Blogs and Forums
as Communication and Learning Tools
in a Massive Open Online Course
Sui Fai John Mak, Roy Williams, Jenny Mackness
Business Systems and Access Section, TAFE NSW-Sydney Institute, suifai.mak@tafensw.edu.au
Department of Mathematics, University of Portsmouth, roy.williams@port.ac.uk
Independent Consultant, jenny.mackness@btopenworld.com
Contents
1. The Story
2. The Research Process
 Framework #1
 Framework #2
 Data
3. Shifts & Strategies
4. Motivation
5. Analysis … Framework #3



Openness versus Autonomy
Structure and Openness
Affordances
6. Conclusions
7. Questions



Design Issues?
Research Issues?
Next Affordances?
The Story …
The Open Invitation
Once upon a time, two educators decided to run a new
kind of course.
So they set up a really 'open' 12 week MOOC (Massive
Online Open Course: CCK08).
They invited everyone, via the Open Learning Daily
network, from all over the world, to register for free, and
more than 2000 people initially signed on.
They also registered 24 fee-paying students at the
University of Manitoba, who were assessed, to finance it.
The Story …
The tools
All the participants were encouraged to create
their own Personal Learning Environments or
Networks of web2.0 tools, in languages of their
choice.
A moodle discussion forum was provided, in
which participants could create topics, on the
weekly themes, or on ‘general interest’ themes.
Blogs were encouraged, and the Open Learning
Daily newsletter provided an aggregator of blog
postings, as well as selected forum postings, and
several tags were set up.
Online webinars, and weekly readings were
provided.
The Story …
The event
It started with lots of traffic – too much to follow,
but that was part of the plan.
Pretty soon a Troll came along, and dominated
and bullied her way across the forums.
Forums, blogs, Second Life, additional Language
forums, etc, all took place.
Towards the end, participation had dropped off,
and, in the week on ‘power’ one of the
instructors decided to ‘force-feed’ the course
updates to everyone, as an illustration of
inappropriate use of power. Tempers flared.
The Story …
The research
The researchers participated in the MOOC, and after it was
finished, set up a research wiki, a survey, and email interviews,
to explore:
•Reasons why people chose blogs or forums?
•What affects strategic choices between blogs and forums?
The research wiki, which captures the research process, is open
access at: http://connectivismresearchprojectb.pbwiki.com
Survey: 167 bloggers, 132 forum users, 2 course
instructors: 30% response.
eMail interviews: 58 self-selected, including 2 instructors:
38% response rate
The Process
The researchers developed a series of
descriptive and analytic frameworks:
Framework #1: Thematic: MOOC
The CMap of the issues in the MOOC
yielded four themes:
• Personal Connections
• Conceptual Connections
• Use of Technology (principally
blogs and forums)
• Approaches to Learning
These themes were used for the survey
questions, on blogs and forums.
The Process
Framework #2: Thematic: Blog / Forum Distinctions
An analysis of the survey resulted in a slightly different
framework
• Personal Connections
 Conceptual Connections
 Personal Autonomy
 Identity
 Approaches to Learning
These themes were used for the email interviews.
The Findings
Changes, shifts and Strategies: survey data
The analysis of the research data, from the
survey, showed:
3.1 Use of Media
 82% posted to a blog
 86% ran their own blogs
 75% posted to other people’s blogs and
 84% posted to forums
The Findings
3.2 Preferred modes of interaction:
 Blogs 41%
 Forums 31%
 Blogs and Forums: 24%
 Other Media: 4.5%
The Findings
3.3 Shifts and Strategies
Left the Forums
57% ceased participating in forums for some or all
of the time, because of:
Structural problems: 27%:
o lack of facilitation
o unwieldy forums
Unacceptable behaviour: 65%
o Forceful intellectual debates
o Feeling of forced participation, and
o Rude behaviour
The expertise divide: 8%
The Findings
3.4 Moved into blogs
Not all of these participants moved into
blogs – some left the course. Those who
did move into blogs did so because of:
o Structural reasons: 15.3%:
o Unacceptable behaviour: 46.2%:
o The advantages of blogs: 36.4%
o Course requirements to write
blogs: 1.9%
The Findings
3.5 Motivation: Reasons for blogging
(ranked)
1) Space to develop my own ideas
2) Ownership
3) Self-expression
4) Familiarity with using blogs
5) An attractive layout to express ideas
6) Personal learning
7) Quiet slow reflection
8) Personal relationships
9) Own pace
10) Establishing a presence
11) Thoughtful long-term relationships, and
12) Personal voice.
