The Educational Affordances of Blogs

The educational affordances of blogs offer the opportunities for students to become self directed learners in a supportive social environment. Blogging activities can assist groups of students and their teachers in the development of cognitive, social and self directed learning skill. A group of students was asked to analyse the use renewable energy in the generation of electrical power. Students used commenting feature of blogs effectively for the purpose of praising and encouraging their peers, and also giving hints and tips for solving problems, they however did not coach each other on higher order skills therefore blogging requires a higher education value within the electrotechnology students. Blog is a tool used in the learning process, t can be evaluated from three aspects that is social affordance, cognitive affordance and motivatioal affordance.

Social Affordance

The blog is a kind of environment for people to write, learn, and to share the knowledge, information, and anything else. When students reread their articles published on the blog, they can modify some inaccurate perspectives and reflect it to deepen their feeling. At the same time, the blog is a platform which is convenient to communicate with each other. To the interesting topic and viewpoint, students could talk about and make comments with teachers, exchange their different ideas to get more new information and strategies. With the linkage, they could read other students' blog, which is another way to learn.This results in new understanding and point of view which help improve learning. In addition, the blog is a social media for our collaborative learning. To the same target, students can discuss and interact with other group members on the blog, present opinions and views, which is useful for students to broaden trains of thought and make them accomplish the task better. At the same time, it is in favour of fostering and proving the student's abilities of problem-solving.

Cognitive Affordance

  The design feature of the blog is to help, support, facilitate and enable person to think and know about something. It is easy to apply a blog on the internet, for example, I apply for my blog on the www.blogger.com. After getting my account, I can design my blog with the “dashboard”, which is the place for decorating, setting, writing, editing, and so on. In “dashboard” menu, I could use option “user” to invite other people to update my blog, use “theme” to choose different theme and tune it, use “links” to link URL which I am interested in, use “widget” to choose various items showed on the blog (categories, links, meta, calendar, tag, etc.), use “posts” to write something and insert pictures and video, the option “comments” inform us to read comment on our blogs, and others. All of those designs give us instruction and support to know and use the blog conveniently. This can also be applied to students.

Motivational Affordance

 Some research suggests that the motivation can be divided into two parts: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. The intrinsic motivation "refers to the pleasure and inherent satisfaction derived from a specific activity”; the extrinsic motivation “emphasizes performing a behaviour because it is perceived to be instrumental in achieving valued outcomes that are distinct from the activity” (Venkatesh and Speier 1999, p. 2).The intrinsic motivation refers to the person’s motivation, which is the motivation to use a blog. After learning how to build a blog and having my blog, I find it is not difficult to use a blog. Except for publishing the homework, I always design my blog, when I study how to insert video and pictures, I am excited to add some video and pictures into my article, it is really interesting for me, and I have got the sense of achievement. So I believe I am really keen on the blog now. Otherwise, the extrinsic motivation refers to blog, which is a kind of social media. Firstly, the blog is a channel for knowledge, information, comments, and links. We could publish, search and organise knowledge and information, comment on other person’s standpoint, link to what our favourite and interesting website. Then, the blog is a tool to develop sharing and communication. When we share our knowledge and information on the blog others can comment, discuss, and exchange ideas. When we read feedback, it is helpful for our learning. Lastly, as the educational and entertainment resource, the blog has automatic time and date stamps, which avoid misinformation; in addition, the blog is portable, if we have a computer and Internet connection, we could use it at anywhere and anytime.

Below is an image which analyses the affordances of blogs

Blogging is a useful tool in elearning as teachers we need to be fluent in how it works so as to manipulate blogging to pedagogy and andragogy.


References

J. H. Jung, Christoph Schneider, Joseph Valacich. (2010) Enhancing the Motivational Affordance of Information Systems: The Effects of Real-Time Performance Feedback and Goal Setting in Group Collaboration Environments. Management Science, Vol. 56, No. 4, April 2010 .724-742

 Samuel K. W. Chu, Alvin C. M. Kwan, Peter Warning (2012). Blogging for Information Management, Learning, and Social Support during Internship. Educational Technology & Society, 15(2), 168–178

Venkatesh and Speier, 1999