Abstract
Despite the widespread use of blogs in higher education, there remains a lack of knowledge and consensus about the use and value of blogging in higher education, particularly when used for long periods. This article investigates the use of a group blog to assist traditional teaching activities and foster collaborative learning through the development of a sense of community. It describes how the blog project was implemented and the experiences of administrators and students in using the blog providing insights to educators. To assess students’ experience, a survey was administered to a sample of 135 undergraduate and graduate students. The results show that students find blogging a useful learning tool and that blogs can effectively be used to support learning activities for longer than one semester based on the blog visitors’ statistics and feedback. However, its capacity to build and sustain a sense of community was not as strong as expected. Students were more positive about the use of the blog as an information and promotional tool to share marketing news and information and publicize the degree, rather than for community building. Findings suggest that although the majority of students thought the system was helpful for sharing discipline-related knowledge and information, they are reluctant to participate in a regular and active way by posting – a resistance that applies also to teachers. Nevertheless, the findings also indicate that students’ participation levels can be successfully increased by means of the grading system.
Blogs and blogging
In a knowledge-based society, graduates are expected to possess many professional and social competencies to handle challenges and succeed in post-university environments. Higher education institutions must realize the importance of social competencies, critical thinking, knowledge sharing and cooperation techniques as critical competencies to achieve high professional standards. In this context, the traditional teacher-centred classroom structure is being replaced by student-centred approaches, with many instructors striving to develop new methods to incorporate these new requisites in higher education to promote students’ active participation in a learning process centred in concepts such as experiential, cooperative and interactive learning (Kaplan et al., 2010). Learning being a lifelong activity, the Internet and blogs provide new ways of interaction (Kaye, 2005) and can be an important educational and networking tool, which can aid individuals and groups learn in new, interactive, cooperative and active ways (Huffaker, 2005; Karrer, 2007).
A blog is a frequently updated personal online space where an author (also called ‘blogger’) publishes a series of ‘posts’ and collects and shares information and resources (Luehmann, 2008). Blogs are well established as a tool for communication, with the estimated number of blogs exceeding 173 million (Statista, 2014), and this number is growing daily. Blog services are user-oriented, providing personal spaces and a set of easy-to-use and friendly tools to allow users to publish content on the web. Its friendliness (Martindale and Wiley, 2004) and interactivity (Williams and Jacobs, 2004) are pointed to as main reasons for its huge success since it allows anyone to contribute in a simple and effortless way due to its effortless interface. There are several types of blogs, and different typologies to classify them have been proposed using different criteria. Recent work reviews (Krishnamurthy, 2002; Williams and Jacobs, 2004; Zawilinski, 2009) show that typically the classification scheme for blogs is based on two main conditions: type of ownership and content. This classification reflects the structure of the blogosphere centred on the who and what and not the why, and since blogs can perform several functions, the blogs’ functions and objectives seem to be overlooked in the classification criteria and can be seen in Table 1.
Blogs classification schemes.
Source: Own elaboration.
In the educational context, Leslie (2003) has come up with an interesting classification matrix of potential blog uses. Sharply, he draws the distinction between writing and reading blogs and between student and instructor, coming up with 18 types of blogs, classified according to their target audience, objectives and functions. From Leslie’s matrix analysis, one cannot but realize that different motivational factors are required to inspire people to use blogs depending on the salience of specific desired outcomes to self and others, specifically to express and discuss one’s thoughts and opinions, and coordinate classroom activities, assessment and knowledge management. Studying also the motivations for using blogs, Kaye (2005) found six main motives: community, convenience, information seeking, personal fulfilment, political surveillance and social surveillance. In harmony with some elements of Kaye’s motivation framework, Gurak and Antonijevic (2008) state that individuals are motivated to use blogs and social network sites in general because they satisfy three key elements of human desire: the desire to express one’s identity, create a community and structure one’s past and present experiences temporally. Based on these statements, it appears that the natural desire to interact, communicate and share with others the need for self-expression and belonging to a community are key motivators for using blogs.
