Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
The use of Weblogs in Higher Education: Benefits and Barriers - Coggle…
The use of Weblogs in Higher Education: Benefits and Barriers
It is described as an interesting teaching technique where by students document their learning activities and learning results in a concurrent journal (log).
The log can serve as the basis for generating Frequently Asked Questions, support class discussion, and provide the basis for the creation of a class presentation and web site.
Weblog Types, Uses and Advantages
Types
The classification is based on two dimensions: style and content.
Style:
There are the interactive weblogs and the closed weblogs mostly based on whether the weblog author allows for comments on the weblog.
Content:
There are many sorts of weblogs: personal topics, political/social/economic commentaries, information technology, etc.
Instructor Weblog:
Mainly used as an additional communication channel to share information with students. Contain course content, course management information, ect.
Student Weblog:
Are learning weblogs or projects weblogs. The learning weblogs are like a learning diary, created concurrently with the learning experience, and reporting on the learning content as wells as the process. The project weblog is often authored by a team of students, documents the project progress and findings.
Uses
The educational field is being used to satisfy a variety of communication needs to favor e-learning practices.
Improving writing skills, encouraging reflective writing, reading
student weblogs for assessment, sharing resources and ideas, recording progress and process, etc.
Five ways of using weblogs in the classroom are:
Standard class web pages (class times, syllabus, etc.).
Professor-written weblogs which cover interesting developments that relate to the theme of the course.
Organization of in-class discussion.
Organization of intensive seminars where students have to provide weekly summaries of the readings.
Requiring students to write their own weblogs as part of their grade.
Practices relate directly to favoring e-learning practices in HEIs:
A weblog keeps records for TQM policies in teaching assessment. Used by the academic institutions to carry out a SWOT analysis of the teaching-learning process.
Faculty members use weblogs to post class announcements, syllabi, assignments, and more in addition to offering students a forum for discussing class topics.
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.
Advantages
Weblogs are easy to setup and administrate in contrast to other technologies.
Weblogs make it easier to publish all types of resources (text, images, video, etc.) to the Web when compared to traditional web publishing.
Weblogs allow instant publishing with just one click: weblogs are easy to create and maintain, as opposed to traditional web pages that are labor-intensive and require at least some web design knowledge (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).
Weblogs can be updated easily, from anywhere without having to worry about FTP connections, web authoring software, etc.
Weblogs can reach a large audience without losing information quality and allowing for different levels of detail. Weblogs break the trade-off between reach and richness of information.
24/7 (anytime, anywhere) access to information posted in weblogs.
No special blogging software is needed to create a weblog. Blogging software allows a person to create and maintain a weblog without knowing HTML. Bloggers may focus on content without the worries of periodically archiving, not keeping accurate recording times. Still, the complexity of weblogs has greatly increased, therefore, blogging software becomes more necessary with time.
Instructor does not need to periodically request the learning logs to the students.
Other technologies can be applied jointly. For instance, using of Wikis as enablers for group writing and knowledge sharing.
Benefists and Barriers
Benefits
The first and foremost benefit of weblogs in HEIs is their use as e-learning tools. This way, the teaching-learning process can continue outside the classroom.
Weblogs help create connections between students with diverse opinions and interests.
Weblogs’ features (linking, replying, and tracking) make easier sharing knowledge and information.
Collaborative weblogs support team work and group learning.
Because of its format similar to that of a personal diary, weblogs encourage informal communication, creativity and self-expression.
Accuracy of project outcomes increases due to the continuous flow of feedback from the teacher and fellow students from the weblog.
Also, teachers may benefit from the possibility of monitoring projects in real time, thus indicating improvements before it is too late for the students to incorporate them.
Final grading is faster and easier: instructors are able to review how students have participated and developed over the course.
For non-computer science students, weblogs provide the chance of learning about web page creation, hyper linking and other www topics.
Barriers
Instructors may have difficulty in assessing student participation in the weblog. There are several indicators to take into account: group grading, individual posting, quality of posts, etc., as well as subjectivity vs. qualitative appreciations.
The use of technology-based tools may be another barrier. It can be structural, for instance, lack of computers, or difficult access to the Internet. Another source of disadvantage would be computer illiterate users, especially in those countries with a wide digital divide.
Even though most weblogs are hosted in public, free ASPs, learning weblogs should be hosted in private servers, so that they show neither advertisements nor banners.
System administrators tend to be restrictive in installing new software.
If the weblog is public, it may suffer troll infestations, people that intentionally try to disrupt by posting messages that are inflammatory, insulting, incorrect, inaccurate, or off-topic, with the intent of provoking a reaction from others.
Security Concerns
There are several concerns regarding the security of the information logged in the weblog, Therefore, certain questions are posed to those weblog users who intend to make the most of their teaching-learning process.
Is it always preferable to have classroom discussions done publicly?
Should all these weblogs be open to the entire blogosphere or is there value in having discussions open to class participants only?
Should there be a concern about people posting under other people's names?
Does anonymity plays a true role in people’s willingness to disclose information on the
weblog?
Does the user’s willingness to share information depend on the perception of how it will be used?
What happens with the information once it is published?