Abstract

This study explored the narratives of six graduate students who experienced blogging as a learning tool in a graduate seminar on adult education at an English language university in Montreal. The main research question was: What are the experiences of blogging as a learning tool by graduate students in a traditional education setting? All six participants volunteered to be interviewed a few months after the end of the course. They were all female, white between 25 and 59 years of age, four married and two single. Five of the interviews took place face to face in person and one interview was conducted on Skype. Six major themes were identified and summarized under the following headings: Challenges of the course blog experience, running the blog experience, the impact of blogging on learning, Moodle versus Blogger, the impact of blogging on the traditional educational system, and the participants’ evaluation of the experience. The results, summarized in a table at the end of Chapter 3, resonate well in relation to the existing body of the literature on the topic and point towards further research projects.
This case study adds rich data about the experience of learners with educational blogging to the existing literature with regard to implementing blogs in traditional classrooms in higher education. This thesis may also be of use for educators interested in integrating technology in traditional classrooms in order to promote an active and useful learning experience for students.