Blogs in education
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the Internet has become an important resource for teaching and learning (Parsad and Lewis, 2008) as it extends communication and faculty availability beyond class time, fostering student interconnectivity and enhancing interactivity (Peltier et al., 2003). The new educational scenario does not call for the replacement of traditional teaching methods but instead for the integration of the traditional face-to-face classroom activities into more open virtual central spaces that are easily accessible via web interfaces and tailored to satisfy the needs of users (Capuruço and Capretz, 2009). Blogs are well suited to this new scenario since they can have several uses in higher education (Huffaker, 2005). The review on the use of blogs in higher education revealed that the bulk of previous studies was carried out, mostly, in five different areas: language (Deng and Yuen, 2011; Miyazoe and Anderson, 2010; Murray and Hourigan, 2008; Wang and Hsua, 2008; Wu, 2006), teacher education (Dickey, 2004; Kuzu, 2007; Makri and Kynigos, 2007; Martindale and Wiley, 2004; Wang et al., 2009; Wang and Hsua, 2008), business (Davi et al., 2007; Williams and Jacobs, 2004), information technology and sciences (Du and Wagner, 2007; Ellison and Wu, 2008; Xie et al., 2008; Zeng and Harris, 2005) and other courses (Chong, 2008; Halic et al., 2010; Paulus et al., 2009).
Edublogs (blogs used as an educational tool) can fill a niche between formal assignments and casual communications (Deng and Yuen, 2011) and thus provide an environment for students to reflect and publish their thoughts (Luehmann, 2008; Wilson and Yowell, 2008), enhance learning, foster collaboration and motivate students to engage in learning activities beyond classroom walls (Downes, 2004).
In their review, Sim and Hew (2010) identified six major uses of blogs. Based on their study and our own observation and experience, Edublogs can be divided into six main classes: school blogs, degree blogs, teacher blogs, student blogs, course and class activities blogs, and alumni blogs. This list of blog usage is neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive, and other usages may well be identified. Often, blogs activities are integrated within course work in the most diverse ways, and the completion of blog-related activities is part of the grading system (Du and Wagner, 2007; Kaplan et al., 2010).
Blogs have great power to promote more interactive learning spaces. Williams and Jacobs (2004) reviewed refereed published materials on blogging and exploring educational blogging methods in higher education and maintain that blogging has the potential to be a transformational technology for education, although some point out the under-utilization of educational blogs that are not well integrated into learning activities (Tekinarslan, 2008). Deng and Yuen (2011) maintain that the pedagogical benefits of blogs tend to centre on two areas: blogs as reflective devices and blogs as interactive devices. As reflective devices, blogs provide a convenient way for self-expression and self-reflection. Bloggers can document their experiences, publish thoughts and express feelings. At the same time, the interactive feature is fundamental to explore blog’s social nature (Halic et al., 2010). Blogs create a space for collaborative and cooperative learning and have the potential to encourage interaction among bloggers and their audience through interactive and linking mechanisms that open the possibilities for connections and discussion (Ferdig, 2007; Hall and Davison, 2007). Many students find that their learning is most effective when they actively construct knowledge through group social interaction and collaboration (Lu and Yeh, 2008).
According to Ellison and Wu (2008), blogs can also enhance analytic and critical thinking skills and knowledge sharing between students as well as between the instructor and the students. To Kirschner et al. (2004), education is always a unique combination of technological, social, and educational contexts and affordances. Several studies (e.g. Ferdig and Trammell, 2004; Lu and Yeh, 2008) suggest that students are more engaged and find their learning more effective when they have the chance to actively participate in the process of knowledge construction, either using group social interaction or collaboration. This collaborative learning is a form of active learning and represents an instructional method in which students work together to achieve common goals (Smith and MacGregor, 1992). Kim et al. (2013) studied the influence of active learning with group-based learning on the levels of critical thinking and found that students’ scores revealed a statistically significant increase, suggesting that active learning strategies are useful to promote students’ critical thinking. Thus, the success of one student helps other students to be successful. In the case of blogs, each time a user posts something, leaves a comment or links to an external post or a webpage supports the learning of others. Indeed, social presence and interaction play a crucial role in all forms of formal education (Capuruço and Capretz, 2009; Ferdig and Trammell, 2004). Additionally, blogs have the power to shift learning from the classroom’s limited space and time to anytime, anywhere (Du and Wagner, 2007; Huffaker, 2005). Table 2 provides an overview of educational benefits related to the relevant dimensions of the use of blogging in the educational context.
Benefits of blogs.
Source: Own elaboration.
On a different front, Wang et al. (2008) and Murakami and Minoh (2006) state that blogs contribute to students’ online engagement, while Divitini et al. (2005) have claimed that blog technology has failed to motivate students to become involved in the online activity. Actually, Norris (2004) had already noted that on the Internet, ‘commitments to any particular online group can often be shallow and transient when another group is but a mouse click away’ (p. 33). A blog that is seldom updated and without any notice is more likely not going to get many visitors, thus resulting in less interactivity and willingness to revisit the blog (Yang and Lim, 2009). Visit patterns are especially important since interaction is a basic requisite to develop, strengthen and maintain the sense of community (McMillan and Chavis, 1986). However, there is little literature that has shed light on visit patterns, so there is a need to explore the way in which users visit the blog.
