CRITICAL READING 6

CRITICAL READING OF THE EFFECT OF USING COOPERATIVE AND INDIVIDUAL WEBLOG TO ENHANCE  WRITING PERFORMANCES

H. Gulhan Orhan Karsaki, Seval Fer, and Feza Orhan

University of Turkey

Published by Journal of Educational Technology & Society

Weblogs is one of the prominent tools applied in blended learning environment. There are many researchers studied in this field such as Karsaki, et.al. The aim of their study is to examine the effect of using cooperative and individual weblogs to enhance writing performance, based on blended instructional design. The design of the research is mixed method. In the experimental study, the researcher applied pretest-posttest control group design and in the case study, the researcher used students’s views. The fifth grade students of elementary state school in Istanbul was chosen as the subject of this research. The researcher uses cooperative weblog on the experimental group worked in blended learning environment, and an individual weblog. The result of this research is writing instruction in an individual weblog-integrated learning environment based on blended instructional design, in terms of the ideas/content aspect, ideas/content , performance on fluency, organization and writing rules tasks contributed to the improvement of writing performance more than writing instruction in a cooperative weblog-integrated learning environment.

 Boonk and Graham defined that blended learning is generally defined as the integration of internet-based learning and face-to-face (Boonk and Graham 2013). In addition, (Boonk and Graham 2013) et.al Blogs are defined by different writers as web environments that are easy to create and through which links such texts, pictures, and audio and video files can be shared and updated; additionally, individuals from different locations at different times can comment on these links.

If we use this tool in our elementary school so it will faced many obstacles. There are many students who cannot use  internetw well besides that there are limited facilities that provided by the school. It will be different if we apply this tool in senior high school or university students. They can already manage their selves and their skills in using the internet (weblog).