Building an effective blog-based teaching platform in higher medical education

Abstract

As an educational tool, blog is one of the user-friendly technological means that supports teaching and learning processes in higher education. There are many ways to use blogging in teaching and learning. In our university, we try to build a blog-based teaching platform for higher medical education. This platform provides a constructive and interactive learning environment where students and instructors negotiate, discuss, reflect and evaluate individual understandings of learning and teaching practice and experience. The use of this blog-based teaching platform has shown a positive impact on learning and professional developments. In our experience, what makes this process more meaningful and sustainable are active participation and high quality interaction which require collaboration and interaction together with commitment and support from students and instructors. In essence, this paper not only introduces the blog-based teaching platform building by our university, but also discusses the potential of blogs to support reflection and communication in higher medical education, and explores the strengths and weaknesses of current practice in order to build a more effective platform in the future. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014.