A case study of blog-based learning in Korea: Technology becomes pedagogy

The unique technological functions of a weblog have earned it a growing reputation as a pedagogical tool for educators across fields of study. While using the blog as a communicative and pedagogical platform in two different graduate classes in Korea, this study explored the premise of a weblog as a place for networked individuality. The classes studied employed blogs as a learning environment in which both active participation and discussion among team members was required to resolve learning tasks and issues. The first finding from this study was that discussion occurring in a blog forms multi-dimensional and multi-layered interactivity among the team. Second, a blog can function as a place where instructors and students can experience decentralized relationships among themselves. In the end, blogging provides an opportunity to form a social constructivist learning environment where both students and the instructor can experience a community of practice, while preserving their unique networked individuality.

► A blogging activity is a pedagogical tool for learner-centered, community-based, and content- or knowledge-based instruction. ► Discussion occurring in a blog forms multi-dimensional and multi-layered interactivity among the team. ► With a blog, each learner has some power, some voice, and some sense of control over his own learning. ► Blogging enables decentralized power relationships between students and instructors in a space where they share resources as co-learners. ► Blogs display a more complex, interwoven, and intimate sense of community due to trackback and openness.