Motivation and participation in learning blogs : challenging the role of assessment

Learning about, and developing, a professional teacher identity is targeted in university undergraduate teacher education courses. One avenue to implement this is through social media (Web 2.0), such as blogs, wikis and, more recently, Facebook.Research supports the benefits of blogs in learning and teaching. However, it also demonstrates that assessment is the key in the number, length and quality of blogs posted. The qualitative study reported here tracked and tallied 135 students’ blog postings and analysed responses on a survey. The paper identifies aspects of the relationship among the blogs posted, reasons for posting and not posting, and student tutorial attendance. Evidence is provided of the academic value of non-assessed and non-compulsory blogs in a core professional development, second year Bachelor of Education subject