Guide to Blogging: What are others doing?

Blogging Case Study: Central Queensland University

Rationale

The master’s-level Systems Development Overview course at Central Queensland University (CQU) is taught three times a year at seven of the university’s campuses—as well as online—to a total of more than a thousand students. The number and diversity of the students (many of whom are international), class sizes, and delivery modes presented a number of challenges for course delivery, tracking of student progress, and feedback.

One means of addressing these challenges was student journaling. Students would keep ongoing journals of what they learned, compiling entries into Word documents that were submitted at the end of the term. While this practice helped, it still did not encourage the desired levels of engagement in and reflection on the course material.

CQU staff began to see the potential of blogging to make the journaling technique work more effectively. In 2006, David Jones, CQU faculty member and coordinator for the course, led the way for transforming the journaling activity into a blog-based one. Among the aims were:

Providing an ongoing opportunity for student reflection on and writing about what they learn
Giving students (and instructors) authentic experience using Web 2.0 technologies
Helping instructors more easily monitor student progress and mark student work
Reducing instructor workload and making their efforts more efficient
Reducing plagiarism

Description

The blogging project was launched at the start of the second term in 2006. Two months before the term began, the course coordinator began preparations to integrate blogging into the course, introducing the faculty to the idea as well as developing blog aggregation management (BAM) software that could pull student postings into existing institutional systems and allow instructors to monitor them.

At the start of the course, instructors asked the 278 students enrolled in the course to set up a blog for themselves on one of the Internet’s free blogging services, such as Blogger or WordPress, and to “register” their blogs using the BAM software. In doing so, the students were provided with assistance from instructors as well as a Web page offering detailed instructions. For 9 of the 12 weeks of the course, students were assigned a reflective question relating to their class activities and asked to respond to it in their blogs. The questions were worth 10 percent of the final grade.

The BAM software offered the term’s 14 instructors a window on the blog activity: For any given student who had registered his or her blog, the system displayed the number of posts that had had been made, whether the assigned questions had been answered, the postings themselves, and a means for marking them. The BAM software integrated with CQU systems that supported online submission, management, and marking of assignments as well as plagiarism detection. Instructors thus were able to monitor progress and offer feedback as the course progressed.

Implementation

CQU had no institutional blogging application, and none was pursued for this project, because free Internet blogging services were perceived to be adequate. Many high-quality free services were available, and using them would allow CQU’s technical staff, who had no special expertise with blogs, to avoid spending resources and time developing an in-house product. This approach would also allow them to move toward a Web 2.0–style framework of agile integration of multiple applications and away from a traditional single, CMS-style application. It would also give students authentic experience with a real-world blog application of their own choosing.

To this end, CQU developed the BAM system to integrate blog postings from external blog services into existing university systems for grading, online assignment management, plagiarism detection, and student records. It also provided an interface for instructor tracking and grading of posts. As expected, very few resources were required to develop the program because it relied on existing code and infrastructure as well as, of course, the use of free blogging services. Grant monies were applied to what little costs there were.

More difficult was smoothing the way for instructors and students to succeed with blogging, particularly staff acceptance and training, student training, and overcoming institutional inertia with existing models for teaching and learning.

Evaluation was planned for the end of the course, including an online anonymous student survey, focus groups with instructors from the campuses with heavy international student populations, and comparison of blog performance with overall course performance.

Results

Contrary to concerns about instructor resistance to the blogging activity, many instructors did affirm its value. However, some were unsure how blogs could be used to identify students having trouble. Many were also leery that the project would increase rather than lighten their workload. Given these reservations and the fact that the grading interface was completed after the term had begun, many of the blogs were not marked until the end of the term. Few instructors monitored the posts and took action when problems arose—an element identified as needing further attention in subsequent trials.

Screenshot - Systems Development Overview

Larger View

On the other hand, even though few students were very familiar with blogs at the beginning of the course, most ultimately were able to create, register, and use the blogs successfully (258 of 278). One particularly promising outcome was that performance on the blog assignment proved a predictor of overall course performance. Those who scored relatively high had parallel high scores for the course. The students who had low scores on the blog assignment (roughly one-third of the students) generally either did poorly in the course or failed altogether. The handful who did not even set up a blog failed not only this course but other courses as well.

