FACILITATING A DIALOGIC LEARNING: CLASS-BLOG ON WEBCT

The blog has become an important genre for writing in community settings, workplaces and academe. A number of researchers and educators have pointed to an array of benefits that individual or class-blogs can offer. However, class-blog facilities available on learning management systems such WebCT have not been investigated. This proposed paper identifies the affordances of blog in school, and it maps out the challenges that the use of the blog poses to both instructors and students. Informed by genre theory, medium theory, and discourse analysis the study reports on the students’ level of involvement in class-blogging on WebCT in six university courses, the students’ attitudes towards the task, and their assessment of the pros and cons of the genre. The paper suggests that despite the challenges it poses, when used properly, class blogging on WebCT encourages writing-to-learn and the negotiation of meaning and it contributes to fostering a healthy dialogue among the students and the instructor in and beyond the classroom. The paper makes specific suggestions about the use of the class-blog on WebCT.