Use of Blogs in Online Communities

Use of Blogs in Online Communities

by Sylvia Currie -
Number of replies: 18
One of my next projects for SCoPE (after I catch up on all of the others thoughtful) is to create a SCoPE community blog, or perhaps more than one. I've been trying to wrap my head around how to best integrate blogs into online community life.

I have a few purposes in mind:
  1. An ongoing newsy blog to highlight activities, changes in the community, tips, etc. I suppose it could potentially replace the MicroSCoPE newsletter
  2. A community coordinator reflection blog which would be more like a journal of what I do and why. This came to mind from an experience teaching the "Role of the eModerator" course in Knowplace. I kept a daily log of what I saw happening in the forum discussions, my thought processes around whether or not I should intervene, what I wished I had done differently, etc. The participants found it very useful, especially in that context where the focus of the course was on moderating. As a community coordinator reflection blog I suppose there would be parts I would want to keep private though!
  3. An alternative method of ongoing discussions. I have no idea how this would work. 
How have you used blogs in your communities? As a community coordinator/host/moderator do you find that maintining blogs means duplicating content? Is your blog taking away from your community listserve & forum discussions in any way?

Please point us to your blogs!


In reply to Sylvia Currie

Funny Sylvia should ask us this...

by Sarah Haavind -
I just spent the better part of yesterday gathering what I could on educational uses of blogging and then I saw Sylvia's request about community uses. Interesting! I have now started a blog myself, finally, in the spirit of learning by doing.

You can visit my blog at http://elgg.net/sarahh/weblog/. Remember, I just started yesterday. ;-) But if you go there, you will see some of the resources I've found on the topic. Thanks for these go to my colleague, the ever-helpful Curt Bonk. His blog is here: http://travelinedman.blogspot.com/

I also poked around this link: http://www.blogger.com a bit. So far my conclusions about the educational uses of blogging are that they can be valuable for individuals, but I'm not sure how they add value to communities particularly. Sure, you can comment on postings in the blog, but it doesn't seem you can reply-to-reply. (Am I wrong about that?). Keeping the thread depth at two seems a move backwards, not forward, from the community perspective.

I can see how people appreciate the way they find their public voice with a blog. I think that is what draws us to blogging. Perhaps a community could collectively build a blog, but it seems like a threaded discussion is much more functional for a community. I don't quite see the value of replacing a newletter with a blog.

From a course perspective, Sylvia's description of how she used a blog in Knowplace as a kind of meta-conversation about the real conversation sounded like a really neat tool -- though as she points out, a neat tool for faciliators of conversations teaching others to facilitate conversations, not necessarily for other teaching contexts.

So hummmm. Yes, I'm a little stumped. To hear about it at conferences, it sounds like suddenly we have a new hammer and everything is a nail. I have heard of some neat educational uses however: In a foreign language class, everyone must keep a blog in the new language. (However, I wonder how easy it is for the instructor to view them all at grading time?) Any online journaling activity would work. Members of a group project could gather material and ideas in a blog so everything is together (though I'm not sure why that is better than a threaded bulletin board). The instructor wouldn't necessarily need to visit these. Hummmm.

I'm interested to hear what others can offer to Sylvia's questions from the community perspective. I also wonder, has anyone integrated blogs into a course they taught or participated in a course where blogs were used?
Sarah
In reply to Sarah Haavind

Funny you should site me...Re: Funny Sylvia should ask us this...

by Curt Bonk -

Thanks for citing me Sarah.  I am still learning all the ins and outs of blogs and blogging myself.  yes, there is a pressing need for threaded discussions in Blogger and easier ways to post web resources and and and (we need many tools).  Among the differences from an online forum are the following:

1. It is a personal space and a personally shared space.  When you use a blog, it is your tool and your space to reflect on things and draw people in. A discussion forum is everyone's space.

2. Related to #1, it is a way of building identity; I am TravelinEdMan and no one else.  You can send others to your personal URL or space.  You typically cannot do that in a discussion. 

3. It is semi-permanent.  When a class ends, an online discussion often ends, but not a blog.

4. You can invite others to it--anyone including parents and grandparents.  Discussion forums are usually restricted to a community of class.

