Alison Gotts is an experienced e-learning facilitator who provides professional development to teachers moving into e-learning. She works from home at Cape Tribulation, Queensland, Australia.

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Abstract

This article is a personal account which describes and reflects on the use of blogs (web diaries) within the Diploma of E-Learning, delivered by Tropical North Queensland Technical and Further Education (TAFE), in Queensland Australia. It considers the practicalities of using blogs with students who have limited technological experience, identifies the trends in student/blog interactions over three years and discusses possible strategies for encouraging students to use blogs. The impact of blogs on the students’ own teaching practice is assessed and the work concludes with a checklist to help teachers decide whether to include blogs in their own teaching practice. The article draws heavily on personal comments made in facilitator and student blogs between 2003 and 2005.

Introduction

The Diploma of E-learning is a fully online course which has had five intakes of students. The course was designed to provide accredited training for teachers faced with the task of developing online learning materials and facilitating e-learning with their own students. To ensure the success of the course, the following challenges were identified as crucial priorities, to:
• be responsive to student needs
• create a vibrant online learning community
• provide high quality learning resources
• relate the course directly to workplace needs
• structure the course in a holistic way.

Blogs were seen as a key strategy contributing to the vibrancy of the online community, in helping students to create a digital identity, and thus develop stronger linkages with people they would never otherwise meet. While this article focuses on blogs, this was only one of the strategies implemented within the course. A more detailed discussion of the other course strategies and how they were achieved is explained elsewhere (Gotts 2005).

What is a blog?

Blog is short for ‘weblog’ – a personal journal written and published on the Web, which can be viewed by other people, who are usually able to comment on the journal entries. The entries are chronological, so that ideas are recorded over a period of time. People who write in their ‘blogs’ are called ‘bloggers’. ‘Blogging’ has become a popular activity on the Web, as more people ‘blog’ their daily thoughts.

A Theoretical Framework

The potential for using blogs in the Diploma started as a ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ thought in 2002, that students could keep a diary about their thoughts as they developed, in relation to course concepts. Bartlett-Bragg’s (2003) timely publication of a theoretical and structured framework for the blogging process helped formalise this idea. Bartlett-Bragg outlined five stages.

Stage 1 – Establishment: recall and record learning events and answer structured questions
Stage 2 – Introspection: start to write about emotions and evaluate experiences.
Stage 3 – Reflective Monologue: start to extract more meaning from the experience.
Stage 4 – Reflective Dialogue: developing a deeper reflective process, with a more considered writing style, starting to write for others.
Stage 5 – Knowledge Artifacts: providing guidance to readers, who may use the knowledge to enhance their own experience and learning, as knowledge artifacts.

This framework was found to be very useful at the beginning of the course, when it was explicitly presented to the students, as they were first introduced to blogging, and about to set up their blogs. The framework provided an overview and created an expectation of how their blogs would develop. As facilitator, I envisaged all the Diploma students moving from stage one to stage five over the life of the course (12 – 18 months), creating many knowledge artifacts which could then be incorporated into future courses as new learning materials.

The Practicalities

Where will I blog?If students are going to have a blog, the first decision is where will it be located? There are a number of free blogging sites on the Internet. The one that was finally chosen for this course was www.xanga.com. This site was chosen for several reasons, the main one being that it was simple to set up, and easy for students to subscribe to each other’s blogs, once they were members of the Xanga community. The ability to comment on each other’s blogs was seen as an important building block in developing a sense of community. Xanga provided a digest of all new postings and comments, which was emailed to one’s inbox. Receiving this update made it easy to respond with a comment – just one click between the email link and the relevant blog entry. This entry from my blog shows how effective this digest was in keeping me updated:

Tuesday, September 13, 2005 – Bombarded by blogs
Never in my wildest dreams – logged on after two days away from the computer and there was my email subscription with no less than 8 blog entries made by students – and some great entries from the ‘old guard’ as they reflected on running their own chats and commented on the issues. I felt like I had 8 people in the lounge room talking to me. And really discovering how they were getting on (A. Gotts, 2005 pers. comm, 13 September).

