Educational Blogs

Digital Convergence is a fascinating phenomenon.  Not only can we watch T.V. on the internet, hook up our computers to T.V.'s so that we can have a bigger screen or check our emails on our cell phones, but now we can do things online from an educational standpoint that used to only be done by painstakingly thumbing through dusty old tomes or getting together in groups for study.

There have been several studies done about the effectiveness of blogging and online communication in an academic environment, one of which was published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The study took sixty students and divided them into six groups for online blogging.  The students used the blogs as study tools, which led the researchers to explore the possibility of using wikis and online collaboration tools for classes.  Most of the students reported that the blogs helped them learn a lot, where as a significant amount less reported finding the blog somewhat helpful and even fewer not helpful at all.  The key thing about the study was giving students enough time to post the assignments and analyses they had done and still give other students time to comment on them.  The only thing that I don't recall reading about on the study was a control group- a group of students who did not use any new online tools.  

This would be an interesting study to conduct-- allow one group of students to use a wiki and one group to only do email or face-to-face collaboration, then take note of who does better on an exam.  

Here is a link to the study

Citation: American Journal of Public Health; Sep2008, Vol. 98 Issue 9, p1658-1663, 6p