Enhancing Student Learning Through the Use of Blogs: Proceedings of the Seventh International Blended Learning Conference

For several years, the School of Divinity has pursued innovation in pedagogical use of blogging to enhance the student learning and digital experience and in particular engagement in tutorials and seminars. However, we have observed that when the blogging tool was used primarily as a vehicle for students to report on their critical reading of key texts, students often isolated the blog from the text, reducing the effectiveness of the tool. Therefore, this project implemented the Wordpress plug-in digresst.it (http:/ /digress.it) which has been developed for pedagogical use to bring text and writing closer together, allowing blog comments to appear as marginal comments next to the relevant part of the key reading. This tool was implemented during the second semester of the academic year 2011-12 in the first year course within the School of Divinity: "Christian Ethics, Sources". For each of the six tutorial groups a separate incidence of the tool was made available containing all the weekly readings (three per week) in a digital format. This paper will discuss in detail the usage of the tool and our analysis of its success based upon evaluation from both staff and students.