As a result of the blogging, the incidence of plagiarism declined but was not eradicated. Also, based on instructor feedback and focus groups held at the end of the term, reflection and engagement did increase somewhat, but room for improvement remained. The international students in particular faced challenges, not only with expressing themselves in English but also overcoming culturally based assumptions about how to answer the open-ended blog questions.

The public nature of the blogs was both a boon and a peril. On the positive side, a few student posts garnered comments from people outside the class. However, although students used anonymous blog names to minimize ethical and legal concerns about compelling students to make their work public, many students did not take advantage of that option and identified themselves in their blogs.

The results of the project were successful enough that the blogging activity has been fine-tuned and retained in the two subsequent terms of the course to date. Blogging and the BAM system have also now been adopted by two additional CQU courses.

Reflection

Although modest, the project did show some success, and its costs were low. Considering the challenging setting—with the great number and diversity of the students and the overtaxed state of the instructors—that success is perhaps remarkable.

Finding ways to further increase student engagement with the blogging activity will be a challenge, especially given that instructors have little time to spare. To this end, however, CQU plans to add some of the more community-based features of blogs into the BAM system, such as comments and tagging, which have the potential to spark peer-to-peer communication and learning.

One of the most compelling aspects of the project was the simple way it married Web 2.0 applications with institutional systems. This approach has the potential to give institutional teaching and learning systems greater efficacy and agility by making use of the many free or inexpensive—but useful—tools like blogs proliferating on the Internet and to liberate institutional computing staff and resources for other efforts.

For Further Reading

The Web site of David Jones, senior lecturer and head of e-learning and materials development at CQU, chronicles the project in great detail and offers links to a number of related resources: http://cq-pan.cqu.edu.au/david-jones/.

