From Submit Button to Public Blogging

This week, I kept thinking about how our course itself is using Web 2.0.

In one of the readings, Zgheib and Dabbagh (2020) discuss an interesting problem: even when instructors use social media or Web 2.0 tools, the activity does not always become truly “social.” Sometimes the tool is used almost like a regular LMS. The instructor posts materials, students submit something, and the interaction still mostly goes in one direction: from instructor to student.

That made me think about our class blog.

Technically, our professor, Vanessa could have used Canvas in a very simple way: upload the readings, post weekly prompts, collect assignments, and maybe leave grades or comments. That would still be online learning, but it would not necessarily create much student-to-student interaction.

Instead, our course uses public blogging. We write our thoughts where classmates can see them. We read each other’s posts. We leave comments. Sometimes we notice that someone interpreted the same reading in a completely different way. Sometimes we realize that another person had the same confusion or reaction. And sometimes a comment makes us rethink what we originally wrote.

To me, this is where the design becomes meaningful. The blog is not just a place to “submit” weekly reflections. It becomes part of the learning process itself.

It also supports metacognition in a very natural way. When I write a post, I have to ask myself what I understood, what stood out to me, and how I connect the reading to my own experience. When I read others’ posts, I compare my thinking with theirs. When I receive comments, I sometimes revisit my own assumptions.

So, the important part is not simply that we are using Web 2.0. The important part is how it is designed. In our course, the blog moves the activity from one-way broadcasting to peer interaction. And through that interaction, we are not only learning the content—we are also becoming more aware of how we think.


References

Zgheib, G. E., & Dabbagh, N. (2020). Social Media Learning Activities (SMLA): Implications for Design. Online Learning (Newburyport, Mass.), 24(1), 50–66. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v24i1.1967

Comments

  1. Maria HJune 28, 2026 at 1:21 PM

    Exactly! I wrote a very similar-looking sentence about blogging in our class discussion this week. As a non-native speaker, I think that blogging helped me tremendously. I know that I have made huge progress in eliminating my article errors and improving the overall flow of my sentences. And, as you mentioned, classmates' feedback always "pushes" me to go back and re-evaluate my ideas. I used to read blogs now and then, but being a produser changed my outlook on blogging completely!

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