Blogs: A qualitative investigation into an instructor and undergraduate students' experiences

Abstract

This study reports on the experiences of an instructor and an undergraduate class who used blogs in their teaching and learning environment at Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey. Qualitative data were collected from observation of students' activities when working on blogs in the classroom, analyses of students' blog documents on the web, and interviews with 42 students. Most students reflected that blogs are user friendly and convenient tools for publishing and sharing studies. Moreover, blog implementations contributed positively to students' information searching and writing skills, despite the limited opportunities that many students had for Internet access outside the university. However, students' ignorance regarding copyright issues and their tendency to copy information from online sources and paste it into their blogs was a common problem.