Analysis of weblog-based facilitation of a fully online cross-cultural collaborative learning course

Abstract

Online facilitation in a cross-cultural collaborative learning context is increasingly prevalent, but limited research has been conducted on the related issues, especially on facilitation via weblogs, which are increasingly used as an educational tool and becoming a significant component of many web-based learning environments. In this paper we address two issues: (i) how facilitators use weblogs as an educational instrument to support the students' activities in a fully online multi-national collaborative learning course; (ii) whether facilitation style plays a role in influencing the learners' working styles and performance in a setting where weblogs have been heavily used. The analysis results indicate the practicality of deploying weblogs as an effective online facilitation and learning tool, the rather intricate relationships between facilitation and learning styles mediated by some socio-cultural factors, and the usefulness of our proposed weblog analysis scheme. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.