Open Access Research Via Collaborative Educational Blogging: A Case Study from Library & Information Science

This article charts the development of activities for online graduate students in library and information science. Project goals include helping students develop competencies in understanding open access publishing, synthesizing research in the field, and engaging in scholarly communication via collaborative educational blogging. Using a design experiment approach as a research strategy, focus is placed on the design of the collaborative blogging activity, open access research as a knowledge domain, and analyses of four iterations of the project. Findings from this iterative learning design suggest several benefits of implementing collaborative educational blogging activities in distance contexts.

Beyond students’ perceptions: investigating learning presence in an educational blogging community

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an integrated framework for designing and investigating students’ engagement patterns and learning presence in educational blogs. The framework was grounded on the ideas of self-directed and reflective learning, and was applied to analyse students’ blogging activities in the context of an undergraduate course. Design/methodology/approach The proposed research framework was organized along three dimensions: content artefacts, blogging processes and community building. With regard to the methodological tools used, this study integrates content analysis of students’ posts using the framework of community of inquiry, the representation of learning mapping and social network analysis methods. Findings The results have revealed important information about the different ways of students’ engagement and learning presence within the blogging groups, the contribution and the influence each student had, as well as the structure and the cohesion of the learning community developed around the blogging project. Research limitations/implications The findings of this study are limited by the blended course features, the specific sample and the context of implementation. Future research needs to consider and analyse students’ lurking or invisible presence in educational blogging communities. Practical implications This study has yielded promising results with regard to the design of educational blogs in higher education that aim to enhance students’ engagement, reflection, collaboration and self-directed learning. Originality/value The originality concerns the proposed conceptual framework which can guide the design, monitoring and analysis of blogging processes in order to reveal students’ learning presence within self-directed communities of blogging.

Users' perceptions of blog functions: educational vs personal use

Purpose – This paper aims to understand how users' perceptions of the different functions of blogs vary in educational use and personal use, and further to explore whether experience with blogs has an influence on differences in perceptions of blog functions. Design/methodology/approach – To empirically determine whether the blog functions were suitable for educational and personal use, a blog system with numerous functions was constructed for users to evaluate. In total, 48 college students were recruited to participate in the study. The participants navigated this system and then filled in a questionnaire to give their opinions on the functions of both educational blogs and personal blogs. Findings – The findings of this study indicate that of the 26 blog functions, perceptions of 20 of the functions differed significantly between educational and personal use. Moreover, the results showed that only two blog functions, backup and traffic source, were influenced by both blog experience and blog usage. Originality/value – This study distinguishes itself from the previous studies on blogging systems in its specific focus on functionality with detailed evaluation under different purposes of contexts. Practical suggestions are accordingly made for practitioners to choose when and which functions to use under different circumstances to enhance the interaction and information exchange between users in the field practice of educational blogging.