Facilitating communities of learning with weblogs (final)
2.8.2005 @ 18:07 · Signals Käveleminen
Jere Majava and Jarmo Levonen
University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences
This presentation is based on preliminary observations on two on going projects: An ethnographic study of Finnish blogosphere and a project in the faculty of Social Science, University of Helsinki with an objective to develop and research uses of weblogs in learning, research and public communication in a university setting. For more information (in Finnish only) visit http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/blogs/blogresearch/ and http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/opkeh/unilukkari.htm
Weblogs: a short introduction
Weblogs are simple, chronologically ordered websites typically written by a single person using easy to use publishing tools. Unlike static homepages, each weblog is a constant process: new entries are written periodically and past entries are archived. Weblogs are also usually densely interconnected. Single entries are often comments of other entries on different weblogs, containing a link to the original entry. This makes weblogs not just a publishing medium but also a tool for discussion. Commenting forms, RSS and Atom syndication formats and TrackBack are some of the technical features facilitating interaction between blogs.
Networked discussions make weblogs radically different from other online community tools: Personal, public and dialogical nature of weblogs creates a structure of interaction where communities are not delimited by a single environment, but are based on bilateral connections in an open and public network of individual weblogs. Natural communities can emerge around a common interest, topic, event, central node etc. Communities in 'blogosphere' are never clearly defined or exclusive and constantly changing.
Accounts of weblogs in education
Most accounts of educational uses of weblogs are based on isolated cases, reports of single course or seminar, where weblogs are used. Unlike with course management systems there are no set formulas how to set up a virtual learning environment using weblogs. So, implementations vary, as do the (mostly positive) experiences. Typically weblogs are used to publish a website for a course or for creating a single "community blog" for a group of students. In cases where each student has her own weblog, the blogs are set up specifically for the course and are seldom continued afterwards.
What is similar to all these accounts is the idea of weblog mainly as a tool: an easy to use web publishing system with interactive features. Weblogs are evaluated from the viewpoint of a single course. This approach oversees both the community dynamics of the larger blogosphere and how individuality associated with personal weblogs is an essential factor in emergence of these communities.
Blogging as an individualistic practice
Although simple publishing systems and services have made possible the growth of blogosphere, weblogs are not defined by the mere functionality of the blogging tools: blogging is essentially a practice, a way of doing things. Essentially blogging is writing and communicating from a personal perspective. Weblogs are personal journals, personal columns, personal communication centres.
As masters of their (sub)domains, bloggers exert final authority in their virtual home: authors can freely use them to what ever purpose and set the tone and outlook of their blogs as they like. They decide what to write about, how and when, who they link to, what level of interaction they allow and with whom. The emergence of communities in blogosphere is based on this individualistic nature of weblogs: bilateral, voluntary interaction between autonomous agents.
From course blogs to personal blogs
In the context of a single course weblogs can be useful, but may not offer anything very special after all. Instead shifting the focus from course blogs to the possibilities of free form, personal blogs in education open up some unique possibilities:
First, having a personal weblog may empower the learners to take a more active, committed and self-governing role in their own learning process. Whereas OLEs usually portray learners as "users" or "members" of the environment, personal weblogs are completely "owned" by their authors.
Personal weblogs can also facilitate continuity and incorporation of different fields of activity in a way that is not possible in course or topic oriented environments. Students can use the same weblog on different courses as well as use their personal public space for informal learning and other activities. Weblogs allow the learners to engage in dialogue not only with other people or weblogs, but with their own past archives, helping them to evaluate and reflect on their learning as a continuous process and to construct personal learning narratives.
Third, the community aspect of weblogs can be utilized to facilitate open dialogue in the university beyond educational purposes. Although weblog communities cannot be designed, learning institutions can facilitate their birth by offering tools and support for creating and maintaining weblogs.
Facilitating weblog communities in learning institutions
The following are some suggestions of how to facilitate the birth of "authentic" weblog communities in univeristies.
- Personal blogging should be encouraged. Staff members (teachers and researchers) generally need encouragement more than students.
- The university or faculty can set up a weblog community portal (See for example Weblogs at Harvard Law School or Warwick blogs) that offers 1) possibility to setup a weblog (having your own hosting service is not a necessity), 2) syndication of content from registered blogs and 3) instructions, guidance and technical support.
- On courses and seminars instead of setting up a group blog specifically for the course, students' personal blogs could be used.
Forming a learning environment from personal weblogs
On courses and seminars personal weblogs can be tied together to form a temporary collaborative group simply by syndicating their entries to a single page with a news aggregator. For the duration of a course participants can write their instructions, notes, assignments, thoughts etc. on their personal weblogs, maintaining full ownership of their work, while the aggregator gathers them (or links to them) in a single page. The aggregation page operates as the hub, where teacher and students alike can follow the course activity. The aggregation page can also incorporate newsfeed from other information sources relevant to the topic as well as from shared workspaces such as wikis or bulletin boards .
Conclusions
Based on these observations we can make two conclusions or suggestions for future research and development on educational weblogging:
- In order to fully take advantage of the possibilities that weblogs offer for education, we need to take a second look on the actual practices of blogging outside the educational framework.
- To facilitate communities of learning with weblogs, we need to accept and embrace the radically individualistic nature of weblogging.
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