Title : The Effect of Using Cooperative and Individual Weblog to Enhance
Writing Performances
Writer and
Institution : H. Gulhan Orhan Karsak1, Seval Fer, and Feza
Orhan from University of Turkey
Publisher : Journal of Educational
Technology & Society, 17 (4), 229–241.
Academic writing
is a skill that must be mastered by today's graduates. The teacher must be
creative to find the most appropriate tools in enhancing students’ writing. According
to (Boonk and Graham 2013) et.al he
defines that blended learning is generally defined as the integration of
internet-based learning and face-to-face. In addition, (Boonk and Graham 2013)
et.al Blogs are defined by different writers as web environments that are easy
to create and through which links such texts, pictures, and audio and video
files can be shared and updated; additionally, individuals from different
locations at different times can comment on these links. In this case, Weblogs
or blogs are one of the prominent Web 2.0 tools in the interactive web
technology environment applied in blended learning .
This research
tries to investigate the effect of using
cooperative and individual weblogs to enhance writing performance, based on
blended instructional design. The design of the research is
quantitative-qualitative (two-stage) mixed research. The researcher uses
pretest-posttest control group design as an experimental study and the views of
students in the experimental group as a case study. The subject of this
research is 5th grade students of elementary state school in Istanbul. The
researcher uses cooperative weblog on the experimental group worked in blended
learning environment, and an individual
weblog The result of this research is writing instruction in an individual
weblog-integrated learning environment based on blended instructional design,
in terms of the ideas/content aspect, ideas/content , performance on fluency,
organization and writing rules tasks contributed to the improvement of writing performance
more than writing instruction in a cooperative weblog-integrated learning
environment.
If I apply this individual
weblog- integrated learning environment based on blended instructional design
to students of elementary school in my region, there will be many drawbacks.
They are students’ skill to use the internet and the limited facilities that
the school or students have. I suggest that individual weblog-integrated
learning environment based on blended instructional design can be applied in
senior high school or University students since they have good facility, self
management and great skill in using internet.
