Characterising the different blogging behaviours of students on an online distance learning course

Since the early years of the twenty-first century there has been an increasing interest in using Web 2.0 technologies to support learning in Higher Education. However, previous research suggests that the integration of blogging into courses can be difficult and cites problems with issues such as student compliance. We adopt a learner-centred perspective and explore students’ (rather than their educators’) understanding of how blogs and blogging can support distance learning in Higher Education. We report on a study of UK Open University (OU) students on an online distance learning Masters course, that has enabled us to determine the issues that are important to these bloggers, and we describe five ways in which they appropriated blogging to suit their individual needs. We discuss the importance of making blogging activities flexible so that students can blog to meet their own needs whilst still attending to the requirements of their course