It is possible to use other blogging sites and subscribe via RSS, but given the low level of computer literacy among my students, and the need to get them blogging early in the course, Xanga was the best option. There were four intakes into the Diploma over three years and they all blogged at Xanga, which meant that new students were able to subscribe to the ‘old hands’ blogs, and a lot of e-learning advice and wisdom was passed on. One new student posted to the blog of an ‘old hand’:

Phew! Thanks for your inspiring blog D—–. I’ll have to come back and read the early days soon (Student A, 2006, pers. comm, 5 March).

As this Xanga blogging community grew to more than 45 members, it became counterproductive to shift it to another location. Some learning management systems now offer a blog or journal. However once students complete the course, they no longer have access and therefore it is my hunch that they are likely to cease to blog, or at least in that location. Encouraging them to set up a blog which stands outside the course boundaries means that the blog, and the blog learning community may outlive the course. If more information is required about RSS, Richardson (2005) provides a quick start guide for educators.

Blogging Expectations

Information was provided to students at the beginning of the Diploma to answer the question: Why do I have to keep a blog for this course?

‘Journal entries can provide tangible evidence of mental processes. They make thoughts visible and concrete, giving a way to interact with, elaborate on, and expand ideas. A good teacher is a reflective teacher, one who thinks about what she is doing, how it is working, and how it makes her feel.’ Adapted from Kerka, S. (1996) Journal Writing and Adult Learning, ERIC Digest No.174.

Think of the blog as a learning tool to help you make sense of your experiences in this course. By writing regularly you will develop new perspectives over time and create new ideas about what actions can be taken. You will need to set aside some time each week to think over the activities and write something. This will require a certain amount of self discipline. You are expected to make regular entries in your blog – at least once a week – and to comment on the entries made by other students. Your blog will be assessed to provide evidence for a range of competencies.

Here are some general questions to think and write about:
• What do you think and feel about your progress through the course?
• What did you learn today and how will you apply that learning in practice?
• Write about a person or reading that touched your thinking
• Write your draft ideas about topics here as your thoughts flow.

Strategies to Encourage Blogging

Blog yourself

This strategy is fairly obvious – teachers who wants their students to blog need to blog themselves, and by providing the students with your blogging URL, it provides them with a window into your thoughts, which they don’t normally get to see. But teachers often have a range of reasons why they don’t blog, mainly related to lack of time.

Stephen Downes (2001) has three rules or challenges for building a community.

The third rule is: you – the community manager – are a real person too. Possibly the most important real person in the community. If you expect to elicit reaction, to stimulate debate and discussion, to encourage the sharing of resources, then you will have to (to some extent) wear your heart on your sleeve. You have to have (and express) a point of view. It has to be your point of view (people have long since been trained to shrug off corporate or government news releases.) It doesn’t have to be controversial (the controversy will come of its own accord, trust me), it merely has to be honest. (Downes 2001:para.19)

This quote has provided a good guideline for my own blogging behaviour – be honest and open. Let the students see your point of view. They can only learn from it. Here is an example from my own blog, attempting to write in an open and honest way:

Saturday, March 5, 2005 – Communal Coffee Shop – What a brainstorm!
I am probably not the first to do this but I felt the lightning strike as I realized that with two different groups in the Diploma at different stages, it would be good to have a space where they can all mingle. So the Coffee Shop forum is now going to be an open space for ALL Diploma students. Don’t know how the new students will feel about this, but I guess in the real world you would be a bit apprehensive about walking into a crowded room where it seemed like everyone knew each other and they are all talking at the top of the voices, drinking coffee. And I can see a smoke haze as well – an outdated image (A Gotts, 2005, pers. comm., 5 March).

One student wrote in his first blog entry ‘…I am afraid to write my real thoughts’ (Student B, 2004 pers.comm, 7 August). Writing this down was an amazing way of sharing his feelings with the group – many of whom were equally terrified, and probably gave other students more confidence to write than anything the facilitator could say.

Comment on student blogs on a regular basis

One first blog entry started with a poem:

Just starting out – timidly – shy
Who’d want to read this – why? (L. Owbridge, 2004, pers. comm., 10 September).

If students know that their facilitator is interested in reading their blogs and commenting on their blogs, it provides motivational force for continuing to blog – the teacher reads what I write. Once they have been writing for some time, this is not so important, especially as other students start to comment. Nancy White, in a videoconference on blogs, observed: ‘You tend to blog more if people give good comments to your posting’ (N White, 2005, pers.comm., 7 July).

