Yang, C. and Chang, Y.-.-S. (2012), Assessing the effects of interactive blogging on student attitudes towards peer interaction, learning motivation, and academic achievements. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 28: 126-135. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00423.x
It's kind of ironic that I'm writing a blog post about using interactive blogs with college students. In the article I read this week researchers conducted a study comparing the effects of interactive blogging and solitary blogging. The students in the interactive blog group were required to comment on their peers' blog posts while the students in the solitary group were not required to do so, but they could if they wanted to. The main conclusion was that engaging in dialogues in the form of blog comments is associated with positive attitudes towards online peer interaction and academic achievements. Both groups of bloggers had positive attitudes toward learning from peers.
Blogging for a class was a new experience for me. I tried to be more on the interactive side and less on the isolated side. E-learning can feel very lonely sometimes, but I found a few classmates who would dialogue with me. These exchanges certainly were more meaningful than just reading a post and moving on, although I did plenty of that also and I did learn things from doing that. To be fair, a few times I would read about a tool or a tip on a classmate's blog and I would dash off to investigate further and I would forget to leave a comment on the original blog post! If I did that to you, I'm so sorry! Just know that you inspired me. ✨ (See right there...I just applied the shortcut trick that Wile E. Coyote posted on our course blog. That's supposed to be a spark, like you sparked new ideas in me!)
I think the blog was one of my favorite parts of this class. That's probably why I am still blogging this week, even though I don't technically have to. I love the idea of using blogs to engage learners who might not otherwise share their thoughts because they are too shy or they need more time to think. That's me. I'm that student! If there was a way to track how much time I spend writing/thinking about my blog entries, one might question my cognitive abilities and how I actually ended up in a graduate level class! However, usually it is just that I have so much to say and most of it needs to be filtered out because I'm off on the 99th rabbit trail of the day (and right here I just learned the difference between rabbit trail and rabbit hole). So, the point was, allowing the extra to write the blog entry has me more engaged in the class because there's about 1% chance I'd share any of these thoughts in a classroom!
I love this reflection on blogging! I did the same this week. I'm not sure why, but I really struggled with the blogs. Normally, I love to write, but I couldn't really get into a groove until these last few weeks (I'm actually starting to enjoy it, haha). I love the blog as an assessment tool for this class, as well as how it connects us to one another. I also love the flexibility and individuality a blog provides. The images and how you lay out your blog give me a little more insight into you as a person than a typical discussion post does. I probably didn't take as much advantage of this blogging thing as I could have for this course, but I definitely see myself coming back to it in the future. Thanks for your thoughts!
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