Kasandra's Article Reflection

I am reviewing the article “Personal Learning Journal – Course Design for Using Weblogs in Higher Education” by Stefanie Hain and Andrea Back from the University of Saint Gallen in Switzerland. In the article a case is made for the use of blogging as a way of demonstrating knowledge about a course topic. In this paper, a blog is defined as, “a knowledge sharing technology that enables people to record their thoughts in diary form and publish those diaries as web pages without programming or HTML coding.“ The article goes further to say that blogs postings are chronological and often contain pictures/artwork. The use of blogs in industry, personal use and even education is increasing. The article states that the use of blogs in education has two major benefits, the first being that it is a form of self-reflection. The article states that this has been defined as the highest form of learning and that the chronological nature of the postings allow a student to track their progress and understanding over time. The second reason for using weblogs is that they allow for interaction and collaboration through comments on each other’s posts and hyperlinking.
The journal provides some tips for successfully including blogs in an online course, based on a study that was done over 4 semesters with various online classes. The article suggests three areas of concern to address when implementing weblogs: content, networking and technology. Firstly, in requirements for blog posts, educators should be checking to see if content is adequately addresses to show student understanding of the course concepts. Secondly, there should be collaboration, such as comments on posts and links to various websites or projects among students within a course. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, the technology being used to create blogs should fit with the course expectations and requirements and should allow students the ability to express themselves to a high extent.
As I read the article, I thought about how similar a weblog seemed in comparison to a discussion board. I think the discussion board is more or less a simplistic version of a blog as it was defined in the article. Either way, with discussion boards or actual posts, the use of weblogs to aid online learning does appear to be beneficial to learners in any online course as a means of reflection and discussion about learning.