Description

In Germany openly accessible blogs for student education on the undergraduate level are still not very common. After explaining the ideas behind using a blog students were given the assignment to post at least two own entries and to comment at least five times on an openly accessible blog during the semester. The blog was centred on a common topic and all students were invited to the blog. At first students where a little apprehensive about their entries being visible by fellow students and also on a worldwide scale, but at the same time they liked the idea about writing for a larger audience than just their professor. While most of them choose to use a different author name to post, some of them still used their real name or an identifying abbreviation. In general the style of writing seemed to have improved. Although the blog was available for about 5 months more than half of the students did use a timeframe of on month or less to fulfil their assignment and did not use the blog as a means for ongoing communication. Problems in using the blog were partly caused by students first writing their post using a word processor and using elaborate formatting which did not survive the cut and paste operations. Since students were commenting the work their fellow students the resulting communications patterns where analyzed. Some group building did appear in the pattern. The hypothesis that the group building was caused by a common topic could not be held. Rather some clustering was seen by students posting at about the same time. This can be interpreted as a means to reduce workload. In looking for a fitting entry to comment on they started at the most recent one and worked their way back. The goal to engage the students for a prolonged time could not be met for most of the students. Still they considered the exercise a very interesting and engaging one. They particularly liked the idea of using up-to-date technology.