Despite the importance, dissemination and widespread use of blogs in higher education (Minocha et al., 2010), the academic research on the subject is still in its infancy (Deng and Yuen, 2011; Sim and Hew, 2010). Blogging remains the object of inconsistent and mixed research findings (Halic et al., 2010; Kim, 2008). Sim and Hew (2010) reviewed the use of blogs in higher education and found only one study specifically concerned with the use of blogs in marketing education in higher education: the study by Kaplan et al. (2010). A more recent study was published by Hazari et al. (2013), but a scientific literature on blogging is still limited and the majority focusing on course blogs limited to a period of one semester.
Despite this and in agreement with Wang and Hsua (2008), there is the need to explore the value of blogs as a collaboration tool in educational contexts other than exclusively the one-semester course environment and, particularly, how they can actively support teaching and learning activities and foster the sense of community identity in undergraduate and graduate programmes. Previous blog studies focused primarily on blog content and what motivates bloggers to host such sites, but largely ignore blog readers’ needs and desires (Kaye, 2005). As will be seen from the following section, a group blog that has been online for several years now is used to gauge students’ opinions on the usability, value and motivations to use and participate, to extend the current knowledge on blogging in higher education, which has to date mostly been confined to course blog studies results. Thus, the objective of this study is to assess the value and usability of blogs to motivate student participation in learning beyond the merely short term. To accomplish this aim, it analyses the use of a particular blog project in use within a particular university and examines the blog’s purposes, use, functions, visit patterns and the motivations of learners to participate.
Methodology
Participants
The population was full-time marketing undergraduate and graduate students of an undergraduate and graduate marketing programme from a Portuguese Public University. The participants were 127 undergraduate students and 8 graduate students enrolled in four different courses randomly selected from the marketing programme. All the students attending the chosen classes in the day when the data were collected were invited to participate, and none refused to take part in the survey.
Design and procedure
A survey research design was used to gather the required data from the sample of students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate marketing programmes at the University of Beira Interior, a Portuguese public funding university. The study was conducted at the end of the 2010–2011 spring semester. All the students attending the selected classes were asked to participate in the study but were told that participation had no effect on their grades. Printed questionnaires were distributed and collected at the end of the semester in four different courses by the regular teachers to ensure the highest possible response rate. Special care was taken to ensure that no student was allowed to answer more than once since some were enrolled in more than 1 year. This was the sole instrument for collecting data regarding students’ opinion. For monitoring blog traffic, Google Analytics and two additional counters are used.
Measures and analysis
As no single previously validated survey was available that addressed students’ perceptions of blogging to support learning and to develop the sense of community within a programme that was suitable for this study objectives, one had to be developed. Using as a source other surveys addressing the evaluation of blogging activities, namely, the one by Halic et al. (2010), a questionnaire was developed and adapted. The questionnaire was structured in six parts. The first part was composed of generic questions aimed to assess students’ perceived level of familiarity with the blog. The second and third parts were devoted to evaluate the visit patterns and understand the reasons to passively use (i.e. just reading) and the motivations to actively participate (i.e. posting or commenting) in the blog, respectively. The fourth part of the questionnaire was used to evaluate the level and extent of the participation. The fifth part focused on the evaluation of the perceived value of blog content to students and the public and its strengths, weaknesses and needs for improvement. In the final section, respondents were asked to provide some basic personal details. Questions were designed to be answered either by closed (dichotomous) questions or by a 5-point Likert-type scale. The Likert-type scales range from ‘1-strongly disagree’ to ‘5-strongly agree’ in question 2.4 and from ‘1-not useful’ to ‘5-very useful’ in questions 4.3 and 4. In addition, a group of open-ended questions was also included giving the respondent maximum freedom to present their view when it was thought appropriate.
Results
Overall, 135 respondents filled out the questionnaire, yielding a response rate of 74.6%, based on the 181 students enrolled in both the undergraduate and graduate programmes. The data collected were analysed using IBM-SPSS version 20.0. Table 3 provides information on the initial sample characteristics.
Sample characteristics.
From the initial sample, 16 students were excluded from further analysis since they stated that they had never visited the blog. Thus, the final sample for analysis comprises 119 usable responses.
