Blog aggregation management : reducing the aggravation of managing student blogging

Abstract: This paper examines the design and implementation of reflective journals as individual student blogs in a course with 276 students and 13 teaching staff. The academic aim was to encourage reflection, reduce plagiarism, increase student engagement and increase the visibility of students’ progress in the course. The technical aim was to experiment with an approach that uses a small and simple information system to integrate freely available blog services (e.g. Wordpress.com) with institutional systems and requirements. This paper reports on the learning design, technical implementation, outcomes, and future directions of the approach. While not without problems, both the employment of blogs for reflective journals and the technical approach used to implement them could be usefully adapted for use at other institutions.