Student perceptions and learning approaches of using blogs in IT education for reflection and knowledge construction

Abstract

Blogging is a commonly-used tool in supporting reflection in student learning. The present research explored the possibility of using blogs as an assessment tool for promoting self-reflection and knowledge construction to the associate-degree students from four different cohorts who were taught by the researcher. Students were required to write reflective journals weekly in their blog as part of the course assessment.
The primary goal of the study was to explore any evidence of the student constructing knowledge via the blogging exercises and evaluate the blogging technology in promoting in-depth self-reflection. The research adopted a mixed research method which combines both quantitative and qualitative methods. The study included a questionnaire which is composed of two previously developed questionnaires, the Reflection Questionnaire (RQ) (Kember, 2000) and the Revised Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F) (Biggs et al., 2001) for exploring the relationships between students’ perceptions of blogging and their learning approaches and their level of reflective thinking. The results would then triangulate with the findings of content analysis of blog posts and student interviews.
The study showed that deep approach scores and scores of reflective thinking scales have been found as a significant contribution to the explanation of the portfolio and total course marks. It also showed that there is strong relationship between the learning approach and the students’ habit of reflective thinking. By comparing the pre-teaching with post-teaching scores, it is found that a positive change in the total scores of deep approach in particular in deep strategy subscale and a positive change in the total scores of higher levels of reflective thinking (reflection and critical reflection). Furthermore, the results showed that a negative change in the total scores of the lowest level of reflective thinking – habitual action. These implied that blogging may motivate students to learn deeper and drive them to think reflectively.