The Bimarketing blog project
The blog was created on September 2005 in http://blogger.com named Bimarketing. The first post appeared on 22 September. The Bimarketing blog could be classified as a group and community blog (due to the ownership nature) defined by its content (marketing and education). In the creation process, three equally important objectives were defined. The first was to provide a meeting point, a public and open space for current and former students to meet, socialize and share discipline-related knowledge and information. The second was to complement the teaching material of different courses and stimulate students to actively engage in meaningful learning experiences that simultaneously contribute to improve the group learning experience. Finally, the blog was projected to reinforce bonds between students, faculty and alumni, sowing the seed of a community.
One universal shared account was created, and the username and password were distributed among all the students. Another general account was created to allow guests to publish. The blog’s administration was shared between students and teachers. Its structure comprises two main administrators (teachers) and a team of three students. Each year, the team of student administrators changed on a voluntary basis. As can be inferred, the administrators have only partial control over what is published in the blog. Since all the contributors use the same blogger account, it is virtually impossible to track who wrote (or modified) a specific post, unless the author explicitly identifies themselves. This is an obvious threat because if someone decides to do some harm to the blog, there is no way to identify them. We have relied on the good sense of the community members to overcome this problem, and up until now, we have had no problems.
Since the beginning, no strict editorial protocol was imposed to Bimarketing contributors. However, there is a tacit form of control based on the blog’s underlying structure. The administrators are responsible for providing a certain trajectory to the posts, which can be on any topic that is relevant to the Bimarketing community. Virtually, any topic is considered appropriate as long as it exhibits a link to discipline-specific theory or practice or about students’ lives at the university campus.
Evolution
Bimarketing has been online for more than 7 years. Its evolution has been very positive. Both the number of posts and the number of visits have increased. Figure 1 shows the evolution of the number of posts. Considering just the complete years (2006–2012), the number of posts shows a modest increase between 2006 and 2008 and a far higher increase in 2009 and 2010 but a decrease in the following year due to the competition of the Facebook group, active since 2011. These numbers indicate that it is possible to keep students engaged with an educational blog for more than one semester. However, in the face of the new scenario in terms of students’ engagement with the social networks (e.g. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter, among others), the blog owners’ strategy should focus primarily in providing selected useful and interesting information to its target.
Number of posts.
To track blog visits, three free web-based counters are being used. They show that over the past years, the number of Bimarketing unique visitors has held relatively steady, and as of September 2013, the number of visits, according to Site Meter, reached 261,200.
This has been a very useful and rich experience, which enabled us to identify a list of problems and challenges. The most important challenge we have had to face was getting the students to actively participate on a voluntary and regular basis since students regularly read the blog. Lately, we have been experiencing a huge competition from Facebook, so we have created a Bimarketing group in Facebook that was connected to the blog using NetworkedBlogs.com, a third-part service application that automatically publishes every post made at the blog in the Facebook group page. Furthermore, the participation problem is not confined exclusively to students; some teachers also exhibit extremely low levels of active participation. In one last attempt to increase students’ participation, it was decided to reward students’ participation in the blog. The reward was only 5% of their grade; despite this, we noted a significant increase in student willingness to participate.
Gratuitous criticism is another phenomenon that we have had to learn how to deal with. From time to time, flamers and trolls make their appearance exclusively to annoy. Criticism, whether warranted or not, can ruin a blogger’s will to keep an active participation.
Preliminary analysis of blog knowledge revealed that 3 respondents (2.2%) had never heard of the blog, 13 (9.7%) had heard about it but had never visit it and 16 (11.9%) stated that they did not have any plans to visit it. The reasons why they did not visit or plan to visit the blog were not collected since this type of behaviour was not anticipated since the blog is presented to the new students every year during the first semester at the university. Data analysis reveals that these three categories add to a total of 16 unique respondents. Data from these respondents were excluded for further analysis.
The second part of the questionnaire addressed the visit intensity, frequency and motivations. The results revealed that 80 students (67.2%) visit the blog regularly over time, even during school breaks. Cross-tabulation of the answers to this question with the reported visit frequency found a significant relationship (p < 0.05) between the two of them, suggesting that students who visit the blog all the year round visit it also more frequently (Table 4). Clearly, the night, with 63% of the responses, and the afternoon, with 26.1%, are the chosen periods to log on to the blog.
Visit intensity and frequency of visit cross-tabulation.
Nominal by nominal tests: φ = 0.312 (p = 0.021), Cramer’s V = 0.312 (p = 0.021), contingency coefficient = 0.298 (p = 0.021) and Pearson correlation = 0.277 (p = 0.002).
