Blogs in Developmental Reading

Shu, Hui-Yin, and Shiangkwei Wang. “The Impact of Using Blogs on College Students’ Reading Comprehension and Learning Motivation.” Literacy Research and Instruction 50.1 (2011): 68-89. ProQuest. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.

In their 2011 article, Shu and Wang report on a study they did on the use of blogs in developmental reading courses. They write that recent research suggests that helping students develop a command of digital (and multimodal) literacies is important so that “students can successfully access and create the evolving language required in higher education and future workplaces.” However, they assert that not much research has been done about “how […] college reading education respond[s] to today’s students who are familiar with and motivated by […] digital technologies,” revealing what they see as a bias toward print in higher education.

Shu and Wang focused on nine sections (three instructors, each teaching three sections) of developmental reading at the same four-year U.S. university; two sections (taught by different instructors) incorporated blogs, while the other seven sections did not. The curriculum between the blog-enabled and traditional courses was standardized; in the blog-enabled sections, instructors supplemented traditional instruction by asking students to post responses to and analyses of textbook chapters, news articles, and YouTube clips. Students were encouraged to marshal Internet sources in support of their posts and to read and respond to others’ posts.

Appropriately, an extensive section of this article is devoted to their methodology, and I do not have the space to go into it in detail here. In brief, though, they incorporated demographic and academic data such as age, race, GPA, pre- and post-course COMPASS measures, post-class retention rates, and a thirty-one question survey “divided into four factors: self-efficacy, confidence in prerequisite skills, self-directive and initiative, and interest in learning the subject.” They also interviewed the two instructors who used blogs. Shu and Wang’s research questions focused on whether blogs affected students’ reading performance or motivation, what other factors might affect reading performance, and what instructors’ perceptions were about integrating blogs in their classes.

Their findings were extremely interesting. Their study did not support the contention that blogs (at least as they were used) improved reading performance or motivation. While Shu and Wang found several factors affecting student reading performance, blogs were not among them. However, student retention correlated strongly with blogging: students in blog-enabled sections signed up for another semester of classes at around a 10% higher rate than their fellows in traditional classes. Interviews with the instructors suggested that students in blog-enabled classes formed stronger learning communities and were better able to express themselves (due to the equalizing nature of the online environment).

Shu and Wang appear somewhat disappointed with these results. In their conclusion, they admit that, in retrospect, they do not feel they spent enough time training the instructors in blog usage, and they devote the majority of their conclusion to a discussion of why non-tech-savvy instructors might be resistant to using much technology and how such resistance might be addressed. However, as someone who has served on a committee for several years focusing on, among other things, student retention, I found their retention results astonishing, and I wished they had spent more time discussing them. A “payoff” of 10% for a relatively small change is incredible, and I plan to share the article with my committee. I would also recommend this article to a colleague interested in how to design and report on a research study—the discussion of research questions, methodology, and findings is exemplary.