Introduction

Edu-blogging, or the use of blogs within formal education programming, is an important sub-set of blogging activity, as it provides an opportunity for learners to practice blogging within a structured, secure, formal learning environment. Blogging involves a dialogue among others, but more importantly, it requires learners to adopt a reflective stance while interacting with their own ideas, the ideas of others, and with content. This paper explores pedagogical strategies to encourage and facilitate learners to develop the skills and processes to learn as autonomous, self-regulated bloggers. This paper explores methods for facilitating two key processes for learners new to edu-blogging: network construction and knowledge-construction (Kerawalla, 2008). Blogging can be used to build connections between self and others, to express ideas and share perspectives, and can be used for collaborative and cooperative learning. While engaging in network construction, students master the skills to engage with others in discourse and dialogue, relying on others for validity and for resources. However, an equally important process that successful bloggers engage in is knowledge construction, a largely solitary activity, where they use self-talk and others’ content rather than rely primarily on conversation with others. By engaging in critical self-reflection and sense-making and mastering skills to effectively form connections between ideas, these learners engage in self-regulated learning.

This paper explores facilitating blogging activities within a formal practice network through posting ideas to one’s own personal blog, interacting with other individual student bloggers, participating in smaller peer group blogs, and engaging in blogging with the whole class in a group blog.

The discussion of facilitation strategies for student bloggers begins with a definition of the nature of blogging for learning, followed with an exploration of controversies surrounding the identification of what successful student blogging entails. This is followed by an overview of facilitation strategies for students new to blogging, followed by a review of a recent case study conducted by Royer (2009) which offers recommendations for facilitating student blogging. Finally, this paper will provide an overview of the stages of both the knowledge-construction process based on Efimova’s description of the ideas development process (2009) and the network construction process based on Downes’ ARRFF theory of personal learning (2009). The various stages for both cycles will be outlined in terms of the following: description and significance, facilitation strategies, scaffolds, assessment strategies, and student products.

Defining Learning through Blogging

Currently there is great confusion in the research literature as well as anecdotal online and offline conversation, over the most effective and efficient means that blogging can be utilized to support learning. Following a review of academic literature on the subject of edublogging, a number of definitions emerged that suggest wide variations in definitions, theories, and goals.

On the one hand, there are connectivist theorists that assert that blogs provide learners with the tool to form and strengthen networks, and create and share learning objects with others. Stephen Downes (2009) described learning as the ability to construct and traverse networks, to learn how to communicate with those networks, and to learn how to share with those connections. Learning is the process of creating objects and then sharing them among fellow learners within a distributed environment (Downes, 2009). Furthermore, George Siemens supported Downes’ views, and explained that connectivism involves the act of learning as the process of "forming and navigating networks" (2006). Because blogging provides an authentic audience for learners, students are more motivated to strive to produce their best work (Downes, 2009).

Another major theme found in the literature about blogging is that there is consensus on the importance of the process of knowledge building and sense-making and the role that public authorship plays in enhancing these practices. Much of the academic literature recognizes that blogging enables a learning process that encourages learners to organize and present knowledge, as well as a process of learning by observing the best practices of others (Du & Wagner, 2009).

“…learning is better accomplished by engaging students in the continuous process of constructing knowledge through acquiring, generating, analyzing, manipulating, and structuring information” (pg. 2). In addition, “…learning is a process which develops, tests, and refines mental models, and transfers new knowledge into long-term memory” (Du & Wagner, 2009, pg. 3).

Important questions arose from the literature review: how can blogging contribute to the development of cognitive and social knowledge construction processes in learners? Is blogging even an effective tool, compared to other online tools? What are some compelling reasons are there for students to blog?

Du and Wagner (2009) argue that blogging is useful for encouraging “thinking by writing”. They note that the sustained, continuous use of blogs actively promotes both cognitive and social knowledge construction and representation by learners. Blogging enables a learning process that encourages learners to organize and present knowledge, as well as a process of learning from best practices of others (Du & Wagner, 2009).

Blogging enables incremental improvements of one’s own ideas, promotes a specific kind of self-directed learning in which “…learning is a process which develops, tests, and refines mental models and transfers new knowledge in to long-term memory” (Du and Wagner, 2009, pg. 3).

Though academic literature has come to an agreement on the central benefits of educational blogging, there does not seem to be the same level of agreement on the reasons blogs should be used, and the most promising practices for using blogs for learners.

Controversies Surrounding Facilitating EduBlogging

Academic literature is split on the reasons for using blogs for instruction. This has implications for decisions on how facilitators decide to interact online with learners. The controversy exists between theorists supporting the use of blogs as journals for fostering reflection and knowledge-construction processes, and theorists supporting the use of blogs as tools for building social networks for network construction. Royer (2009) argues that some educators think of the blog as a means to facilitate learners’ responses, or reactions, to content, such as readings, events, and experiences, whereas other educators argued that blogging is not about journaling nor responding to instructional content, but about making connections between readers, event, ideas, and others’ posts. I find that the two processes are complementary, rather than exclusive for successful blogging, and thus both should and can be facilitated concurrently.

