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THE USE OF WEBLOGS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: BENEFITS AND BARRIERS (Practices…
THE USE OF WEBLOGS IN HIGHER EDUCATION:
BENEFITS AND BARRIERS
Weblogs are personal web pages written in chronological order and maintained through a speficic software that helps their administration.
From an educational point of view, weblogs are the development od traditional learning logs for students and teachers , wheter as a complement to traditional lectures or as e-learning tool.
WEBLOG TYPES, USES AND ADVANTAGES
Types;In order to understand the functioning of weblogs, the first thing to be done is to address their nature.
Instructor Weblog are written by instructors are mainly use as an additional communication channel to share information with students.
Students Weblog written by students are basically learning weblog or project weblog.
Uses; There are many uses for weblogs in many fields. Nardi [15] discovered five major motivations for
blogging: documenting one’s life; providing commentary and opinions; expressing deeply felt
emotions; articulating ideas through writing; and forming and maintaining community forums.
Certainly, these motivations are not mutually exclusive and might come into play simultaneously.
Practices relate directly to favouring e-learning practices in HEIs:
A weblog keeps records for TQM (Total Quality Management) policies in teaching
assessment. The information provided by the analysis of the weblog development may be
used by the academic institutions to carry out a SWOT (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities
and threats) analysis of the teaching-learning process. Finally, improvement areas can be
shown for future deployment [16].
• Faculty members use weblogs to post class announcements, syllabi, assignments, and more
in addition to offering students a forum for discussing class topics [8].
• Weblogs can extend conversations and discussions past the school day, linking to resources
and relevant materials, inviting parents to participate with their children, and inviting students
from other parts to collaborate [19].
Advantages
Weblogs are easy to setup and administrate in contrast to other technologies.
Weblogs makes easier to publish all types of resources (text, images, video, etc.) to the Web
When compared to traditional web publishing.
Instructor does not need to periodically request the learning logs to the students.
Beneficts
Weblogs help create connections between students with diverse opinions and interests. This encourage critical thinking and teaches the values towards other students point for view..
Weblogs’ features (linking, replying, and tracking) make easier sharing knowledge and information.
Discussions in weblogs promote higher levels of thinking, because people can think before answering back.
Collaborative weblogs support team work and group learning.
Barriers
The use of technology- based tools may be another barrier. It can be of a structural nature, for
instance lack of computers, or difficult access to the Internet.