Abstract:

Social media is extensible, being labelled as providing collaborative tools for enhancing students learning experience. In spite of the increased use of social media like microblogging, social networks, and forums by instructors, very limited attempts are made in assessing the impact of blogs in enhancing students’ engagement and interactivity in class. This paper examines the relevance of an analytical framework for assessing students in collaborative and reflective learning experience through Edublogs activities, based on Community of Inquiry (CoI) model used in a private Malaysian university. The proposed fundamental framework is examined with 287 students, enrolled in public relation and advertising courses, as part of their assignment requiring them to utilize blog support. The findings are drawn from the analysis of an online survey completed by the students, at the end of the semester to evaluate the meaningful learning experiences between instructors and students, and between students themselves. This empirical study considers contextual factors such as supportive learning opportunities through the utilization of educational blog, feedback from course mates or comments from students directed to instructors that serve as salient factors in the development of both individual and group knowledge. Nevertheless, it attempts to determine the impact of students' perceptions towards social, cognitive and teaching presence seamlessly in building collaborative and reflective learning experience among students. Principal Component Analysis with oblique rotation was employed to test the cross-loadings and inter-item correlations to check its significant relationship of social, cognitive and teaching presence that are assumed to influence students' involvement and engagement in the Edublogs. Based on the exploratory nature of those CoI constructs, results suggest that blog provides a promising collaborative and reflective learning environment in the higher learning institution, with an exception that teaching presence deemed to be feeble in delivering purposeful learning outcomes.

Keywords:

meaningful engagement, teaching presence, social presence, cognitive, presence, collaborative learning, reflective learning.