The Analysis of the Blogs Created in a Blended Course through the Reflective Thinking Perspective

Blogs have evolved from simple online diaries to communication tools with the capacity to engage people in collaboration, knowledge sharing, reflection and debate. Blog archives can be a source of information about student learning, providing a basis for ongoing feedback and redesign of learning activities. Previous studies show that blogs can enhance reflective thinking, provide deeper learning and construct the knowledge. The aim of this study was to analyze the content of the student's blogs to achieve the reflections and the reflections level of the students. The study was conducted at a second year undergraduate level course called "Instructional Technologies and Material Design". The course was redesigned for blended learning model. The researchers used the Drupal web development software to create blogs and integrated them to the course website. They used content analysis method and reflective writing framework to analyze postings in the blogs. The purpose of data analysis was to explore participants' reflections and blog entries within the educational settings. Findings suggest that students mostly wrote descriptive writing at the descriptive reflection level in three main themes, including the course, learning and personal thoughts. By focusing on this authentic blogging practice, this study contributes to an understanding of how to harness blogging the in higher education settings.