One student, knowing that I (the facilitator) read her blog regularly, started to write in an informal style, as if she was having a real-life conversation with me. At first this was mainly outlining problems, but as the course progressed, it became more reflective and moved into the later stages of Bartlett-Bragg’s (2003) framework.

Communication like that email is important – it sort of rounds up the ‘browns cows’ and gets a group dynamic – and the role play is good – same result and people feel more confident when they hide behind a person – they seem to like doing mini-plays and participate vigorously – there you are Alison – that is my feedback as a student and it is my experience as a teacher – being a student in this course is making me a better teacher by reminding me of what motivates students to participate and what bonds them together as a group, apart from my computer skills which are way better and make me feel more confident with my little tech-heads and gives me new prestige in the staff room (Student D, 2005 pers. comm., 3 November.)

Do not make blogs prescriptive for assessment

There was an expectation in the Diploma that students would blog and that what they wrote in their blogs would be used as evidence to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of e-learning. But there was flexibility in the course, as a few students hated blogging, and never actually wrote a blog. These students can accumulate the evidence they require in other ways. White (2005) also raised the issue of blogs and assessment. One of the students posted the following thoughts to her blog.

One thing I did get out of the video-conference [with Nancy White] was that some teachers seemed to be pressured into using a blog as a way of assessing a student. This method seemed to be chosen either from a lack of understanding as to what a blog really is or maybe because someone said that if your course is worth anything, then you must blog. Maybe because I am still learning and developing my blog skills I don’t see it as an effective assessment tool. It is a medium that I can express myself in, warts and all, but if I knew that I wouldn’t pass my assessment tasks if I didn’t blog, then I would certainly not enjoy it at all (J. Mair, 2005, pers. comm., 21 July).

Another student describes how he sees blogs were used in the Diploma.

Our blogs are used as a ‘doodle pad’ for developing our thoughts and assessment tasks for the assignments (R. Godwin, 2006, pers. comm., 7 February).

Blogging may suit students who have a more reflective learning style, as one diploma student recognised in her blog.

I am hesitant to enter blogs into the arena of assessment, knowing that a lot of TAFE students are not reflective, are scared of writing their thoughts down, do not feel confident in any sort of writing, etc. etc. Just don’t think it can be used in assessment (J. Mair, 2005, pers. comm., 9 July).

Encourage students to revisit earlier postings.

White also noted ‘…[i]t is a powerful experience to look back on what you wrote – to trace how you grew your ideas like the “family album”’ (N. White, 2005, pers. comm., 7 July). Within the Xanga community, Diploma students have had a large number of ‘family albums’ to peruse and learn from, not just their own. In the early part of the course, chats and discussion topics were held which were based on the blogs of earlier students.
The Reality

Diploma of E-Learning students have blogged for three years, and it was an interesting experience to revisit all the blogs and see what trends and patterns could be identified. Between 2003 and 2006, there have been 4 intakes, and each intake was expected to blog. Students generally took 12 – 18 months to complete the Diploma and the blogs tell the story from the beginning. It’s been possible to read their blogs and watch them change from beginners to confident e-learning facilitators. The blogs told the stories of the barriers they faced, and the hurdles they overcame, their successes and their achievements. So what were the main patterns?

1. In each intake, there were one or two students who set up their blogs, then never made an entry.
2. The early blogs in a student’s career were more focused on personal feelings, family dramas and barriers to their projects. This relates to Bartlett-Bragg’s (2003) Stage Two – introspection. It could be argued from that finding that some students may never leave leave Stage Two.
3. Although leading questions were provided to get students blogging, most students ignored these questions after a few postings and wrote what they wanted to write.
4. More than two thirds of the blogs documented students’ progress on their project for the Diploma and wrote up their successes and achievements, as the project developed. Some students used the blog to discuss their problems, and seek a solution. Some students reflected on their role as a student in the Diploma and then changed perspectives to view it through their teacher roles. These blog entries usually fit into Stage Three – Reflective Monologue or Stage Four – Reflective Dialogue. This is where the majority of blogs were located.
5. Only a handful of students reached Stage Five and created knowledge artifacts.

In Hindsight

In preparation for this article, Diploma students were invited to reflect on blogs and how meaningful they were:

Oh dear poor old blog, not only lacking in colour, interesting fonts and images but devoid of cutting edge comments and original thought! I should have been a much more caring parent. I think my guilty vice is selfishness. I used you for purely personal reasons, to vent my spleen and crow about successes although I do treasure having such a record of my turbulent times as a total beginner in the vast and ever expanding world of e-learning (L. Evans, 2006, pers. comm., 3 February).