More confusion results when instructors graft older pedagogies onto blogging technologies, and engage or assess learners in conventional ways, suggesting there needs to be a model of instruction that effectively incorporates both content and process in a manner that provides clear roles for instructors and students.

The largest challenge to determining effective facilitation strategies for student bloggers is determining the perspective of learners. If learners see themselves as goal-oriented, for example, engaged in instrumental learning and motivated by utilitarian aims, they will have expectations that their instructor will provide well-structured content and sequenced learning activities. There needs to be support for process and product, so that instructors provide signposts to guide apprentice bloggers in an educational setting. For learners to make most appropriate and compelling use of blogs, students and instructors need to shift to a perspective of co-creator, of self-regulated learner, and of informed participant. These self-regulated learners do not require (but invite) direct tutorial support from peers, and instead tend to draw their ideas from a wide number of sources. They set their own goals, and engage in self-monitoring and adapt their network construction and ideas development strategies within a number of blogging environments within a practice network, and often do so without significant direct feedback from others. This paper now turns to effective facilitation strategies for these autonomous, self-regulated learners.

Methods for Effective Facilitation

Several authors have identified a number of strategies to promote connective learning; that is, knowledge construction and network construction. For example, Oravec (2003) asserts that instructors need to encourage students to make connections to content, observe and comment on their online learning environments, and learn the skills required to collect observations and data. To accomplish this, instructors need to provide feedback and support as well as provide exemplars for students to guide them with models of blogging, or connective writing (Oravec, 2003).

The academic literature also describes the importance of the instructor in the establishment of the learning setting. Haverila (2009) lists several key goals that should be accounted for by facilitators within the edublogging context: understanding and reducing anxiety, eliciting and incorporating expectations, and acknowledging and utilizing learners’ experiences. In addition, Haverila (2009) also identified techniques such as embedded questions, self-checks, and practice exercises for facilitating student self-assessment and self-correcting capacity and the development of learners’ meta-cognitive skills. Instructors might encourage learners/apprentices to engender connections to content, observe and comment on learning environment, collect observations and data, provide exemplars for writing, and provide feedback and support for learners.

In this next section, there is a summary of Royer’s (2009) research on facilitating student bloggers, which provides a contextualized example of means to carry out these suggestions.

Facilitating Student Bloggers: A Case Study

In this case study, Royer (2009) described two attempts to use blogging with graduate students. In the first instance, the instructor used Blogger, and had students using Google Reader to keep track of each others’ blogs. In the second instance, the instructor switched to Edublogs.org. In the first instance, the instructor allowed students to choose their own topics, whereas in the second course, the instructor gave specific topics, and offered links to helpful resources of various kinds. The instructor then explained that students should branch out with their own readings and reflections. In the first instance of the course, the instructor asked the students to comment on each others’ blogs, However, these comments seemed “forced and shallow” (Royer, 2009, pg. 3). In the second instance, however, the instructor added support resources as scaffolds such as response rubrics and exemplars of posts from previous semesters. In addition to resources created for learners, including the instructor’s blog, these additional scaffolding resources were provided to students to promote more meaningful, connected blogging (Royer, 2009). She concluded that at the outset, instructors need to make their expectations more explicit, specifying that students need to connect to others’ posts, to read others’ blogs and weave the ideas of others into their own posts.  She also noted that during preparation of the initial posts, there were a lot of back-channel dialogues between the instructor and students on how to decide upon an audience, on appropriate language and voice, and on the adoption of a role or persona. In addition, the learners had questions about what style to use. In this case, the instructor told them to use their own personal style, and speak in the first person. Royer observed that as student bloggers became more confident, they required less scaffolding, and required less direction on choices concerning how to address assigned topics and recommended readings and resources (2009).

Royer’s study examined students’ blog posts for evidence of critical thinking and learning, and has important implications for facilitating student bloggers. Instructors should provide salient readings or tutorials detailing blog functions and goals, offer guidelines such as rubric(s) and exemplars that act as scaffolds, include expectations for student participation, including the requirement for students to embed reflections and reactions to others’ posts into one’s own posts, and give students the freedom to explore. The issue remains, however, what scaffolds are required to encourage learners to explore, to feel increasingly confident as independent learners? I believe that both knowledge construction and network construction processes need to be encouraged in learners. I define knowledge construction as the process of learners making connections between their own ideas and with course content. Learners engage in self-reflection and self-talk to capture meaning-making. This process requires self-reliance, and skills to navigate, identify, select, and evaluate content, as well as weave others’ ideas into one’s own. Network construction involves the process by which learners work with others to validate, share, and discuss ideas, resources, and learning products. This process requires dialogue and discourse among participants.