An article summary - Blogs in Higher Education: Implementation and Issues

In selecting an article to read about blogging in education, I wanted to start with one that discussed the idea of blogging in general, one that discussed some of the overall benefits or challenges posed by blogging. I selected Blogs in Higher Education: Implementation and Issues, published in TechTrends, June 2009 (Deng and Yuen, 2009). The article had just what I was looking for.

One of the topics covered was the fact that blogs, unlike personal journals that are kept secret and private, "can be a social medium that allows for dialogue among bloggers and their peers, outside experts, or even a global audiences" (Deng and Yuen, 2009).  This social aspect with the additional ability for blogs to incorporate hyperlinks and user comments and contribute to collaborative and cooperative learning.

That being said, the article also discussed the differences between blogs and forums when it comes to cooperative back and forth learning. The article describes how "unlike a discussion forum with a shared community space, conversations via blogs are distributed and fragmented in individual blog spaces, and there is no effective facility to track the flow of dialogue" (Deng and Yuen, 2009).

The article also addressed how some learners, those who are more task focused and outcome-oriented might find the rationale for blogging difficult to understand (Deng and Yuen, 2009). To help with this, the authors suggested it is important for the teacher or facilitator to set expectations for how blogs will be used in the class, what is expected to be gained or learned from blogging, as well as what is appropriate for blogging, since this can be a very formal or informal medium.

I agreed with many points in the article. I find blogs to be scattered and unconnected, so it makes sense to me that using blogs in an educational setting would be difficult for students to follow their classmates and for the teacher to follow student progress. I am extremely task driven, so setting out expectations for the use of blogs in class would help me very much understand where the blog might fit in for the class. Overall I found this article interesting and helped me, as a new blog user, articulate some of the issues I have with blogs.References:
Deng, L and Yuen, A. (2009). Blogs in Higher Education: Implementation and Issues. TechTrends, 53(3).