5. You can keep building on them after a class has ended and look back at your personal growth.  In a discussion forum. you often cannot do that.

Ok, there are some differences perhaps if you are talking about a discussion forum that is limited to a particular community or class.  I am sure that there are at least 5 more to get us to 10 things.

In reply to Curt Bonk

Identity identity identity

by Sylvia Currie -
Forget about location location location!

A recent exchange with TravelinEdMan Curt really hit home how useful blogs are for building identity identity identity. I found out so much about Curt in from a quick browse through his blog. We had a quick conversation by email that saw bits of conversation from community forum posts, email, and blogs merging together.

Here in SCoPE we have a profile, but that's more of an overview of accomplishment, interests, current projects, etc. It rarely gets edited. A blog can give the scoop on what an individual is up to at certain points in time. It can also provide interesting insights on that individual's opinions, philosophies, and connections with other people. Now I wish everyone had a blog! Maybe when I get going on one I'll learn more about myself :-)


In reply to Sylvia Currie

Dead Poets Re: Identity identity identity

by Curt Bonk -

I think when Robin Williams reads a quote in Dead Poets Society about truth and identity and that someday we will all be dead and pushing up daffidills (sp), that he is spot on.  A homepage is a static document for most of us and so is a profile provided in an online community.  What makes sharing online pictures and blogs and now video blogs so engaging is that they become the externalization of one's identity.  These are all pieces of identity, but the blog perhaps comes closest to it.  In part, since it is fresh and new and alive with thoughts one only had a few moments ago or perhaps years earlier.  It is the permanency of text but the changeability of ideas that makes a blog exciting.  It is an evolving biography of who we are and what we do.  It is something that can get others to reflect on who we are and also to personally reflect on who we are.

Identity.  We all need it or we would be checking out on life.  It is what life is.  Now a blog can also help stretch your community beyond one letter to a friend to an entire community of millions (or billions) of potential readers.  At the same time, it maintains some of the passion and emotion of a letter and is not distilled down or emptied of one's true self for a publisher to feel safe about.  You really get a sense of a person or a story that he or she is sharing.  It is about story telling and having those stories remain available for others. 

Of course, more tools are needed such as tools to connect our blog stories and look for themes and patterns but they are coming.  And many are already here.  Hopefully, we will use them to share and intertwine our identities before we push up daffidills.

(By the way, before posting this response, I posted it to my blog; see http://travelinedman.blogspot.com/.  Smile!)

In reply to Curt Bonk

Re: Dead Poets Re: Identity identity identity

by Salvor Gissurardottir -

Curt, you say "Now a blog can also help stretch your community beyond one letter to a friend to an entire community of millions (or billions) of potential readers"  this of course is true but we also have to prepare us for the time when information became worthless... when information becomes free and so readily available that we don´t pay attention to it.. like water... like the air that we breath.. we only notice it what it is  not enough of it.  This is particularly scary for us that make our living as a knowledge workers, this means many "business models" of today will not be working. Perhaps people will stop to read... some already have... people will expect to have automated tools that search for info for them when they need... just as news aggregators do now.

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Identity identity identity

by Nancy White -
I have to chime in and say that blogging gives a view over time of a person that is FAR more powerful than a bio, but it sure takes more time to absorb. So I follow blogs of people I want to learn from, get to know, work with and TRUST. I check bios just to identify initial connections. What is also interesting is to follow people's del.icio.us tags, flickr feeds or things like suprglu pages. These aggregate what THEY are paying attention to.
In reply to Nancy White

Re: Identity identity identity

by Salvor Gissurardottir -
Nancy, tagclouds are one interesting way of seeing what a person is interested in or stands for. There are now also tools that take several blogs (or feeds) and make a tagcloud from the community. This is interesting , see www.tagcloud.com  at least the idea but I could not get it to work on my feeds.
In reply to Sylvia Currie

strength is in weak ties

by Barbara Berry -
Hi,
Have recently tuned into the discussion again as I am keen on the blog as a networking tool. I have recently been spending time thinking about blogs, networks, resource exchange and the concept of the social identity obtained through the process. If you are interested in the early network theory I recommend reading about Mark Granovetter's work on the "strength is in the weak ties". Here is some information on his work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Granovetter

I have just recently started my own blog as an experiment in how the blog might be a tool for networking, constructing a social identity in cyberspace and of course learning.....

