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Divitini, M., Haugaløkken, O., and Morken, E.M. "Blog to support learning in the field: lessons learned from a
fiasco," 5th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT2005), IEEE Press,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2005
Blog to support learning in the field: lessons learned from a fiasco
Monica Divitini, Ove Haugaløkken, Eli M. Morken
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
divitini@idi.ntnu.no
Abstract
In this paper we report on our experience using a
blog to support teacher education. The system has
been used to support communication and reflection
while students were spending a period of teaching
practice. The system has not been used, despite its
potential usefulness. In this paper we reflect on this
experience to identify strengths and weaknesses of
blogs in supporting learning in the field.
1. Introduction
Learning “in the field” is used in many contexts where
it is useful for
learners to practice what they learn at
the theoretical level in a real situation. In this way
learners have the possibility to gain a first-hand
experience of the real situation where they are
expected in the future to use what they are learning.
The success of the learning process deeply depends on
the capability of learners to reflect on their experiences
[5]. Interactions with different people that can support,
in different ways, the learning process play a key role
in supporting reflection [4]. In this paper we
investigate the possibility of using blogs to support
informal communication, experience sharing, and
reflection when learning in the field. Blogs allow easy
publishing on the Web, generally supporting the
chronologically presentation of entries [3]. Blogs have
become very popular in the last years, and they have
been used also in educational settings, see e.g. [1, 2].
In [3], the authors report different motivations to the
usage of blogs: blogs can be seen as documenting
one’s life, as a sort of diary, but also as a muse and as
community forum. All the reported experiences seem
to suggest the possible usage of blogs to support
learning in the field.
In this paper we report the experience with the
initial adoption of a blog for supporting teacher
students following the course Practical Pedagogical
Education (PPE) at our university. PPE is organized as
a one-year course, with normal classes as well as
teaching practice. In this course our university
cooperates with 30 schools that grouped to create
partnerships. A partnership includes 5 schools that
give teaching practice to circa 30 students. Normally
the students of a partnership are spread on the five
schools of their partnership, but sometimes they all go
to the same school. This happens, for example, during
a takeover, i.e. when students have the responsibility
for all the teaching in the school while regular teachers
are away. Reflection is emphasized throughout the
course and is supported with meetings and seminars,
and through the production of written work. This work
is part of the portfolio evaluation for the course.
2. Setting up the scene
After an initial analysis of how to support PPE
students, we decided to offer the students of one of the
partnerships (34 persons) the possibility to use a blog
during the week they took over a school. The system
was intended to support informal communication, and
foster experience sharing by the creation of shared
diaries. For publishing our blog we used Blogger
(http://www.blogger.com), a widely used tool with
different add-ons provided by third parties.
Design of the blog. The PPE blog is designed as a
common blog plus one blog for each student, all
password protected. The students have visibility of all
the blogs, they can add entries to the common blog, but
not to other students’ blogs. A third party solution was
used for entering SMS to the blog and we informed
students about the possibility to upload pictures.
Introducing the system. To introduce the blog, we
sent students a letter explaining the objectives of our
study and informed them about the system. During a
PPE seminar, we met the students to give a short
introduction to the system, presenting the blog as a
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diary and as a tool for sharing ideas and getting
response from peers and teachers. Since it was not
possible to give students a course on how to use the
system, we asked them to try it out individually. One
student with a degree in informatics offered to help the
other students. During the takeover this student gave
an introduction to promote adoption, focusing on the
simplicity of the blog and the way it could complement
the university Learning Management System (LMS).
Seeding. To have some initial activity on the blog,
the pedagogy teacher entered two messages in the
common blog, one with information on the course, and
the other to motivate students to use the blog.
Following is the content of this second message.
“…When the regular teachers at the school return from
their study tour, they will need to be updated on what
has been going on in their classes. While we have the
responsibility, we need to keep each other informed on
a daily basis about the life in the different classes and
the activity in the subjects. When the week is over, it
can be useful to have a place where we can refresh our
memory and maybe find material for the documents to
produce for the final assessment. Here the individual
blogs may be useful...”
Collecting data. To collect data on this experience
we used: the blog content and usage logs, student
observations, and a questionnaire distributed to the
students after the end of the observation period. The
combination of sources gives a rich set of information.
3. No doubts: a fiasco
Usage of the blog. The students did not use the
blog much during their practice. 12 of the 31 students
that answered the questionnaire had been into the
system to have a look, but only six of the students
created any content. One of these just filled in some
personal information, 3 made a test-entry, and one used
the blog as a diary and added 5 entries in addition to
one test-entry. The student helping us tried to start a
discussion on his blog. We entered a message on the
common blog to inform about this discussion, and this
resulted in two comments.
Patterns of usage of technology. In the
questionnaire we asked students about their usage of
various technologies. Most of the students (27) used
the LMS during the week of takeover, though very
seldom. Most of the students used SMS to get in
contact with their peers during the week. However,
only 4 students said they would consider posting SMS
to a blog. E-mail was used by 18 students to contact
their peers, and 15 students used telephone. Some
students (12) stated that they use technologies less
frequently during the takeover to communicate to their
peers due to geographical collocation. Access to
computers in the school was limited.
Patterns of cooperation. During the takeover
students cooperated with different actors: all had
guidance from their supervisors, most of them (23)
collaborated with students from the same partnership
that have the same subject, but other collaboration
partners were also mentioned. Cooperation can be
around different issues: subject matters (23),
practicalities (27), experiences (26), and one’s own
skill as a teacher (12). However, only 4 of the students
had discussed with their peers the content of the
practice summary they are supposed to write.
