Are blogs the same as discussion boards and what are the pros and cons of blogging in the context of adult learning?
I have to admit, setting up my first blog site and publishing my first post is rather exciting. I feel like I am finally coming into the 21st Century!
Blogging…is
it the same as a discussion board? I say no. The fundamental differences
between a blog and a discussion board are purpose and organization. Discussion boards provide a place where students are required to comment on and generate discussion about a
particular subject or idea.
Students post answers to a question and respond to classmate’s posts;
whereby, creating a virtual dialogue. Additionally, posts are listed in the
order they are submitted to the thread and organized by topic. The dialogue
tends to be linear in nature because of the format and sequence in which the
posts appear.
Blogs,
on the other hand, are intended for a wider, voluntary audience but targeted at a specific
group of people with similar interests (King & Cox, 2011). Blogs are a
place where information on a particular subject is posted and the community can
add to the information by posting comments and links to related documents and
sources, but they are not required to do so. Blogs provide a forum for answers to
questions; whereas, discussion boards question answers. Blog posts are
listed chronologically and all posts are visible for anyone to see. This allows
for a broader viewing of the subject matter.
There
are many pros and cons to using blogs in the context of adult learning.
PROs
- Blogs allow for an exchange of comments with individuals of similar interests so the exchange can be more meaningful for the individuals.
- Blogs can be used as a single portal for a topic and link participants to other sources on that topic.
- Access to blogs is not limited so there can be broader participation in the blog.
- Blogs build virtual communities. They create a place where anyone can be a member.
- Williams & Jacobs (2004) as cited in King & Cox (2011) posited that, “blogs have the potential to be transformative technology for teaching and learning because of their reach into the virtual world of learners beyond the confines of the university providing a forum for discourse without parallel (p. 97).
CONs
- If using a blog as a course requirement, there is a greater time commitment because each student’s blog is on a separate site.
- Blogs can create confusion and frustration for those students who are not tech savvy.
- Blogs are available for all to see. What is written in a blog is public domain.
- Blogs are not intended to challenge thinking but to present information on a particular subject.
Below is a link to a TED video with Mena Trott on blogs. The video is not directly related to blogs in the context of adult learning but it does offer some insightful perspectives on how blogging is changing our world.
http://www.ted.com/talks/mena_trott_tours_her_blog_world.html
References:
King, K. & Cox, T. (2011). The Professor’s Guide to Taming Technology. Charlotte, NC:
Information Age Publishing.
Williams, J.B. & Jacobs, J. (2004). Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher
education sector. Australasian Journal of Education Technology, 20(2), 232-243.
I like your point that dialog on discussion boards “tends to be linear in nature because of the format and sequence in which the posts appear”. Discussion boards can also be hard to follow because of this. Since replies are sequenced based on which previous post was replied to the topics can quickly become disjointed. Like you, I just posted my first blog ever. This is my first reply ever. I have spent time on forums before, but as noted, these are different from blogs and have a different audience and intent. I came up with many of the same pros and cons that you did, especially the drawback of all posts being open to the rest of the internet. This can limit the amount of information that some students, like myself, are willing to share. It will certainly limit the amount of current job and location information that I place on the site.
ReplyDeleteEven with this drawback I think that the utilizing a blog over a discussion board creates significant opportunities. For one, not all institutions have an internal network like K-State. Gaining skills with open source blogging would open opportunities for some smaller institutions. This opens the same can of worms, both with perception and reality that is addressed by Ms. Witte, privacy and liability concerns related to allowing minors to create and maintain open source blogs as a school function. (I was not surprised that administrators had a problem with this, I was even less surprised when I noticed that she was teaching at a school on an Army installation.)
Overall, I expect that this exercise will generate an increase in both creativity and depth of conversation due to the change of environment and style of discussion.
I think I have to disagree with you and King and Cox (2011) about message boards.
ReplyDeleteThere are many non-institutional message boards that are indeed: voluntary, place to find answers, wide audience, virtual communities, chronological, single portal on a topic.
Here are few examples:
If you like to knit: http://www.knittingforums.com
If you are a mom and have questions: http://www.justmommies.com/forums/
If you ride motorcycles: http://www.bmwmoa.org/forum/
If you are a military wife: http://cinchouse.com/Forums/tabid/56/Default.aspx
If you like labrador retrievers: http://www.lab-retriever.net/board/
I'm sure you get my point, but the list goes on and on.
My argument is that blogs are very similar to discussion boards.
Katie,
DeleteThank you for the reply. I guess I was just looking at discussion boards in the context of formal education. It is incredible how the use of technology continues to expand our connections with people, places and topics of interest! Everyday I find something on the internet that provides me useful information or offers a different perspective on a given topic. Technology has paved the road to endless opportunities for learning and expanding our connections to the world.
Katie,
ReplyDeleteI agree that there are many different formats blogs, discussion boards, and forums and that the lines between the three have blurred. I looked at the justmommies.com link (believe it or not I have actually not been on that site before) and the format is almost identical to another forum that I utilize regularly http://www.deerforums.com/vbforums/index.php. It is a great location for information exchange and I have used it to both convey and receive information. Even with that I believe that the discussions tend to be linear and not as creative as they seem to be on most blogs.
One challenge on both types of boards is the ability for discussions to be “high jacked”. The K-State board actually has a pretty good format to prevent this because the view allows replies to be replied to rather than a flat view.
The funny thing is that I just randomly looked the boards up by topic on a google search to see if they existed and of course, they did! lol
ReplyDeleteJust type in "_____ forum" and you can find a forum on pretty much everything you never thought would ever have a forum!
Its quite fascinating, actually.
Welcome to your first blog! It looks great. I have created several blogs, but I am not disciplined or interesting enough (in my opinion) to keep it going. I agree with you in regards to a con of blogging being more of a time commitment, an advantage of message boards is that all of the discussion is contained in one location. Blogging requires visiting several different sites, reading the initial post as well as the comments and then commenting. So all of that considered, I would have to say that I don't see the potential for blogging to replace message board posts, at least not in the near future. Even though blogging has a great place in the classroom, message board posts keep everything contained.
ReplyDelete