Sitting in the 2nd of two paper presentations on blogging.
The first was ‘Exploring students’ understanding of how blogs and blogging can support distance learning in higher education’
Lucinda Kerawalla, et. al. (ALT-C 2007 Research Proceedings pp169-178). Part of this detailed earlier work which recorded resistance by students to the use of blogs for education. Not insurmountable, but they emphasized the need to be able to justify and explain the use of blogs to students you expect to use them. Also to be clear with yourself how you want the students to use blogs, and which features do you want them to be using. Consider – is it for discussion within a class, or open to the public. Are there any reasons why you might not want open commenting? Follow up work looking at students who continued blogging after the class completed was also detailed.
The second is ‘Postgraduate blogs: beyond the ordinary research journal’, by Rebecca Ferguson, Gill Clough, Anesa Hosein. (ALT-C 2007 Research Proceedings 179-189). This highlighted the advantages that using blogs instead of traditional research journals can bring. Creating a more active community of research students, with better communication is perhaps the basic advantage. Other than time-consumption, few draw-backs were identified.
I previously posted the link for the papers, go check em out.
