Evaluating blogging as a reflective strategy in a service-learning module for undergraduate nursing students

Abstract

Literature suggests that blogging has the potential to be a transformational technology for teaching and learning. It is claimed that blogging is a useful practice for development of higher-order learning skills, active, learner-centred pedagogy, authentic learning, associative thinking, and interactive learning communities. At a school of nursing students are expected to be active participants in constructing knowledge and to build upon constructive learning principles through the use of e-tools such as forums, chat rooms and blogs. Hence an online module was designed for the fourth-year undergraduate nursing programme that requires students to engage in and reflect on a service learning community project. The reflection activities were accomplished through blogging and were expected to be completed according to the allocated structure. The main pedagogic objective was to reflect upon and discuss module content and/or issues that arose out of their learning experiences. Quantitative methods were used for this study. The purpose was to evaluate whether blogging could enhance reflective learning and the depth of the reflection that arose as a result of blogging. Results showed that students engage in both reflective and non-reflective thinking through blogging, with varying levels of depth of reflection.