Extending%20meanings%20of%20blogging%20in%20adult%20informal%20learning

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Extending meanings of blogging in adult informal
learning
Young Park, Ed.D., ypsuh_at_oiclv.com OIC Language
Visual Ltd. Gyeong Mi Heo, Ph.D.,
cesttout_at_hotmail.com Romee Lee, Ph.D.,
romeelee_at_hotmail.com GyeongIn Womens College
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Table of Contents

• Purpose
• Background
• The Purpose of Study
• Research Questions
• Theoretical Framework
• Methodology
• Survey Questionnaire
• Results
• Discussion and Conclusion

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Purpose of Study

• This study defines a blog as a contemporary
  web-based environment that can make a difference
  in adult informal learning practice.
  Specifically, It aims to identify how blogging
  supports informal learning for adults.

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Background

• Blogs have been a social phenomenon for the last
  decade (Boyd, D. M., Ellison, N. B., 2007).
• Today, more people are reading and keeping blogs.
  For example, as of March 2008, 184 million
  worldwide users have started a blog while 26.4
  millions uses in US 346 millions worldwide users
  read blogs while 60.3 millions in US (Winn,
  2009).
• They expressed positive feelings about using
  blogs to express themselves, to socialize, and to
  communicate with companies. A large
  majority63.5of those bloggers said that they
  keep a personal space online, just to talk about
  daily life.

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Background

• Several studies indicate that the features of
  blogs are used for educational purposes,
  particularly for various kinds of classroom
  instruction (Boling, et al., 2008 Glass
  Spiegelman, 2008 Haramiak, Boulton, Irwin,
  2009 Kajder Bull, 2004 Martindale Wiley,
  2005 Quible, 2005 Ray, 2006 Wassell Crouch,
  2008).
• But no many studies focus on adults informal
  learning.

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Definition of Informal Learning

• Adults learn in more diverse and flexible
  settings and may learn significantly more in
  incidental and spontaneous learning situations
  than in educational settings. Adults also learn
  without any direct reliance on teacher or
  instructors, sometimes learning through
  serendipity.
• In a broader sense, informal learning includes
  everyday experiences from which we learn
  something (Merriam Cafarrella, 1999).

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The Purpose of Study

• Informal learning is a significant form of
  learning among adults (Johnstone Rivera, 1965
  Tough, 1971, 1978 Livingstone, 2001)
• Despite much evidence that informal learning can
  help adults, it is easy to underestimate how
  informal learning is practiced in adults lives.
  Therefore, informal learning has not yet been
  investigated fully due to its broad definition.
• Blogging, a societal phenomena can be seen as
  learning activities and/or to support learning.
• The relationship between informal learning and
  blogging should be identified accordingly.

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Research Questions

• What are features of using blogs and the adult
  bloggers perceptions of the blogging experiences
  related to learning?
• What are potential uses of blogs for the learning
  in relation to the perspectives of adult learning
  processes?
• What are characteristics of the blogging as the
  adult informal learning in distinction from the
  formal education?

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Theoretical Framework

• Mitchell and Livingstone (2002) argue that the
  theories of adult learning are not competing but
  complementary, offering different and valuable
  perspectives. For example, adult learning not
  only includes the acquisition and accumulation of
  information, but also embraces making sense of
  our lives, transforming not just what we learn
  but the way we learn, and it is absorbing,
  imagining, intuiting, and learning informally
  with others (Merriam, 2001, p. 96).

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Theoretical Framework

• Schugurensky defines learning in three different
  forms.
• self-directed learning refers to 'learning
  projects' undertaken by individual learners.
• Incidental learning refers to the learning
  experiences that occur when the learner may not
  intend to learn something.
• Socialization, also called tacit learning, refers
  to the internalization of values, attitudes,
  behaviors, or skills.

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Theoretical Framework

• Processes and outcomes of adult informal learning
• Adult informal learning takes different process
  and yields diverse outcomes. Adult learning
  process, according to Fenwick and Tennant (2004),
  can be grouped as four different perspectives
  learning as (a) an acquisition process, (b) a
  reflection process, (c) a practice-based
  community process, and (d) an embodied
  co-emergent process.

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Methodology

• This study adopted a mixed model research
• Participants 70 Adults bloggers in Korea,
  Blogging Service Naver (http//www.naver.com)
• Survey was conducted.
• A set of questionnaire consisting of twelve items
  on a Likert scale was developed specifically to
  investigate bloggers perceptions on the
  usefulness of blogging for certain types of
  learning and designed based on the four
  perspectives of learning process.

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Questionnaire for the relationship between
blogging and learning

• 1. Blogs are useful to acquire knowledge and
  information.
• 2. Blogs help us develop our own expertise.
• 3. Blogs help us engage more actively in our
  interest.
• 4. Blogs make us experience the moments of
  self-reflection and self-understanding.
• 5. Blogs provide opportunities to reflect our own
  life, thoughts, and experiences.
• 6. Blogs are useful to describe and express our
  thoughts and knowledge.
• 7. Blogs make us build more specific action plans
  in relation to our own life.
• 8. Blogs are useful to build up social networks.
• 9. Blogs make us aware of the importance of
  people around us.
• 10.Blogs offer an opportunity to recognize the
  importance of communities.
• 11. All blog-related activities (e.g., contents
  of blogs, technical skills, human relations, and
  everyday life influenced by blogging) are
  meaningful.
• 12. Blogs help us create our own new expertise as
  well as build and share existing prior knowledge.

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Results Reasons for using Blogs
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Results Perception on the usefulness of blogging
for learning

• the majority of participants believe that
  blogging is most valuable in acquiring specific
  knowledge, expressing thoughts and opinions, and
  maintaining their interests. However, the
  participants were not sure of the value of blogs
  on other perspectives such as community-based
  learning and co-emergent learning processes. It
  implies that the blog is considered more as a
  personal online space in which individuals
  learning can occur as distinct from a group-based
  learning space, such as an online community or
  online discussion forum which can be created in
  the blogosphere, the community of blogs.

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Results Perception on the usefulness of blogging
for learning
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Results Positive Changes in their life

• Based on their blogging experiences, forty-six
  respondents (65.7 ) gave positive answers on any
  changes in their life as below
• (a) Ways to deal with information and knowledge
  (23) I got a habit that I searched and
  collected information like collecting different
  coins. I became sort of expert-minded on certain
  topics.
• (b) Personal ways of thinking (23),
• I reflect myself by sharing thoughts with other
  people.
• (c) Self-development (40),
• I could see myself more objective while writing
  a blog. And I could arrange and organize the
  things around myself better.
• (d) Social relationships (15),
• My relationship with friends and colleagues is
  more extended and deepened since I could stay in
  touch with them using blogs.

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Results Positive Changes in their life

• 24 participants (34.3 ) reported that the
  blogging had no influence on ways of thinking or
  on their life. No matter whether they recognized
  any changes in their life, the majority of the
  participants (90.0 ) agreed that they had
  experienced some kinds of learning through their
  blogging activities.

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Results Difference of characteristics between
informal learning through blogging and formal
education at schools.
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Results Difference of characteristics between
informal learning through blogging and formal
education at schools.
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Results Links between Informal Learning and
Blogging

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Discussion and Conclusions

• Characteristics of blogging and informal learning
  are overlapped and well matched each other.
• Blogging can be an meaningful vehicle/tool to
  support adult informal learning, namely blogging
  helps users active and self-regulated.