To evaluate the level of participation in the blog, students were asked to indicate whether they had contributed to the blog and how. Considering ‘contribution’, the active participation that goes beyond the passively act of reading, the results show that the students are more motivated to contribute by writing posts than to comment on the publications of other students. From the 119 respondents, 73 (61.3%) reported they had actively participated in the blog. A total of 49 had contributed by posting content, 18 stated that they had posted and commented and 6 only commented on published posts. Regarding the intensity of the participation, only 21 students declared that they regularly participated in the blog. Moreover, non-participating students suggest that they would have participated if they had had any relevant information or opinion to share.
According to the results presented in Table 5, convenience to access general and specialized information about the subject matter seems to be the most important motivations to visit the blog. The entertaining and fun nature of the blog also appear to play an important role in students’ motivation.
Evaluation of the motivations to access the blog.
Scale endpoints are 1 = I completely disagree and 5 = I completely agree.
Table 5 compares the mean score of each motivation statement to the scale midpoint (neither agree nor disagree). Any significant difference from three implies an inclination to a non-neutral opinion. The results of one-sample t-tests show that the means of the motivations ‘to discuss with friends’ and ‘share my opinions’ are the only ones that are not statistically different from the midpoint at the 0.05 level, indicating that respondents evaluated these motivations as having no significant influence to their decision to visit the blog.
Current results on the blog’s functions and uses suggest that in the view of students Bimarketing blog is most suitable to share discipline-specific information and educational resources, promote the marketing programme and publicize student-related activities and not so much to develop a sense of community (Table 6). Further data exploration indicates that students see the blog more as a source of information than as a way to interact with peers. The content that students like most in the blog are advertising and funny videos (37.62%, n = 38 responses), followed by the ability to interact with other students (21.78%, n = 22); the availability of marketing information, news and innovations (14.85%, n = 15); and finally, being updated daily (6.93%, n = 7).
Perception on blog uses and functions.
Discussion
This study investigated the value and usability of blogs to motivate university students’ participation in learning. It explored how blogs could be used to complement a course syllabus by providing students with tools where they can share with their peers examples, case studies, supplementary materials and any other elements that may contribute to improving their learning. One of the more significant conclusions to emerge from this study is that blogs can be used for more than class or course activities and for more than one semester. Overall, the majority of the participants in this study reported that their blog experience was positive and that Bimarketing was a useful learning tool.
We have learned that the true challenge with blogs is to keep the blog well fed, which is consistent with the findings of Wilson and Yowell (2008). Based on this, the mission of bloggers is to continually seek interesting information for their target public. This is a daily or at least several times a week activity, which requires a great deal of effort from the blog administrator and contributors since the information they post must be synthesized or extended to accommodate new or additional questions, contrast differing viewpoints and identify trends. Keeping the blog fresh and updated depends heavily on the administration commitment. Since administrators are a key element to keep the blog going and are vital to its success, they must possess some special characteristics. We acknowledge that the level of participation can vary over time and from blog to blog, but as stated by Kaye (2005), it is always determined by the user, not the technology. The most important characteristics in our opinion are available time to devote to blog activities in order to have it regularly and frequently updated, capacity to handle technology and a clear understanding of the blog visitors’ needs to be able to select the appropriate content to be published. Actually, the pertinence of content proved to be a determinant criterion that governs the willingness to participate. Students stated that they preferred not to participate in blogs mostly because they considered that it was not worth the effort or they were unsure whether they had anything valuable to contribute, which accords with prior findings by Akbulut and Kiyici (2007).
Thus, the big challenge with educational blogs is to motivate students to participate on a regular basis and keep the blog fresh and updated. We have noted that people tend to lose motivation along the way since the rate of individual participation decreased over time. Nevertheless, the global level of participation increased. It was also noted that the majority had the motivation to participate passively by reading, but just some published on a voluntary and regular basis and only a few of them commented on published posts. Based on the analysis made to the content of open-ended questions, the main causes for this behaviour could be the lack of confidence in their capacity to produce a convincing comment and the fear of what their colleagues may think or feel. It looks like they preferred not to comment to protect themselves from the uncertainty of what others may think. This observation is consistent with the empirical findings of Ellison and Wu (2008) who reported that students felt uncomfortable providing and receiving negative feedback, and some were concerned with the absence of substantive peer feedback. In the Halic et al. (2010) study, only approximately one-fourth of students valued their peers’ comments on the blog. This is particularly important given that the absence of comments can be associated with the lack of sense of community (Kerawalla et al., 2008, 2009). From this, we may conclude that the natural desire to interact, communicate and share with others and the need for self-expression and belonging to a community identified in the literature review (Gurak and Antonijevic, 2008; Kaye, 2005) are not sufficient motivators for using blogs.