Cheers,
Barb
In reply to Barbara Berry

Re: strength is in weak ties

by Salvor Gissurardottir -

Barbara, thanks for the link. I find the work of Mark Granovetter most interesting perhaps because my background (my first university degree) in in economics and I have always been interested in how technology changes society and what are the mechanics of change.

In reply to Sarah Haavind

Another blog story

by Sylvia Currie -
There was an interesting discussion a couple months ago on the Online Facilitation list faciltated by Nancy White. Here's a link to Nancy's blog. The question was whether or not Nancy's contributions (and others) to her blog were taking away from the list. In other words, could or should the the two exist side-by-side?

I'll need to dig to refresh my memory on some of the thoughts of the list members. Maybe Nancy can give us an update on how this has worked out.

Have any of you been struggling with this question?
In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Another blog story

by Nancy White -
Hey, Sylvia. I think my blogging has "taken away" in some respects from the list. For two reasons. First, I have less time/attention to pay to seeding the list with links and resources -- I tend to put all of those on my blog. Second, it made me realize that my resource offerings were one of the "engines" that powered the list so I decided to try and get the community more involved ... by stepping back and only offering provocative questions now and again. The traffic dropped.

But here is the flip side: since I started blogging, I think that has driven the number of new members to the list up. Plus the RSS feedability of Yahoogroups enables people to "consume" it more like a blog than a discussion list. So it becomes an information flow rather than a conversational flow. But there is some sort of symbiosis going on as well. It is not all drain.

Lots of dynamics. It might be fun to try and model or draw out some of these dynamics. This is a half baked fast post because I've avoided work all morning playing with www.squidoo.com and now have to WORK!!
In reply to Sarah Haavind

Re: Funny Sylvia should ask us this...

by Salvor Gissurardottir -

Sarah,

I have integrated blogs into all my courses since 2002. My website from 2002 (I won European E-learning award from the European Schoolnet for that project) about how to use blogs as one part of the student portfolio is here: http://starfsfolk.khi.is/salvor/basics/

Right now Elgg is most near to what I think learning system should be... even if am not very satisfied with the limitation of that system.

Blogs are just one part of the portfolio - the dynamic part - the part describing the process - the learning journal.

But there is other reason for me to use blogs in my courses. That is I teach educational tecnology and how to integrate Internet in learning and teaching and blogs are the easiest and best suited tools for explaining og trying out some new Internet tools.

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Videoblogging from Les Blogs in Paris December 5th and 6th

by Salvor Gissurardottir -

Hi all,

I am now in Paris, France. I come her for the Les Blogs 2.0 conference that ended yesterday. More than 300 bloggers mostly from Europe were there and I want to share with you how I think these bloggers are part of community of practice and how they debate.

First I like to point you to my videoblog with several videoclips from the conference: http://samkoma.net/videoblog/  and to webpage where I try to list my blogs, I am always creating new ones, trying out different tools, right now my main blog in English is on Elgg http://elgg.net/salvor/weblog  but a list of my blogs is http://samkoma.net/salvor

I think it is wise to pay attention to the bloggers on this conference and how they behave and how they connect and work together, they are using tools that will after not so long time be accessible in ordinary high school and university setting.

Almost all the bloggers have RSS feeds and use some kind of aggregators to cope with the information overflow.  Conference participants contribute to discussion before, while and after the conference by tagging their contributions with the tag LESBLOGS and ping  services like Technorati when they post something on their blogs. That means you can follow the dialogue here http://www.technorati.com/tags/lesblogs

You can also see all the pictures in Flickr tagged with LESBLOGS (around 4000 of them - from two Les Blogs conferences) http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/lesblogs/

There is an interesting debate/story travelling accross bloghosphere and this is discussed on various blogs and blog-related ezines. See my post about this: http://samkoma.net/videoblog/?p=10

I am not familiar with use of backchannel at conferences and as you can see from the videoclip some found that offending but some also like this.