ELI ELI Discovery Tool: Guide to Blogging What are others doing? Central Queensland University Middlebury College University of British Columbia Additional Examples of Blogs What do students think? Reflecting, Writing, and Responding: Reasons Students Blog The Campus Press Blogs How do I get started? Position and Perspective Decisions to Make About Blogging What Faculty Want to Know Making the Case for Blogging		Guide to Blogging: What are others doing? Blogging Case Study: Central Queensland University Rationale The master’s-level Systems Development Overview course at Central Queensland University (CQU) is taught three times a year at seven of the university’s campuses—as well as online—to a total of more than a thousand students. The number and diversity of the students (many of whom are international), class sizes, and delivery modes presented a number of challenges for course delivery, tracking of student progress, and feedback. One means of addressing these challenges was student journaling. Students would keep ongoing journals of what they learned, compiling entries into Word documents that were submitted at the end of the term. While this practice helped, it still did not encourage the desired levels of engagement in and reflection on the course material. CQU staff began to see the potential of blogging to make the journaling technique work more effectively. In 2006, David Jones, CQU faculty member and coordinator for the course, led the way for transforming the journaling activity into a blog-based one. Among the aims were: Providing an ongoing opportunity for student reflection on and writing about what they learn Giving students (and instructors) authentic experience using Web 2.0 technologies Helping instructors more easily monitor student progress and mark student work Reducing instructor workload and making their efforts more efficient Reducing plagiarism Description The blogging project was launched at the start of the second term in 2006. Two months before the term began, the course coordinator began preparations to integrate blogging into the course, introducing the faculty to the idea as well as developing blog aggregation management (BAM) software that could pull student postings into existing institutional systems and allow instructors to monitor them. At the start of the course, instructors asked the 278 students enrolled in the course to set up a blog for themselves on one of the Internet’s free blogging services, such as Blogger or WordPress, and to “register” their blogs using the BAM software. In doing so, the students were provided with assistance from instructors as well as a Web page offering detailed instructions. For 9 of the 12 weeks of the course, students were assigned a reflective question relating to their class activities and asked to respond to it in their blogs. The questions were worth 10 percent of the final grade. The BAM software offered the term’s 14 instructors a window on the blog activity: For any given student who had registered his or her blog, the system displayed the number of posts that had had been made, whether the assigned questions had been answered, the postings themselves, and a means for marking them. The BAM software integrated with CQU systems that supported online submission, management, and marking of assignments as well as plagiarism detection. Instructors thus were able to monitor progress and offer feedback as the course progressed. Implementation CQU had no institutional blogging application, and none was pursued for this project, because free Internet blogging services were perceived to be adequate. Many high-quality free services were available, and using them would allow CQU’s technical staff, who had no special expertise with blogs, to avoid spending resources and time developing an in-house product. This approach would also allow them to move toward a Web 2.0–style framework of agile integration of multiple applications and away from a traditional single, CMS-style application. It would also give students authentic experience with a real-world blog application of their own choosing. To this end, CQU developed the BAM system to integrate blog postings from external blog services into existing university systems for grading, online assignment management, plagiarism detection, and student records. It also provided an interface for instructor tracking and grading of posts. As expected, very few resources were required to develop the program because it relied on existing code and infrastructure as well as, of course, the use of free blogging services. Grant monies were applied to what little costs there were. More difficult was smoothing the way for instructors and students to succeed with blogging, particularly staff acceptance and training, student training, and overcoming institutional inertia with existing models for teaching and learning. Evaluation was planned for the end of the course, including an online anonymous student survey, focus groups with instructors from the campuses with heavy international student populations, and comparison of blog performance with overall course performance. Results Contrary to concerns about instructor resistance to the blogging activity, many instructors did affirm its value. However, some were unsure how blogs could be used to identify students having trouble. Many were also leery that the project would increase rather than lighten their workload. Given these reservations and the fact that the grading interface was completed after the term had begun, many of the blogs were not marked until the end of the term. Few instructors monitored the posts and took action when problems arose—an element identified as needing further attention in subsequent trials. Larger View On the other hand, even though few students were very familiar with blogs at the beginning of the course, most ultimately were able to create, register, and use the blogs successfully (258 of 278). One particularly promising outcome was that performance on the blog assignment proved a predictor of overall course performance. Those who scored relatively high had parallel high scores for the course. The students who had low scores on the blog assignment (roughly one-third of the students) generally either did poorly in the course or failed altogether. The handful who did not even set up a blog failed not only this course but other courses as well. As a result of the blogging, the incidence of plagiarism declined but was not eradicated. Also, based on instructor feedback and focus groups held at the end of the term, reflection and engagement did increase somewhat, but room for improvement remained. The international students in particular faced challenges, not only with expressing themselves in English but also overcoming culturally based assumptions about how to answer the open-ended blog questions. The public nature of the blogs was both a boon and a peril. On the positive side, a few student posts garnered comments from people outside the class. However, although students used anonymous blog names to minimize ethical and legal concerns about compelling students to make their work public, many students did not take advantage of that option and identified themselves in their blogs. The results of the project were successful enough that the blogging activity has been fine-tuned and retained in the two subsequent terms of the course to date. Blogging and the BAM system have also now been adopted by two additional CQU courses. Reflection Although modest, the project did show some success, and its costs were low. Considering the challenging setting—with the great number and diversity of the students and the overtaxed state of the instructors—that success is perhaps remarkable. Finding ways to further increase student engagement with the blogging activity will be a challenge, especially given that instructors have little time to spare. To this end, however, CQU plans to add some of the more community-based features of blogs into the BAM system, such as comments and tagging, which have the potential to spark peer-to-peer communication and learning. One of the most compelling aspects of the project was the simple way it married Web 2.0 applications with institutional systems. This approach has the potential to give institutional teaching and learning systems greater efficacy and agility by making use of the many free or inexpensive—but useful—tools like blogs proliferating on the Internet and to liberate institutional computing staff and resources for other efforts. For Further Reading The Web site of David Jones, senior lecturer and head of e-learning and materials development at CQU, chronicles the project in great detail and offers links to a number of related resources: http://cq-pan.cqu.edu.au/david-jones/.
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