Blogging in Education at SFU

In the TECH 114 course at SFU Surrey, students explore and learn about the nature and evolution of technology. In the recent semester, the instructors have set up blogs in order to provide the virtual educational environment for students and themselves.

Through blogs, both instructors and teaching assistants were able to post up necessary announcement and ideas, communicate with the students, and link to various class resources for students’ learning. For example, in the main blog page of the TECH 114 course, teachers were able to make the change in the course schedule and post up the valuable reading that related to the weekly lectures.

Furthermore, students were also able to set up their blog spaces, communicate with the instructors in a faster way, and build up interactive relationships with peers. One student has responded to the function of the blogs, “I think the blogs are a creative way to release class information. These are easily accessible and students can get most of the class notes on the fly. It also supports handing assignments online which can be more convenient for students.” As a result, many students feel positive about having the blogs as their virtual educational environment where they can constantly be exposed to the central theme of technology through the blogs.

On the other hand, some students were not happy with the blogs as their educational environment. One major problem arose as a vast majority of their course contents were posted up in their class blogs. For instance, one student has responded, “As most of the homework and lectures are posted up in the blogs, I feel that I am becoming lazy to attend TECH 114 lectures and labs.” This problem was also evident as there was a growing number of the Techone student population who have decided not to show up to lecture classes. Thus, the balance of the course materials in the blogging and lecture environment is in need to provide the effective educational environment for students and instructors.

Overall, by identifying problems with blogs and by improving its use with feedback from users, blogs will continue to be developed so as to enrich the educational environment for instructors as well as students.