Abstract:

With the spread of Internet and the possibility of using web2.0 technologies, educational blogging has triggered increasing research interest. It has been argued that educational blogs can foster the development of learning communities; students engage in cognitive, metacognitive-reflective, affective, and social-collaborative learning processes during blogging; journal writing and peer feedback will promote reflection as well as deep thinking and learning; blogging can contribute to the development of the students’ writing.
These positive effects results mainly from two aspects of blogging-related educational tasks: writing for community stimulate writers to consider further what they write, and the social and reflection-triggering effect of peer feedback.
During a whole semester students from three experimental groups were given six blogging tasks (e.g. writing their own thoughts concerning a lecture or reviewing texts), and giving critical feedback about each other’s blogs with questions to-be-answered. The control groups were given related tasks with balanced difficulty, without the possibility to read or comment each other’s writings. Post-tests indicate deeper understanding of subject-related information in experimental group, which support the positive effects of metacognitive-planning of written material. Texts written by experimental-group students were also more comprehensible. Results indicate the positive effects of peer-stimulated writing considerations on writing and learning efficiency. Blogging and giving feedback result a stronger sense of community and perceived learning in experimental group students.

Keywords:

Educational blogging, writing, metacognition.