The Findings
3.6 Motivation: Reasons for forum use
(ranked)
1) Familiarity with forums
2) Faster pace
3) More lively debates
4) Tougher challenges
5) Big picture links
6) Less effort
7) Easier to find and follow
8) More people to interact with
9) More open discussions
10) Relationships based on ideas
11) More accessible
12) More sense of being in a group.
4. Changes, shifts and Strategies: email
interview data
The analysis of the email interviews shifted
the framework yet again, to:
Framework #3
 Openness and Autonomy
 Structure and Openness
 Affordances:
 Home >><< Bazaar
 Long loop >><< Short loop
 Engagement >><< Reflection
4.1 Openness <versus> autonomy
Value:
Self-organisation, highly interactive
micro-agents >> emergence: new ideas, new networks.
As:
Individuals? (unfettered liberalism: in ‘networks’)
Community? (complexity with constraints: in ‘groups’)
Problems:
Negative attractors, diversions, intellectual and
emotional overload.
•The course was designed for maximum autonomy
• Most of the shifts into blogs were because forums didn’t work for
the participants – compromising autonomy
4.2 Structure and Openness: Aggregated network of blogs
An aggregated network of blogs, provided a new form of facilitator's
‘weaving the threading’ – blogs posts were profiled, with little or no
comment, in the OLDaily newsletter
The success of blogging depended on:
 On the positive side:
 The ‘protected private space of blogs
 The convenience of a ‘blog-digest’, and the ‘status’
reward of being cited on the high profile OLDaily.
 On the negative side:
 60% left the forums.
 Half of these were ‘refugees from the forums’, because
of inappropriate forum behaviour, or lack of facilitation.
4.3 Affordances
In general, blogs were seen as more useful for personal relationships and quiet,
slower, reflective learning. Forums for conceptual and more engaged learning.
Agreement rankings were stronger for blogs than forums.
The choice between blogs and forums is more nuanced, strategic, dynamic and
contextual than a simple choice of technology. Participants adapted their strategies
quite often across all 3 sets of affordances (below), along the continuum of each
dimension.
Key Affordances:
o Home >< Bazaar
o Long-loop >< Short-loop (quiet >< busy)
o Engagement >< Reflection
Affordances are “The product of the interaction between the user and the
environment. Each interaction potentially alters the identity of the user, as well
as the micro– environment.
Affordances
Home >< Bazaar
 Home base < to > communal space.
 Connecting with people < to > connecting
with
ideas.
 Different learners use different media to
pursue
the same affordances
 Individual blogs can be seen as personal
aggregators
 Influenced by context and prior experience
Affordances
Long-loop >< Short-loop
 Concerns pace, crafted response, type
of sequence and turn around time
between posts.
 Not necessarily short = forums, long =
blogs (Twitter is a hybrid of both). Long for
reflection. Short for engagement.
 Long loops support individual
ownership. Short loops are multi-track,
multi-purpose and multi-perspective.
 Both influenced by expertise divide and
lack of English fluency.
Affordances
Engagement >< Reflection
 Both blogs and forums support
engagement. Participants moved between
blogs and forums, e.g. writing a reflective
post in a blog and then moving it into a
forum.
 Engagement in blogs and forums was
influenced by how people build up their
knowledge base, consolidate their learning
resources and manage their own personal
learning context.
 Contributing to forums was influenced by
audience - number of possible readers
Conclusions
 Choice between blogs and forums is contextual and
strategic
 There were 3 distinct groups – bloggers, forum users
and both
 The 3 identified dimensions of learning are more
independent of particular media than was anticipated
 E-learning users are maturing – creating personal
learning networks and affordances rather than just
being consumers or content creators
 Maturing e-learners are using technologies in
innovative and nuanced ways
Questions: 1. Design Issues:
Using Blogs, Forums, for Emergent, Creative
Affordances:
oMedia <&/or> Affordances?
oMedia Guides <or>Creative User Communities?
oWhat and how much structure?
Affordances:
 Home >< Bazaar?
 Long loop >< Short loop?
 Engagement >< Reflection?
 Others?
Questions 2: Research Issues
Frameworks: what frameworks do we need for researching
web3.0 learning?
•Learning Theory
•Interactive Theory
•Complexity
•Digital Residents/ Digital Visitors
•Digital Learning Ecologies
•Augmented / Embedded/ Uncanny Realities?
Future Questions
Next Affordances?
• Twitter: the end of celebrity?
 Kinaesthetics: Wii’s, iPads, and ...
 Clouds?
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Stephen Downes and George Siemens
for the CCK08 course and for allowing us to
discuss this paper with CCK09 participants.
Also thanks to Matthias Melcher for his
contributions to this research
4/13/2015
Blogs and Forums as Communication and
Learning Tools in MOOC - Networked
Learning Conference 2010
27