Blogging Beyond Blackboard for Deeper Learning

This presentation describes the integration of interactive technology into the undergraduate English and Foreign Language curriculum by utilizing blogging to deepen student learning. It will address how blogging, as a pedagogical tool, holds the potential to encourage active student engagement with text, with instructor and with peers, while helping to develop important critical thinking skills and reflective learning practices essential to empowering autonomous learners. Students engage in both internal and external debate about content and the platform for sharing it, while deciding about what is significant to include in the blog and how to develop an appropriate and creative post. Constructivist theorists such as Piaget and Vygotsky have largely influenced previous educational experiences of the current cohort of university students. Therefore, the use of available interactive technologies, such as blogging, which engage students in metacognitive and self-directed learning, will enable instructors to meet the challenges of teaching this generation of college students while aligning pedagogy with the highest orders of thinking identified in Bloom’s Taxonomy. Blogging on an external platform, in particular, allows for an authentic audience, greater flexibility to express creativity and skill development beyond digital writing - all identified as important 21st century skills. The blogs are a permanent repository of student work that provides for a wider sharing of knowledge beyond the confines of a Learning Management System such as Blackboard or Angel