Students’ Lived Experience Of Using Weblogs In a Class: An Exploratory study

Due to Weblog’s highly individual and reflective nature, students’ experiences and perceptions of the technology and practice is of primary importance in furthering its educational use.

Reflective thinking was originally defined by Dewey (1933) as purposeful thinking oriented toward a goal. Reflection in learning involves a process of recording experience and then revisiting the description with the intent of refining learning processes and strategies (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985). Two propositions are important in this context: one, that students find it difficult to engage in reflection over time without external support (Harri-Augstein & Thomas, 1991) and two, that the learner is primarily responsible for identifying important experiences and then linking experiences to learning (Boud et al., 1985).

Kolb (1976), who proposed a cyclical four stage model where concrete experiences serve as the basis for observation and reflection, which in turn allows for abstraction and application in new situations.

Weblogs offer a relatively convenient and easy mechanism for students to journal their learning processes, and if used appropriately this technology has the potential of facilitating reflective learning. Weblogs support the ability of students to record and revisit experience, which is an important part of reflective learning (Boud et al., 1985). Bateson (1973) conceptualized that reflection was a function of distance, “they (processes of reflection) are preconditioned by distance” (Sorensen, 2004).

Another focus of exploration has been the impact of Weblogs on interaction between students and instructors.

Positive perspectives:

- Weblogs were useful for their learning and thinking because they offered different points of view and additional information beyond the class content, and connected the learning content to their own experiences.
- The Weblog provided a space where students could organize their thinking and synthesize their learning
and students appeared to find it useful to have a structured space where they could construct their learning.
- As students read their own blogs, they could see their own changes and growth in thinking. Being able to see those changes allowed them to better reflect on their learning.
- It appeared that Weblog publishing encouraged students to adopt deep approaches to learning. In order to find something to write about in Weblogs, students had to focus their attention on their reading and were “pushed into deep thinking” about the content.
- A second positive theme was the role of blogging in creating a sense of learning community and extended discussion in and outside of the class.
- Weblogging experience itself made the students excited in that it
provided them a hands-on opportunity to fully explore an instructional technology.
- Being exposed to Weblogs for the first time, some students had not yet understood how they could use
Weblogs in their learning and thinking. Thus, they engaged in the activity for only the purpose of meeting the class requirement. For such students, Weblogging became a somewhat stressful experience.
- Since the students had no idea of how to blog at the beginning of the class, they were expecting more
“structures or guidelines” from the instructor about how to blog and what to blog.

Concerns about privacy:

- Because of the public nature of Weblogs, most students expressed their concerns about the topic they wrote
about. They chose not to blog anything personal, anything “too controversial” or too negative.

Students’ Lived Experience Of Using Weblogs In a Class: An Exploratory study