Title: Examining the blog use in a faculty development programme: a multiple case study

Authors: Shenghua Zha; Andrea Harpine Adams; Joshua Mathews-Ailsworth

Addresses: Center for Instructional Technology, James Madison University, MSC 4602, 1251 Carrier Drive, Harrisonburg, VA, 22807, USA ' Center for Instructional Technology, James Madison University, MSC 1702, 800 S. Main St., Harrisonburg, VA, 22807, USA ' Department of Human Resources, Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community, 1501 Virginia Avenue, Harrisonburg, VA, 22802, USA

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine the values of blog use in an annual faculty development programme occurring in 2010 and 2011 at a four-year mid-Atlantic university in the USA. A framework of educational affordances of blogs was adopted to analyse the participants' behaviour on blogs over time. In addition, this study revealed different blog use between instructors who were experienced and who had no prior experience in online teaching. Results show that in addition to engaging participants in self-expression and self-reflection a blog helped programme facilitators to discern different behaviours and learning needs of participants with diverse online teaching experience. Implications of using blogs in similar education programmes are also discussed in this paper.

Keywords: blog use; professional development; faculty development; higher education; universities; USA; United States; social media; internet; world wide web; blogs; blogging; bloggers; social networking; networks; educational affordances; participant behaviour; instructors; prior experience; online teaching; e-learning; electronic learning; online learning; self-expression; self-reflection; programme facilitators; learning needs; teaching experience; education programmes; James Madison University; learning technology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLT.2013.052824

International Journal of Learning Technology, 2013 Vol.8 No.1, pp.5 - 19

Published online: 31 Mar 2014 *

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