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EXPLORATORY STUDIES ABOUT THE USE OF WEBLOGS INHIGHER EDUCATION
Francesc Balagué
Universitat de Barcelona
info@blocdeblocs.net 
Abstract 
These are changing times in higher education. The use of ICTs and Higher Education System inEuropean Converge will imply changes in the way students learn and also the way professors teach.The new professor’s role will demand an active participation and the use of more resources and newstrategies to attend to the emerging needs. They will also need a lot of support to succeed in thisprocess.Prior studies have shown the lack of support in the resources’ area for professors. Institutions will haveto take a more active role giving facilities to them, so it will be very important to work in the direction of setting up new resources database and facilitating professors’ access to these resources.To fully achieve the integration of technology, efficient training is needed. Professors have to knowhow to put these new resources to good use, what constitutes good pedagogical applications of ICTs,etc.Training must respond to the real necessities of professors, be flexible and well promoted.To better understand the current usage of resources in higher education, we reviewed numeroussources, created by other professors or by university’s excellence centres.In our research we have decided to focus in the use of weblogs. We want to analyse this tool, whichwas not initially designed for use in educational environments, and explore its potential for higher education. As a collaborative learning tool, it lets student interact with other students or withprofessors, so it offers many possibilities. For example, PhD students can use it as a bibliography andquotes manager or as a personal research diary, professors can use weblogs to give complementaryinformation and foster online discussion outside the class, and degree students, can use weblogs towrite reflections about their own learning process and share them with others.
Keywords
Higher education, technological resources, university teaching, weblogs
1. INTRODUCTION
The use of ICTs and the convergence process to the European Higher Education System will implychanges in the way students learn and also the way professors teach. The new professor’s role willdemand an active participation and the use of more resources and new strategies to attend to theemerging needs. They will also need a lot of support to succeed in this process.Prior studies have shown the lack of support in the resources’ area for professors. Institutions will haveto take a role giving facilities to them, so it will be very important to work in the direction of setting upnew resources database and facilitating professors’ access to these resources.
 
To fully achieve the integration of technology training is needed. Professors have to know how to putthese new resources to good use, what constitutes good pedagogical applications of ICTs, etc.Training must respond to the real necessities of professors, be flexible and well promoted.To better understand the current usage in higher education, we reviewed numerous sources, createdby other professors or by university’s excellence centres.In our research we have decided to focus in the use of weblogs. We want to analyse this tool, whichwas not initially designed for use in educational environments, and explore its potential for higher education. As a collaborative learning tool, it lets student interact with other students or withprofessors, so it offers many possibilities. For example, PhD students can use it as a bibliography andquotes manager or as a personal research diary, professors can use weblogs to give complementaryinformation and foster online discussion outside the class, and degree students, can use weblogs towrite reflections about their own learning process and share them with others.
2. TECHNOLOGICAL RESOURCES IN HIGHER EDUCATION TEACHING
The convergence process to European Higher Educational System has many implications at manylevels. The main one is the change in the teaching and learning model. Students will be at the centreof that process, and professors will have to use new strategies and new resources to adapt to this newsituation. It has an impact because it implies a change in the traditional understanding of the teachingand learning process.Benedito (in Goñi [1]) summarizes the way professors will have to teach:-Will get a new role as the organizer of the learning process.-Will have to decide the students' workload-Will be responsible for defining the common knowledge focus on order to configure thecurriculum at an interdisciplinary level.-Will need to promote tutorial activities-Will need to set up assessment systems to evaluate students' progress in their learningprocess.
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Will need to use, elaborate and share materials, resources, etc.-Will need to get students' involved and committed, both at individual and group level, in thedevelopment of their learning process.All these changes will require a global reorganization of the university system: more institutionalsupport to professors (Gibbs & Coffey [2]; Berg & Hofman[3]), training adapted to their necessities(Gros & Romañá [4]; Zabalza [5]), and more access to resources and technological support.We must keep in mind that, as Ramsden [6] notes, the use of resources and new strategies does notimply an improvement in teaching quality. Reflection about the teaching approach is needed.Trigwell & Prosser [7] link the professors' approach with the quality of teaching and the process of student’s learning.The European convergence process will imply a new role for the professors. They will have to use newstrategies, new materials and more resources. To guarantee the success of the process, institutionswill have to offer all kind of resources and adapted training.In our previous still unpublished research, professors told us of their difficulties in knowing whattraining programs were available but, also, trainers told us that most of the professors came to thetraining programs just looking to increase the number of certificates in their vita. There appears to be areal break between the training offered and the professors’ interests and needs.As an example of good practices in the use of technological resources in higher education, we want tomention Digit@le Did@ctiek [8], a project carried out in Holland dedicated to offer resources toprofessors who want to introduce ICTs in their teaching.The main objective of this project is to promote ICTs use in higher education, and it does it through:
 
-Offering support to university teaching using ICTs-Bringing to professors the didactic application of ICTs.-Creating and keeping a professors net, to share their knowledge and experiences using theseresources.This is only one example but we can find many others, from centres for learning and teachingexcellence to online discussion communities on the use of Moodle, wikis, etc. where professors aresharing and reflecting on how to improve their teaching using these technologies.Currently, we want to focus on a specific tool, weblogs, which we will develop in the next point.
3. USE OF WEBLOGS IN EDUCATION3.1 Introduction to weblogs
The definition of weblog started being a kind of web page that collected links, selected by the author,to other sites, but it has evolved into something more complex. In a weblog, the author or authors cancreate new contents, debate news or trendy topics, etc. Weblogs can deal with very different subjects,some refer to more general fields and others deal with very specific issues.One of the basic aspects of weblogs is their structure, with reversed chronological order. They used tobe updated frequently, and visitors could see the newest post at the top of the page. Content isarranged by categories and can also be managed through the calendar or the search engine.It is important to emphasize the fact that usually weblogs allow the posting of comments in each post.This is the key to creating interaction and facilitate building collaboratively knowledge and reflecting ondifferent topics.Setting up a weblog has become easier, and new free weblogs hosting and plug-ins services areappearing constantly.Although they where not specifically created to use as an academic resource, all of thesecharacteristics lead us to consider the use of weblogs in higher education as a tool that can help usimprove our teaching and develop a better learning environment.
3.2 Uses in higher education
If we refer to the European Higher Education Area, where students workload count not only the timespent attending classes, but also the time that students spend working together, working at home, etc.Weblogs can be used by professors to follow students learning process.One possibility is the use of weblog as a learning journal, where students reflect about what they arelearning, what they are reading, what they are working on with colleagues, etc.Students can share this space and learn from each other, and this tool lets professors know how theyare doing, what is the learning rhythm of the class, etc.To motivate students to have a blog, it is not recommended that it be mandatory, or at least, not tomandate a blog for the purpose of using a blog. We can invite students to present their activities intheirs blogs, so that their work can be shared, evaluated (by professors or by mates), etc. Theimportant thing is to use the blog as a tool. Using blogs has to be beneficial for students and we haveto show them these benefits. If we do not do this, some students will reject using it (it will require moretime, it will be difficult to set up and administrate, etc.).It is strongly recommended that professors also have their own weblogs. They can givecomplementary information; promote new discussions, debates and reflections. And help students inthe intrinsic use of the blog.
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