Positive impacts on learning through blogging, such as active knowledge construction and reflective writing, have been reported. However, not many students use weblogs in informal contexts, even when appropriate facilities are offered by their universities. While motivations for blogging have been subject to empirical studies, little research has addressed the issue of why students choose not to blog. This paper presents an empirical study undertaken to gain insights into the decision making process of students when deciding whether to keep a blog or not. A better understanding of students’ motivations for (not) blogging may help decision makers at universities in the process of selecting, introducing, and maintaining similar services. As informal learning gains increased recognition, results of this study can help to advance appropriate designs of informal learning contexts in Higher Education. The method of ethnographic decision tree modelling was applied in an empirical study conducted at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria. Since 2004, the university has been offering free weblog accounts for all students and staff members upon entering school, not bound to any course or exam. Qualitative, open interviews were held with 3 active bloggers, 3 former bloggers, and 3 non-bloggers to elicit their decision criteria. Decision tree models were developed out of the interviews. It turned out that the modelling worked best when splitting the decision process into two parts: one model representing decisions on whether to start a weblog at all, and a second model representing criteria on whether to continue with a weblog once it was set up. The models were tested for their validity through questionnaires developed out of the decision tree models. 30 questionnaires have been distributed to bloggers, former bloggers and non-bloggers. Results show that the main reasons for students not to keep a weblog include a preference for direct (online) communication, and concerns about the loss of privacy through blogging. Furthermore, the results indicate that intrinsic motivation factors keep students blogging, whereas stopping a weblog is mostly attributable to external factors. read more... > see the resource
posted by Nicolas Balacheff on Sunday 7th, March 2010 (09:50)
We have heard here and there claims and expectations about the so-called Learning 2.0 revolution. The rational is that learners will be able to share, collaborate, exchange in a more open and dynamic way, blowing the barriers that formal education and training may have raised on the way towards knowledge. Among learning 2.0 tools, there are blogs. All of us, I mean the practitioners of blogs, know that blogging is not such an easy thing and having the tools is not enough. So a paper like this one is especially interesting in that it explores in a pragmatic and rigorous way the students motivation or lack of motivation to use blogs ; among the latter there is a preference for direct communication and loss of privacy. May be not a surprise… a question one may have is that of knowing how far this is intrinsic or witnesses the weight of a culture and a lack of experience of these tools.
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