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As with many professional programmes, nursing students in the United Kingdom spend a significant proportion of their time ‘on placement’ – applying their theoretical learning to the clinical area.While off campus and at a distance from their peers and university staff, however, they must continue to study and complete assessments. This creates enormous complexities for nursing students; issues of retention and success, anxiety and isolation are well documented in the research literature relating to this particularly diverse group. Emerging technologies offer opportunities to increase engagement between nursing students and faculty, thus potentially eliminating many of these difficulties. At Glasgow Caledonian University, a blog was developed to provide new students with remote support and a virtual community while on their first placement. The open access resource offered a link between faculty and students and a forum for peer support among the cohort. Student produced materials, such as ‘talking head’ videos and placement diaries, were posted alongside assessment-specific learning resources developed by staff. The blog was fully interactive and participants were encouraged to comment on and respond to posts in order to increase engagement. A thorough evaluation of the continuing initiative highlighted the success and further potential of the resource but also suggested limitations in terms of interactive engagement and issues of digital literacy among some learners. This chapter will discuss the use of technologies such as blogs in providing remote support to learners, using the student nurse blog as a case study.

This chapter provides a comprehensive review of research and developments relating to the use of Web 2.0 technologies in education. As opposed to early educational uses of the Internet involving publication of static information on web pages, Web 2.0 tools offer a host of opportunities for educators to provide more interactive, collaborative, and creative online learning experiences for students. The chapter starts by defining Web 2.0 tools in terms of their ability to facilitate online creation, editing, and sharing of web content. A typology of Web 2.0 technologies is presented to illustrate the wide variety of tools at teachers’ disposal. Educational uses of Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, and microblogging are explored, in order to showcase the variety of designs that can be utilized. Based on a review of the research literature the educational benefits of using Web 2.0 technologies are outlined, including their ability to facilitate communication, collaborative knowledge building, student-centered activity, and vicarious learning. Similarly, issues surrounding the use of Web 2.0 tools are distilled from the literature and discussed, such as the possibility of technical problems, collaboration difficulties, and plagiarism. Two case studies involving the use Web 2.0 tools to support personalized learning and small group collaboration are detailed to exemplify design possibilities in greater detail. Finally, design recommendations for learning and teaching using Web 2.0 are presented, again based on findings from the research literature.

Blogging has become a well-established method of online communication and publication, used by individuals and organisations to disseminate news, ideas and information. In their earlier forms, blogs were used as online diaries, but have now evolved into complex digital environments. The purpose of this paper is to consider whether blogging can be framed as a mode of work-integrated learning in the context of journalism and media education, and to ask whether blogging can develop transferable skills useful in graduate-level employment.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with established undergraduate bloggers to investigate which skills and attributes were developed through blogging.

When evaluated against the Prospects UK list of graduate attributes (the Government career’s service) blogging allows the development of the vast majority of transferable skills, abilities and behaviours expected of graduates. It is necessary to structure the curriculum to ensure that blogging is taught, and blogging activity monitored and evaluated, so that journalism undergraduates maximise the opportunities offered by blogging and fully reflect on their experiences.

This paper argues that these online environments, with their associated communities, offer journalism students opportunities for work-integrated learning. It argues that blog environments have the potential to enable students to develop journalism-specific skills, and enhance transferable graduate attributes including creativity, sophisticated communication competencies, initiative and problem solving. It suggests that blogging offers a platform for accessing experiential learning, and as such should be considered within a curriculum for work-integrated learning in the journalism and media subject area.

Students’ use of blogging tools in learning environments is increasing across the world. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature by examining the effects of relevant factors that engender satisfaction and positive impacts of the technology for learning.

A cross-sectional survey was used to collect data from 108 undergraduate students taking a management information systems course. The partial least squares technique of structural equation modelling was used to test the reliability and validity of the data, and the study’s hypothesised relationships or paths.

This study revealed that perceived enjoyment, compatibility, usefulness, ease of use, and confirmation have positive influence on students’ satisfaction with blog use. Perceived enjoyment had the greatest influence on students’ satisfaction with blog use for learning. Perceived impact on learning was positively influenced by perceived ease of use, enjoyment, and satisfaction.

A limited amount of empirical research has focussed on students’ perceptions of satisfaction and perceived impact on learning through blog use in higher educational contexts. This study adds to the growing literature in this area of study.

Based on previous information systems/educational technology success models, the purpose of this paper is to establish a comprehensive, multidimensional model for assessing blog-based learning systems success.

Data collected from 240 blog-based learning systems users in the context of higher education were tested against the model using the structural equation modelling approach.

The results indicate the interrelationships between six system success variables: system quality, content quality, context and linkage quality, user satisfaction, system use, and learning performance. In particular, this study confirms that quality attributes positively affect user satisfaction, which in turn positively influences learning performance directly or indirectly through the mediation of system use.

