Collaborative Narratives: Collaborative Learning in the Blogosphere

This research explores the use of Blogs as an application that is well suited for the development of a learning community. When aggregated through the use of syndication technologies, student-maintained Blogs form a community known as a Blogosphere. The study proposes that such a Blogosphere promotes the construction of a learning community where individuals are able to conduct reflective analysis, observe how others grapple with new information, interact with classmates, and receive feedback from the instructor. This interaction takes place through narrative construction, and fosters cognitive and social processes that influence both individual and group knowledge acquisition. This ability to construct and articulate knowledge collectively through the use of narratives is considered to be superior to learning new concepts individually and in the abstract.