Blogs op universiteiten

Blogging heeft zich ontwikkeld van een eenvoudig communicatiemiddel om persoonlijke dagboeken te publiceren tot een killer application die mensen met elkaar laat samenwerken, kennis laat delen, reflecteren en debatteren. Bij uitstek dus ook geschikt voor het onderwijs. In Australië is onderzoek gedaan naar de inzet van blogs op universiteiten.

Jeremy B Williams van Universitas 21 Global en Joanne Jacobs van Queensland University of Technology schrijven in een artikel in het Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (2004, nr. 20) over hun onderzoek “Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector”. Hier een samenvatting van hun belangrijkste onderzoeksresultaten.

Over blogs en wiki’s “Others might point to the fact that online collaborative workspace in the form of ‘wiki’ predated any developments in the blogosphere. Wiki, a piece of server software that permits users to freely create and edit web content via any browser, supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages. The first ever wiki site was created for the Portland Pattern Repository in 1995, a site that now hosts tens of thousands of pages. Since this time, wiki has enjoyed varying degrees of success, partly due to variability in users’ collective enthusiasm for creating content. Blogs, on the other hand, boast a level of participation not previously experienced by the earlier wiki initiative, and a greater sense of community and debate is encouraged as a consequence.”

Over blogs en hun verschijningsvormen “Blog pundit John Hiler has described the blog as ‘the latest disruptive technology’, the ‘killer app’ that has the capacity to engage people in collaborative activity, knowledge sharing, reflection and debate, where complex and expensive technology has failed (Hiler, 2003). Indeed, the great beauty of blogs is their versatility. They cater for a wide diversity of interests and uses and there is no rule that states a blog has to be owned and operated by an individual. There are group blogs, family blogs, community blogs, and corporate blogs, and then there are blogs defined by their content; eg. ‘WarBlogs’ (a product of the Iraq War), ‘LibLogs’ (library bogs), and ‘EduBlogs’, a new type of blog that has begun to emerge in educational circles.”

Over blogs en de sleutel van de populariteit “The key to the popularity of blogs, it seems, is the scope for interactivity. While, initially, a blog may be treated by its maintainer as little more than a ‘news space’, it is not uncommon, over a period of time, for a distinctive style to emerge, in the course of writing entries and responding to feedback, that reflects the personal character of the blog’s creator. Significantly, rather than alienate a readership by exposing one’s personal traits and idiosyncrasies, this adds to the very popularity of a blog. As Jacobs (pdf) explains, this is part and parcel of the theatre of interpersonal communication, played out to an undefined, virtually infinite public space. Indeed, this ‘exhibitionistic behaviour is encouraged, supported and even sought’ by the ‘cyber-voyeurs’ of this theatre; viz. ‘the readers of blogs, who post comments in reply to entries, often positively reinforcing the opinions of the blogger, but sometimes disagreeing on points of philosophy, politics or social comment, and occasionally ‘flaming’ the blogger for opinions expressed’ (Jacobs, 2003, p. 2).”

Over blogs en kennismanagement “The simplicity of the mechanism of blogging as a public space for comment and information dissemination has also attracted the interest of the business community, culminating in the first international conference on the business use of blogs in the United States in June 2003, and in the development of commercially hosted blogging spaces such as the Socialtext initiative. Bausch, Haughey & Hourihan (2002) argue that while formal knowledge management tools are complicated to implement and may be deemed an imposition on the time of a worker, informal systems such as blogs provide an opportunity to capture knowledge where it is created in an organisation, sharing that knowledge throughout an organisation.”

Over blogs en leren “As a knowledge management tool, blogs provide the potential for relatively undifferentiated articles of information passing through an organisation to be contextualised in a manner that adds value, thus generating ‘knowledge’ from mere ‘information’. Comments systems and democratic posting privileges allow employees in an organisation to give voice to ideas and provide feedback on procedures in a manner not previously possible in a distributed office environment. Further, personalised responses to news and messages are a simple means of developing an understanding of the collective knowledge of an organisation and a means of broadening that knowledge, thus creating ‘intelligence’ from ‘knowledge’ (see Pór & Molloy 2000, pdf). Thus, in a business context, blogs provide a forum for learning. It logically follows therefore, that the experience of collective knowledge generation can and should be applied to traditional educational environments.”

Over blogs op universiteiten In het artikel komen onder meer University of Iowa, Rice University en Harvard University voorbij als voorbeelden van univeriteiten waar gewerkt wordt met blogs. Uitgebreid wordt stilgestaan bij het initiatief van de Brisbane Graduate School of Business (BGSB) van de Queensland University of Technology (QUT) en hun experimententen met ‘a group MBA blog’. In een vijftal tabellen worden de belangrijkste resultaten gepresenteerd van een onderzoek dat onder 51 studenten (50% respons) is uitgevoerd.

Table 2: The blog as a medium for facilitating learning

Table 4: The blog as a medium for reflection

Table 5: The transferability of blogging as a learning tool

Samenvatting en conclusie “Students have long learned as much from each other as they have from an instructor or a textbook – it’s just a question of finding an appropriate vehicle for facilitating this learning. The ‘cut and thrust’ of the MBA classroom has performed such a function for many years and will likely continue to do so for some time to come, but the blog provides another such forum, one that successive generations of students will feel increasingly comfortable with, as it becomes more commonplace for people to engage with one another online rather than on campus. (Indeed, some might argue that we have already gone past this point.) In short, blogs have the potential, at least, to be a truly transformational technology in that they provide students with a high level of autonomy while simultaneously providing opportunity for greater interaction with peers. A blogging tool would be a valuable addition, therefore, to any learning management system (LMS).”

Het artikel “Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector” is zowel in pdf als html te bekijken.

Meer over blogs in het onderwijs via Weblogs op school, Weblogs en Wiki’s in het onderwijs, Video weblogs in het klaslokaal, Bloggend leren: weblogs in het hoger onderwijs en natuurlijk bij ICT en Onderwijs BLOG.

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