Case Story: Blogscommuntyanddistancelearning

Summary	Can blogs sustain a community of distance learners
Group / workshop	Sustainiung learning communities	Status	seed
Project details...	Based on a funded CDE case study of bloggin.

Situation

What was the setting in which this case study occurred?

A fully online MA in the field of War Studies with a small cohort (35) of globally distributed distance learners. A range of prior experiences, technical competencies, ages and motivations.

Task

What was the problem to be solved, or the intended effect?

To support the VLE (formerly WebCT, now Blackboard) based online delivery of the course with a suitable tool or tool set that would promote both a reflective approach to learning, a sense of ownnership of learning, and a sense of community.

Actions

What was done to fulfil the task?

The media rich course materials and assessment were created as reusable learning objects within WebCT.

Asynchronous online seminars were held with WebCT using the discussion forum tool.

To support the reflective community approach each student was encouraged via the induction programme to create a blog using Google blogger. The tutors also set up blogs to 'lead the way' and to provide a more informal channel for their presence within the course.

To create the community, an RSS aggregation tool was hand-built. This was used to aggregate all the blog feeds and pull them into a page that was visible inside the WebCT course area.

Results

What happened? Was is a success? What contributed to the outcomes?

In brief:

The uptake of blogging as a tool for reflective commentary was patchy with roughly only 50% of the students  feeling 'at home' in this new medium (only one student already had a personal blog)

Cross commentary across the blogs did work but again this was patchy and it was clear that small clusters were forming (4 to 5 members) of those prepared - or at least motivated enough -  to read and respond to each others posts.

The tension between the use of both a discussion board and a blogging toolset caused confusion for some of the students. There were unclear as to the purpose of the blogs and many saw the discussion forum as the place to be visible (to the course tutors) as a learner.

The tutors enjoyed the blogging, to the extent that two of the course leaders produced a prolific number of posts. It was the tutor blogs that became the core of the blogging community.

Lessons Learned

What did you learn from the experience?

Creating a learning community is not a simple process even when on the surface one might anticipate that all the correct drivers and tools are in place.

The use of an informal tool clashed with the deployment of the course within a formal VLE system. The blogging was disruptive in terms of the students notion of learning spaces and as distance learners with limited time they made strategic and pragmatic decisions about where their efforts were best deployed in terms of achieving the ultimate goal of their study - the degree award.

There were exceptions where those with prior experience of distance learning MA study who saw the blogging as a welcome addition to the course that added a richness they had not encountered before.

The expectations of the students came were influenced by largely traditional notions of education and the introduction of blogs was a new form of communication and indeed conversation that they had not encountered before. To help students it seems that some negotiation is necessary to articulate and elaborate the meaning and purpose of the technology and what benefits it is seen to offer.

Licensing

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