Ed Tech DesignERs

Next to the phrase, “social constructivism,” in the dictionary should be a photo of students blogging about the week’s lesson.  Blogging is a type of journaling done online and can cover a wide range of topics.  In education, blogging can create the ideal conditions for social learning where students consider a topic and create posts to ask questions, pose solutions or support their viewpoints.  An educator can leverage this technology to increase mastery of content by asking students to weigh in on a question that emerges from their classwork.  To encourage this type of collaborative learning, instructors must motivate students by participating themselves: assigning tasks and discussions is a good way to do this (Izzah, et al., 2020). 

Mobile technology can increase the effectiveness of blogging for microlearning.  Once the main topic is taught, a series of blog posts elucidating different aspects of the subject matter can increase the frequency of student engagement with the material and expand on ideas to deepen understanding.  This can be particularly useful for the autodidact by expanding the lesson beyond the lecture.

High frequency low dose learning has been shown to help students maintain knowledge and skills, particularly with content the student does not use often (Sutton, et al., 2011).  Blogging can be used to produce short blasts of information that bring the student back into the mindset of the original training and gives them a chance to think about the information long after the course is done.

In medical education, students can not learn a subject in the course of their study and then bury it deep in their memories when their next course begins.  Instead, each course builds on the one before it which acts as a foundation for the new information.  Blogging can help bridge the gap between courses. 

Resources to get you started:

Learn how to start your own blog with Word Press thru Blue Host Click here

Get a tutorial on how to write your first blog Click here

References:

Izzah, N., Kadir, A., Menengah, S. Birdor, K. (2020). Students’ perceptions and information; sharing patterns in learning authoring system course through blogging. International Journal of EmergingTechnologies. 15(19) https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v15i19.10950

Sutton, R.N.. Niles, D., Meaney, P.A., Aplenc, R., French, B.,Abellia, B.S.,Lengetti, E.L., Berg, R.A., Helfaer, M.A., Nadkarni, V. (2011). Low-dose, high-frequency CPR training improves skill retention of in-hospital pediatric providers.  Pediatrics (2011) 128 (1): e145–e151. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2010-2105