Motivations. The students gave several reasons for
their limited usage of the blog. Some did not feel the
need for it, mainly because of their collocation; others
mentioned the lack of time due to a heavy workload.
The university LMS was also perceived as an obstacle.
One student told us that it took time to get an overview
of it and there was no time to spend on yet another
system. Another one mentioned that it was hard to get
an overview over all the provided information.
Another system only added to the information
overload. Some mentioned technical problems they had
encountered or the lack of Internet connectivity.
Several of the students believe the blog could be more
useful when they are distributed in different schools,
but they had no clear idea of how to use it.
Logging of experiences. The students are
supposed, as part of their final assessment, to write a
report summarizing the practice period. Despite this,
only one of the students used the blog as a diary: ” I
use the blog to put down some thoughts about what I
have experienced during the day… I note the same in
my practice file, so why not let anybody else read it.”
4. Lessons learned
After the takeover, we were left with an unused
system, even if the system was potentially useful, as
confirmed by the teaching staff, and usable, as
demonstrated by the thousands of users of the selected
publishing tool. Despite a shortage of time, we also felt
that the system was properly introduced. The small
technical problems are not enough to justify the fiasco.
We therefore started a reflection process for
understanding our experience.
There is not only time. In blogs entries are
organized in chronological order. This recalls a paper
diary and it is an intuitive way to record one’s
experiences. However time line is not enough.
Learners should be able to rearrange the notes in their
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diaries in a flexible way to reflect their understanding.
The entries are also generally unstructured. The blog
should provide students with templates that can help
them to structure the information that they record.
Beware tradeoffs between accessibility and
privacy. The strength of blogs resides in their
capability of supporting sharing and commenting.
However, uncontrolled accessibility can impact on
students’ perceived freedom of expression. Limiting
access, on the other hand, reduces the possibility to
promote knowledge sharing at the community level.
Mobility has different requirements. In our case
students’ mobility was supported with the possibility to
upload pictures and sending in SMS messages. This
allows, while mobile, to collect fragments of
information. There was however no support for
students to view the content of the system, or know
about changes, while mobile. This limited visibility of
the system might negatively impact on its usage.
Beware the social structures. There is a need to
account for the complexity of the underlying social
structures. When we designed our blogs, we only
looked at community and individuals. This is not
enough to support the rich collaboration patterns
within learning processes in the field. The system
should be designed to allow users to easily open or
close their blogs to individuals or groups.
Do one thing, and do it well. The objectives of the
system should be presented by focusing as much as
possible. Though blogs can be used in different ways,
it is preferable to identify one specific need so to make
clearer to students how and why to use the system.
From our observations of students out in practice, we
believe that blogs should be presented as a tool for
recording and sharing experiences.
Developing mental models of a technology
requires time. Development of appropriate models is
particular lengthy when, like in the case of blogs, this
requires users to rethink their role with respect to the
technology, from being a passive reader of information
to an active information provider, and with respect to
their community, from an individual learner to a co-
constructors of a shared body of knowledge.
Align teachers’ and students’ perspectives. When
introducing a system it is important to verify that
teachers’ and students’ expectations about the
technology, but also about course objectives and
learning process, are aligned. In our case, e.g., despite
the importance of reflection has been strengthened by
teachers, students were still not collecting enough
information to later recall their experiences. In
addition, the assessment criteria should be aligned with
the learning process supported by the technology. In
our case the blog was supporting sharing, while the
evaluation of students was done on an individual basis.
Learning systems do not live in a vacuum.
Students use a number of tools. While some systems
can easily co-exist, such as email and phones, others
seem to predominate, as the LMS. To be successful,
systems must be introduced in an environment where
they have the possibility to develop. Creating such an
environment is mainly an institutional responsibility.
If the overall context allows it, lightweight tools like
blogs can then be introduced locally. This is
empowering teachers and students, giving them the
possibility to try out different solutions and
dynamically find the ones that are suited to their
specific needs.
In the paper we presented our experience with the
introduction of a blog to support learning in the field.
We are aware that the acceptance of the system will
change with time. However, by looking into this initial
week we gained insights that might be useful in other
situations. As part of our current work we are
introducing blogs to support different forms of learning
in the field.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Reidar M. Svendsen, Sobah A.
Petersen, Alan Munro, and the PPE students for help
and discussion. The work presented in this paper is
supported by the NTNU-MOTUS2 project.
6. References
1. Dron, J., The Blog and the Borg: a Collective Approach to
E-Learning. in World Conf. on E-Learning in Corp., Gov.,
Healthcare, & Higher Education, (2003), 440-443.
2. Higgins, C.J., Reeves, L. and Byrd, E., Interactive online
journaling: a campus-wide implementation of blogging
software. in 32nd annual ACM conference on User services,
(Baltimore, MD, USA, 2004), ACM Press, 139-142.
3. Nardi, B.A., Schiano, D.J., Gumbrecht, M. and Swartz, L.
Why we blog. Communications of the ACM, 47 (12). 41-46.
4. Price, S., Rogers, Y., Stanton, D. and Smith, H., A new
conceptual framework for CSCL: Supporting diverse forms
of reflection through multiple interactions. in CSCL'03,
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 513-522.
5. Schön, D.A. The Reflective Practitioner: How
Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books, 1983.