Before the conference started bloggers were starting to read each others blogs in real-time, an OPML file had been created with feeds from all the participiants. This is technical stuff but I expect we will all start to use such files after a while.

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Blogging tools within a Community

by John Grant -
Hi all,

There are some great resources you've all provided here, and I must say I'm quite impressed with your own blogs!

As blogging has become somewhat of a 'fad', much like Pogs, Magic (the card game), and tupperware parties once were ;) ... it's hard to go a day without hearing about this phenomenon now. I find it extremely interesting.

I'm the Community Coordinator/Host for SFU Co-op's Online Learning Community , a community which has nearly 3000 members now - the majority of which are post-secondary students.  I'm relatively new to online community environments (only about 2 years) and therefore am somewhat of a sponge (and novice) when it comes to researching new opportunities. Our administrative team has casually discussed implementing a blogging feature for our members themselves to utilize so they can create their own blogs via our Community. Of course, this could be rather complex, particularly if we were to host the blogs on our Community's server. We would also want to feature information (learning module, weblinks, discussion forum, etc.) specifically pertaining to how students could develop/create/maintain a blog for whatever purposes they'd like.

One of our student admin members created a pseudo-blog in our Discussion Forums to see the reaction/activity he would receive as a result of posting his thoughts. For the most part the "blog" entires stand alone with little activity, however the occasional one will spark some debate and stimulate discussion.

I have a general question to start with: Do you find that people create blogs largely to share with others and to serve as a purpose? Or, are they primarily for personal use and reflection - similar to an online journal/diary? Through some cursory research that I've done, it appears to be a mixture of both.

I'm curious if any of you may have any experience dealing with a seemingly complex and large-scale blogging-system within a community, such as the one we're contemplating. Do you feel this could be an effective service to provide to our members? In addition, do you have any suggestions as to how this endeavour could potentially succeed?

I know there are a lot of questions here, so any response is welcome (even if it's only a general comment).

I truly look forward to your responses!

Cheers,

John
In reply to John Grant

Re: Blogging tools within a Community

by Nick Noakes -
Hi John

Sounds like you have a great job! I have one experience as a user of the Educause website (http://educause.edu) which uses the Plone open source,  content management system, which allows the setting up of blogs for it's members. I have to say that I only used it early on and haven't posted to it for a very long time. Why? cos I already had a blog and most of the other members did too. And your post, plus this single experience of community supplied blog, got me thinking. And it sparked some questions I think might need to be answered before deciding how best to procede for you community.

  • What does the admin team think would be the value to the members of having blogs?
  • Have the members been asked? (and if they don't know what they are, how would the potential value be communicated? i.e. the different ways of using blogs, and the corresponding different values of blogs, be communicated?)
  • Do/How many members already have blogs? Do they need another or would it be more productive to aggregate their 'external' blogs (or flickr, del.icio.us, etc) inside the community space?
  • What about the value of collaborative/group blogs vs individual ones?
I must admit that I could see the last but one option as being very benefcial and powerful. One of the problems these day for people who work online a lot if having multiple spaces - and one blog is more than enough for the majority of us. So the aggregation of members' work and attention online through personal feed compilers like suprglu (that Nancy mentioned above) being brought into the community space could be very interesting.

What if you asked (and showed) members who were interested how to use these tools/services and how to aggregate them and then how to bring them into the community using a feed compiler like suprglu and then how to have a dynamic page for them of their suprglu feed using something like Feed2JS. This way they retain ownership of their online spaces like their blogs, social photosharing, social bookmarking but this is brought into the community to both share resources and to share a deeper understand of the community membership.

I'm a teacher and I've been thinking about this for my classes. I don't necessarily need more online spaces coz (liek all of us), I'm already stretched too thin). But I could do with ways of sharing what I'm already doing and finding out what people from my communities, without more 'creation'. I can thinking of a number of communities I mean where this would help. And I've been thinking about this a lot for teacher and student (undergraduate and postgraduate) communities, where I work.

