williams.html

Wu, W. (2005). Using blogs in an EFL writing class. Retrieved May 10, 2006 from www.chu.edu.tw/~wswu/publications/ papers/conferences/05.pdf