As for blogs – this year I have my students using blogs because part of their assessment for a module called ‘Identifying Business Skills’ was to create a learning journal. The success of this has been far beyond my wildest dreams, it’s like students in the past have been hidden behind a door, and now I finally have the key to unlock their thoughts and feelings, and their background information which is sometimes so important, yet so hard for them to share face-to-face (D. Schupfer, 2006, pers. comm., 5 February).

I found that my blog changed dramatically over the year along with the circumstances of my life, which side of the bed I had gotten out on, my bio-rhythms, what I had for breakfast, etc……..sooooooo tied into my emotions, but that was because I was using it as a sounding board and probably not the way Alison wanted us to use it. I don’t have another adult at home with me, so I guess that also has a bearing on how I used it. Had I had an adult to bounce things off first, I may have filtered out some stuff and then been a bit more erudite in my writing (D. Fitzpatrick, 2006 pers. comm., 3 February).

I haven’t thought about getting my students to use blogs. Why? Most don’t know how to turn on a computer. An interesting dilemma but of course we refer to it as a “challenge”! And, the only person I have suggested this to as a useful tool is the one and only – my MOTHER! Being the annoying genius type mother that she is, immediately signed up and subscribed to my blog – I then quickly had to subscribe to hers so that she didn’t think I was a total fraud! 8-)))) (K. Gillham, 2006 pers. comm., 6 February).

I am sorry I didn’t put some jazz into the blog I did for the e-learning. One factor re reluctance to blog I would like to raise is that in this deluge of words coming out of the screen these days, the one great thing of ‘literary style’ has flown the coop. How many people can actually write? To write something that someone will actually want to read is a skill – not one that I have – so maybe here lies a question – those of us that grew up in the literary world where great store was set on great writing maybe now are dinosaurs. Now Stephen, that guy can write (B. Mitchell, 2006 pers. comm., 4 February).

A Checklist

If this article inspires you to try using blogs with your students, here some things to consider.
1. Set up your own blog and start blogging on a regular basis, writing openly and honestly.
2. Subscribe to other educational blogs such as Stephen Downes, and make comments on his blog.
3. Survey the range of blogging opportunities that are available to you to set up blogs for your students and select the best option for your circumstances.
4. Explore RSS and see if this could work with your students.
5. Develop the expectations you will have for your students’ blogs.
6. Think carefully before you make blogs part of the assessment.
7. Look at the learning styles and characteristics of your learners – how many reflective learners do you have? How many are comfortable using the web?
8. Develop a list of strategies to motivate students to blog.
9. Write about all these steps in your blog.

Useful Links

A case study of the Diploma of E-Learning is available at ‘Designing E-Learning’ http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/designing/learning_design/sequences/QLD/index.htm

The author’s blog for the Diploma of E-Learning – ‘Facil_sista’ - can be read at http://www.xanga.com/alisong. It is possible to visit some of the student blogs from the subscription list on the left hand column.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the generosity of the Diploma of E-Learning students who were enrolled between 2003-2005 and allowed themselves to be prodded into writing blogs, and were willing to share their story with others for this article.

The author would like to acknowledge TAFE Queensland for the generous support provided, to enable the Diploma of E-Learning to be offered as a fully online course.

References

Bartlett-Bragg, A. 2003, ‘Blogging to Learn’. Retrieved 12th August, 2006 http://knowledgetree.flexiblelearning.net.au/edition04/pdf/Blogging_to_Learn.pdf

Downes, S. 2001, ‘Virtual Community; Real People’. Retrieved 12th August, 2006 http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/community/GlobalPerspectives/content/article_531.htm

Gotts, A. 2005, ‘The Diploma of E-Learning – reflections on training teachers to teach online, using ICT’. Paper presented to the VETCONNECT Conference, Brisbane, Queensland Retrieved 12th August, 2006 http://tnqit.janison.com.au/e_learning/agottsvetconnect2005.pdf

Richardson, W. 2005, RSS: A quick start guide for educators. Retrieved 12th August, 2006 from http://static.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/gems/tech/RSSFAQ4.pdf