This study is a pioneering effort to develop and validate a blog-based learning systems success model.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a multi-dimensional instrument to measure e-learning blog satisfaction (ELBS).

This study introduces and defines the construct of ELBS, provides an empirical validation of the construct and its underlying dimensionality, develops a generic ELBS instrument with desirable psychometric properties, and investigates the instrument's theoretical and practical applications.

After analyzing data from a calibration sample (n=238) and a validation sample (n=226), this study proposes a five-factor, 20-item ELBS instrument.

This empirically validated instrument will be useful to researchers in terms of developing and testing blog-based learning theories, as well as to educators in terms of understanding students’ ELBS and promoting the use of blog-based learning systems.

This study is a pioneering effort to develop and validate a multi-dimensional instrument to measure ELBS.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of blogs on teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) to primary students. The study also explores educators’ perceptions of social media tools and digital literacy in school environments.

A three-step approach was used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. First, the blogs of 23 fifth-grade students in an EFL class in Kuwait was analysed for one semester along with student perceptions and teacher observations. Second, a survey was distributed to the students at the end of the semester, and finally, four focus groups were conducted regarding educators’ perceptions on the use of social media, their skills and needs and problems encountered.

The findings showed that by the end of the semester, students were writing lengthy sentences, had fewer spelling and grammatical mistakes, were more motivated and independent and displayed a more positive attitude towards learning EFL. In addition, educators are enthusiastic about using Web technologies in their teaching practices but have several concerns such as digital literacy competencies, technology-use behaviour and lack of accessibility to digital content.

The number of questions on the student survey could be reduced. Also, it would be preferable in future studies to require all students to blog at least twice a week which could provide a broader representation of their writing abilities.

Little research has been reported in the literature on the use of blogs in teaching EFL to primary school students. Most literature focuses on teaching EFL to university students. By using a mixed-methodology approach, this study also highlights the needs of educators and students in technology learning environments and makes a good contribution towards offering pragmatic solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to present an integrated framework for designing and investigating students’ engagement patterns and learning presence in educational blogs. The framework was grounded on the ideas of self-directed and reflective learning, and was applied to analyse students’ blogging activities in the context of an undergraduate course.

The proposed research framework was organized along three dimensions: content artefacts, blogging processes and community building. With regard to the methodological tools used, this study integrates content analysis of students’ posts using the framework of community of inquiry, the representation of learning mapping and social network analysis methods.

The results have revealed important information about the different ways of students’ engagement and learning presence within the blogging groups, the contribution and the influence each student had, as well as the structure and the cohesion of the learning community developed around the blogging project.

The findings of this study are limited by the blended course features, the specific sample and the context of implementation. Future research needs to consider and analyse students’ lurking or invisible presence in educational blogging communities.

This study has yielded promising results with regard to the design of educational blogs in higher education that aim to enhance students’ engagement, reflection, collaboration and self-directed learning.

The originality concerns the proposed conceptual framework which can guide the design, monitoring and analysis of blogging processes in order to reveal students’ learning presence within self-directed communities of blogging.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the theoretical link between blogs and organisational learning. It aims to provide a set of practical guidelines on how to overcome the challenges of implementing an organisational blog.

A literature review will be used to examine blogs and their association towards organisational learning and an illustration of how one company reacted to using blogs will be provided.

It was discovered that implementing blogs within organisations can present challenges that might be overcome through properly informing and educating staff about their organisational benefits. A set of guidelines is presented as an implementation checklist for companies considering using internal blogs.

The paper does not examine the adoption of blog use within multiple organisations but reflects on the challenges of running blogs in one specific organisation. The problems identified might not apply to all types of organisations. Further research will be required to determine this.

The paper provides a set of guidelines that allows organisations to assess whether blogging is right for them and suggests steps to take that can stimulate an organisational blogging culture.

The paper offers practical advice and guidelines that help management to overcome difficulties associated with the introducing of organisational blogs internally. The paper provides a novel academic perspective in which organisational blogs might not be as straightforward to implement as argued in the literature.

In this qualitative case study we explored the experiences of low- achieving students responding to an educational blog. Our intention was to leverage the unique affordances of blogs to teach United States history concepts primarily by providing access to digital primary sources and facilitating on-line participation. Overall, our findings point to the positive potential of blogs to enhance instruction with low-achieving students. We found the integration of the educational blog provided an effective instructional format to differentiate content instruction and deliver “equity pedagogy.” In this study student participation increased, students engaged in historical work (although tentative), and the resources activated their prior knowledge. Rather than withholding Web 2.0 technologies from low-achieving students we encourage teachers to use them to meet the unique learning needs of all of their students. With thoughtful scaffolding, it appears teachers might be able to leverage the unique features of blog-based activities to improve student experiences.