In fact, the motivations associated with the social interaction with peers present the lowest means which contradicts one of the motivations to use blogs pointed by Leslie (2003), Kaye (2005) and Gurak and Antonijevic (2008). It appears that the blog is not seen as a good way to interact with colleagues. This is not surprising given the fact that, currently, there are more advanced and powerful peer-to-peer applications to interact with each other. Our personal experience suggests that the fastest ways to forward a message to these students is through Facebook. Almost all have a Facebook account and log on to it several times a day. Some even stay connected virtually all day long using their mobile phones.
In the face of this scenario, instructors play an important role, as no technology becomes an effective learning tool without a lot of effort of the teachers. They need to keep trying to do their best to match students’ interests with their instructional expectations and goals in order to increase the students’ motivation to become and remain involved with blog activities. However, one interesting finding in our study is that the problem of low levels of participation is common to both students and teachers. However, since teachers’ participation is crucial to the success of any pedagogical strategy, they need to understand the value of blogging and develop a purpose that is of clear benefit to students, namely, using the grading system. From the students’ perspective, there in one fundamental question that they ask themselves about the blog: ‘what’s in it for me?’ That is why it is crucial to deal with this problem and motivate teachers to put some effort into promoting the use of the blog among their students. Basically, instructors need to develop a purpose for blogging that is of clear benefit to students. Actually other studies (e.g. Schroeder et al., 2010) had already shown that motivation to participate can be increased by means of the grading system.
Regarding the many uses and functions of blogs stated by several researchers (Halic et al., 2010; Leslie, 2003; Sim and Hew, 2010; Williams and Jacobs, 2004), results from the study described in this article suggest that in the view of students the blog is most suitable to share discipline-specific information and educational resources, promote the discipline-specific programme and publicize student-related activities. The findings showed that students are aware of the importance of the blog for the dissemination of discipline-specific and university-related information; thus, we have every reason to believe that the information dissemination function performed by the blog is well understood and highly valued by students. Yet, these beliefs are not sufficient to motivate the majority to actively and regularly participate. However, visit patterns are especially important since interaction is a basic requisite to develop, strengthen and maintain the sense of community (McMillan and Chavis, 1986). These results stressed the importance of updating the blog on a daily basis, or at least several times a week, since users expect to find new things every visit, and the frustration of this expectation may, over time, result in blog visitors choosing not to visit the blog anymore.
In another vein, several empirical studies on blogging in educational contexts state that blogging can support reflective thinking, critical thinking and collaboration (Ellison and Wu, 2008; Paulus et al., 2009). However, looking at the blog’s function and uses reported by students and the unwillingness to blog and comment provide support to Oravec (2002), who doubts on the actual power of blogging to promote reflective thinking.
In summary, the study described in this article shows that group blogs can be used for more than class or course activities and for more than one semester in the context of higher education since the blog has been able to increase the number of visitors and sustain the level of participation. However, blogs seem not to be quite so useful to foster the development of a community. Overall, the majority of the participants in this study reported that their blog experience was positive and that the blog was a useful tool to disseminate information. Nevertheless, they were not very motivated to voluntarily participate on an active regular basis. The understanding with this particular case suggests that the commitment of administrators and instructors is crucial to long-term success. Still, based on the experience described, it seems important to ensure that the blog be managed by a team composed of several students and teachers in order to lessen the effort required. This effort includes the constant search and selection of content, the moderation of comments and the visual design of the blog’s template, which must be renovated periodically. This explains why we believe that the blog’s administration team should change to a greater or lesser extent every semester or year, taking advantage of the new members’ ideas and knowledge.
Obviously, any attempt to generalize the conclusions of the study described in this article must be made with extreme caution. The fact that the study is limited to just one blog at one university is an important limitation to the generalization of conclusions to different geographic and cultural realities. Future research that continues describing blog use over time is needed. Researchers should also explore the impact of blog effectiveness on student outcomes. The reasons some students did not visit or planned to visit the blog were not collected since this type of behaviour was not anticipated. However, it would be interesting to evaluate their motives in future research. Finally, there is great interest in assessing how to exploit the potential of blogs for students’ collaboration and interaction and the resulting impact on students’ learning outcomes and satisfaction.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.