Open the Windows of Communication: Promoting Interpersonal and Group Interactions Using Blogs in Higher Education

Abstract

Using educational blogs enriches online learning by creating a peer dialogue in the form of a reader response or a peer-blogger-peer feedback sequence. The present study explores interpersonal and group interactions in an academic course using blogs. The findings show that, as predicted by the theory of electronic propinquity (TEP), the feeling of nearness transmitted by students via blog posts interacted with different behavior variables (i.e., choosing post content-type, calling for feedback, responding to peers' comments) and positively affected students’ interpersonal online interactions. Furthermore, bloggers' ongoing responses to readers' comments promote additional peers' feedback. According to the hypothesis, private authorship in personal blogs affected group interaction patterns in comparison to multi-authored wikis. While educational blogs promoted communication among all course students, wiki interactions were affected by student offline former acquaintance and social contact. The present study findings suggest some recommendations concerning the use of educational blogs in order to encourage interactivity among students: (1) projecting nearness to audience, (2) sharing work experiences, feelings related to learning or personal experiences, and especially sharing student thoughts, rather than providing information, (3) calling for feedback, and (4) responding to peers’ comments.