Some thoughts aorund your questions.

Nick

In reply to Nick Noakes

Re: Blogging tools within a Community

by Sylvia Currie -
Nick's comment about aggregation and Nancy's suprglu tip lead me down more paths and I'm ever so grateful for that!

Awhile back we set up an area (repository of sorts, using the glossary tool) in SCoPE and asked members to add their blogs there:
http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca/mod/glossary/view.php?id=234
If you haven't added yours yet please do!

There's an interesting entry from Richard Smith about why he doesn't blog, and about pulling together personal writings, which is along the lines of suprglu. Then I got thinking back to the purpose of blogs to support communities and I thought wouldn't it be useful to glue together content from members' blogs (as well as other content). When I reread Nick's response to John I realized that's exactly what he was proposing. DOH! It only took me a month to get it. blush

Does anyone have examples of suprglu-type sites that extend beyond glueing together personal content?


In reply to Nick Noakes

Re: Blogging tools within a Community

by John Grant -
Hi Nick,

Thanks very much for your very thoughtful response! And my apologies for taking what seems like an eternity to respond...

You raise excellent points with regards to incorporating blogs within an already existing Community. One of the positive challenges we all face when administering an online community is continually adapting to the technological needs of our members and staying ahead of the game, so to speak. It seems that once we adopt and understand one technology and tool, yet another one or two are introduced and we are continually upgrading our knowledge and skillset - which is not a negative thing by any means...

With regards to the initial questions you posed, our team has had some cursory discussion with regards to incorporating blogs or a blogging tool within our Community and here's what I can report on so far:
  • What does the admin team think would be the value to the members of having blogs?
       We're increasingly noticing that students are turning to blogs to record their thoughts, share their experiences, and network with other individuals (via links, etc.) We just recently held interviews for a few upcoming student positions and several of our candidates provided blogs as samples of their technological skills, interests, etc. As our Community is built upon sharing career development practices and experiences, we felt students may be able to create blogs to outline their co-op (work-integrated learning) experiences. In all, the initial idea was the have the blogs center around this personal/academic realm.
  • Have the members been asked? (and if they don't know what they are, how would the potential value be communicated? i.e. the different ways of using blogs, and the corresponding different values of blogs, be communicated?)
       At this point we haven't communicated these thoughts with our members yet, as we'd still like to assess what the benefits may be prior to polling them. As our Community is based upon academic and personal development combined, our team would need to develop a communication outlining the various benefits and opportunities available to students (i.e. blogs are an excellent way to reflect upon your learning outcomes in the work place, a great way to market yourself to future employers, a great way to inform other students about your position and the company you work for, etc.) This would also involve a great deal of brainstorming and buy-in from our staff who work directly with the students. in addition, an additional consideration we would need to take is whether to monitor the blogs and utilize them as an assessment piece.
  • Do/How many members already have blogs? Do they need another or would it be more productive to aggregate their 'external' blogs (or flickr, del.icio.us, etc) inside the community space?
       This is an excellent question, Nick, and one that we're definitely taking into account. One question we'll need to address is what proportion of our students currently have a blog, and what proportion would like to have a blog but don't know how to create and/or manage one? You raise some good points about incorporating the existing 'external' blogs utilizing various programs and features...
  • What about the value of collaborative/group blogs vs individual ones?
       This is one question I had never considered - establishing a collaborative/group blog. Our Community currently has discussion forums which can somewhat serve as a blogging-like experience for a collective group (i.e. students who are looking for their first work placement), however we've noticed that students are hesitant to post. We're currently looking into ways that we can encourage our members to use these means. As a result, it raises a question as to whether we should look at exploring a new initiative (blogging) until we have 'ironed out the wrinkles' in our existing features.

I must say, I'm intrigued by the idea of using a feed compiler like suprglu as suggested by many in this thread. I'll be sure to look at this option in more depth and to consult with our technical team. You've raised some great benefits associated with this.

Again, thanks for your insightful and much appreciated response. I"ll be sure to keep you posted as to our decisions.

Best,

John