The e-Line #9
Blogged for Learning: The web unleashes a powerful new learning tool

This second of a two-part series introduces the growing popularity of online journals in corporate communications. Click here to read the first part, "Blogged for Business".

Blog:
(n.) Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as an individual's publicly accessible personal journal. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the author's personality.
(v.) To author a Web log.
Source: Webopedia.com

Blogs in the virtual classroom

The use of blogs, or weblogs, in learning is growing. To date, the best examples come from higher education; this sector has climbed onto the blog bandwagon faster than the corporate world has although, interestingly, teachers use blogs quite a bit in K-12. Corporate use is emerging.

You can include blogs in courses that are entirely online or in ones that blend face-to-face and online components -- but how exactly?

Instructors can keep in touch with their students by posting new content, observations and suggestions in the course blog, or use it to post assignments. This method demonstrates an effective way to use blogs actively, which can serve as a successful model for those who want to create their own.

Learners can use blogs in several different ways. For example, each learner might keep track of ongoing research and learning discoveries made while going through a course. You can also use learner blogs to post assignments. At the same time, a course site or the instructor's blog can contain a list of links to each learner's blogs.
An alternative to individual learner blogs is one shared course blog that all can post to; however, this method has its downside. A co-author of the book We Blog, Publishing Online With Weblogs comments, "One thing that I have found (and this is universally applicable) is that my method of organizing topics is different than everybody else's. We all structure the world differently." This observation supports the case for individual blogs.

Overall, blogs actively engage learners to read and comment on each other's blogs. The best ones allow readers to post comments -- an essential component for blogs in learning. You can also set up group blogs to facilitate learning groups and course projects.

This active sharing through blogs is an ongoing dialogue, one that just happens to take place at different times. In some courses, blogs are replacing discussion forums while others use a combination of both.

The evolution of blogs

It is too soon to say definitively how you can best use blogs in learning, as acknowledged even by the organizations that embrace blogs. For example, the About page at the Weblogs at Harvard Law site states: "Welcome. This is the place where we point to the developments in the developing World O'Weblogs at Harvard University." This meta-blog -- a blog all about blogs, both in general, and at Harvard Law -- acknowledges that the future of blogs is still evolving. "We're excited about how this technology might be used in all the activities of the university, for faculty, administration, students, alumni, staff."

Privacy and copyright issues for learning blogs

It is important to consider how to protect the learner's privacy. This might seem like a paradox, given that the whole concept of a blog is open sharing between learners and possibly beyond; but it is essential from both an ethical standpoint and legal requirements, as per the Personal Information Protection Act in BC.

At the heart of privacy considerations is that you must advise the learner (employee, student or volunteer), in advance, how you will use their content. After all, many learning blogs, such as those used in higher education, might be openly available on the web. Even where access to blogs might be limited to the learners' classmates and the instructor, it is necessary to state how the information students post in their blog will be used: who will see it, how it will be stored and so on.

This leads to another question: Who owns the content on a weblog? The short answer is: the author -- in this case, the learner.

However, you can approach an organization-sponsored blog in many ways. Harvard Law, for example, states that unless bloggers specify otherwise, blog content is submitted under the terms of an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons Public Licence. (Creative Commons Licences permit others to distribute your content, royalty-free, provided they credit the original author.) This arrangement facilitates the dynamic sharing of learning blogs, but also gives the individual the right to make another choice.

RESOURCES

Blogtalk: ETUG Discussion on the Uses of Blogs in Education
Lots of information. If you follow the links, you'll find actual examples of blogs used in courses.
http://www.edtechpost.ca/blogtalk_archive/

Matrix of uses for blogs in education
http://www.edtechpost.ca/gems/matrix2.gif

Weblogs as a transformational technology for higher education and academic research
http://weblogs.design.fh-aachen.de/owrede/publikationen/weblogs_and_discourse

Weblogs at Harvard Law
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/

Creative Commons Public Licence
http://creativecommons.org/

We Blog: Publishing Online With Weblogs
Paul Bausch, Matthew Haughey, Meg Hourihan
Wiley Publishing, 2002

For corporate application of blogs, click here to read the first installment of this 2-part series, Blogged for Learning.

Please be advised that neither of these articles should be construed as legal opinion.