Blog Community Analysis

For a definition of community, I draw from Lave and Wenger’s discussion of Communities of Practice (CoPs) and Garrison and Vaughn’s outline of Communities of Inquiry (CoIs). These theorists provide a useful map for the type of community desirable in a graduate program, and their theories can be extrapolated to apply to first-year composition as well.

Lave and Wenger address CoPs in the context of situated learning, in which what and how the learner learns is a function of his or her participation in the community. Lave and Wenger’s CoPs are always doing something—the “practice” component of the term—rather than simply existing. A learner begins on the periphery of the community and, by developing the skills, knowledge, and identity valued within the community, gradually becomes a full member with the ability to shape the community. This process involves more than memorizing certain facts or writing a certain way: Lave and Wenger write that “learning involves the whole person; it implies not only a relation to specific activities, but a relation to social communities—it implies becoming a full participant, a member, a kind of person. […L]earning involves the construction of identities” (53). More on this in a minute.

Garrison and Vaughan’s CoIs may be seen as a subset of CoPs that is focused within the classroom (virtual or physical). Garrison and Vaughan define a CoI as “a unifying process that integrates the essential processes of personal reflection and collaboration in order to construct meaning, confirm understanding, and achieve higher-order learning outcomes” (29). Through a blend of social, cognitive, and teacher presence, CoIs contain mutually supportive members who have “a sense of belonging” (21) and who identify, explore, and attempt to solve problems (22). The teacher “establishes the curriculum, approaches, and methods; [she] also moderates, guides, and focuses discourse and tasks” (24).

These two frameworks become useful when we consider that the blog assignment was given in the context not only of an individual course, but in the larger context of a graduate program. To my knowledge, the majority of the students in the course are in the PhD track; although individual goals differ, one accepted goal of PhD programs in general is to prepare students to become members of the academic community. Seen through Lave and Wenger’s lens, the “practices” of the academic community include critical reading and thinking, knowledge-making, inquiry, and discourse. Doctoral students begin on the periphery of this CoP and move toward full membership. As Lave and Wenger point out, full participation involves a shift in identity—we not only learn how to write in an academic way, we become academics.

The blog postings served to move us toward full participation in several ways. Firstly, the critical reading and analysis of research are key practices in academia, as is learning to write robust, concentrated, analytical prose that engages that research. Secondly, the blogs were public, which is important to the assignment: in academia, we engage in public discussion of ideas through publication. This serves to distribute knowledge freely and to open our ideas to criticism by our peers, which is vital to the continual evolution of understanding (knowledge-making) that is a central goal of academia. Learning how to publically critique research and post our own ideas moves us closer to full participation in the academic CoP. Thirdly, we can read and comment on each other’s blogs, which, in effect, represents a microcosmic Burkean Parlor in which we can share and debate ideas (the extent to which this last goal was realized will be discussed later).

The blogs also functioned well as part of a CoI, especially when seen as a component of the entire course. By asking us to critically read and respond to articles connected to the course outcomes, the blogs encouraged us to employ personal reflection and construct meaning. Additionally, we had to discuss why we would (or would not) recommend the article to others in our field, which asked us to engage not only the class community, but the academic community at large. While individual students’ paths of inquiry differed, they could be seen as diverging from the central course question of how best to teach writing from a distance, and can also be seen as a collaborative attempt to answer that question.

Whether the collaborative aspect of CoPs and CoIs was addressed to its fullest with the blog assignment is worth further inquiry. As I have discussed above, the blogs required us to engage with the scholarly community at large. However, the assignment as written did not require the same level of engagement with the class community. Individual course members commented on blogs to differing levels. (I have not done a systematic study, and am basing my conclusions on my observations of my own and others’ blogs.) The comments varied, sometimes suggesting connections to another article or providing another perspective, and sometimes amounting to a well developed “good job.” There was not a high level of collaborative inquiry and debate as might be hoped for in a CoI.

However, as a learner, I did not find this aspect to be problematic. As I have written above, the blogs were valuable even without strongly encouraging engagement with the other class members. The in-class discussions have been particularly robust and draw from readings, experience, and analysis. We have also had frequent collaborative projects that have required us to apply our knowledge in ways fully consistent with both the CoP and CoI concepts—the Blackboard-mediated project in which we were members of a school technology committee, for example, was exactly the type of thing we would have to do as full members of the academic community. These collaborative projects were, in my estimation, the key spurs to the development of course community.

The blog assignment could be modified to require more cross-student engagement. One way would be to use the collaborative class projects as a model: students might be assigned in groups (or self-assign based on interest), and each group would have the task of answering a central question about teaching writing from a distance. The blogs could be seen as pre-writing in which they looked much the same as they do now, but they would be focused on gathering and processing research to be used to answer the group’s central question. Groups would then need to engage with each other’s blogs as they moved forward in their process of inquiry. Chi-Cheng Chang found a positive correlation between class groups’ online discussion performance and the quality of collaborative class projects, suggesting that a collaborative project of the type I outline above might be enriched by incorporating a blog aspect.

I am not sure I would argue for this change, however. The blogs functioned quite well as they currently are, and their structure allowed students to pursue their individual interests, which probably increased engagement. Also, as I have said above, they met many of the key criteria of CoPs and CoIs.

They might also be useful in FYC courses. Many writers have explored the affordances of blogs in composition classes—Charles Tryon writes that encouraging FYC students to read, write, and rhetorically analyze blogs “provoked one of the most productive conversations [he has] ever enjoyed with students about writing, specifically in terms of the relationship between writing and audience. […S]tudents quickly grasped the importance of interactivity in the blog world” (130). Shu and Wang found that using blogs in college reading courses increased student retention, probably because “blogging activities increased the members’ interaction and helped them form a learning community in which they could make friends quickly and easily, offer comfort and support to one another, exchange relatively private information about school work and social life, and offer suggestions to deal with academic problems” (n.p.). Ben McCorkle successfully used blogs in a basic-writing course to encourage students “to participate in the academic conversation [and validate] their voices as engaged citizens with real opinions on issues that mattered to them” by having students post reviews of other blogs, a book, and individual topics that they found “newsworthy” (n.p.).

However, the community of the FYC class is significantly different from that of our class. The CoP of FYC might be seen as that of undergraduate academics, but that could be debated, and certainly their membership is likely to be more temporary than we hope ours will be in the wider world of academia. The CoI framework holds more promise for FYC—many schools offer themed FYC courses that examine art or science or literature, and it would be relatively easy to frame a themed FYC class around inquiry into some key questions. Blogs could be a part of that inquiry; however, they should not be seen as leading directly to the development of a class community.

In sum, the blogs were effective in our course, and they were consistent with the CoP and CoI concepts. There are ways in which the assignment could be modified to increase collaboration, but since collaboration was reinforced in multiple other areas of the course, such modification is not necessary.

Works Cited

Chang, Chi-Cheng. “A Case Study on the Relationships between Participation in Online Discussion and Achievement of Project Work.” Journal of Educational Media and Hypermedia 17.4 (2008): 477-509. Print.

Garrison, D. Randy, and Norman D. Vaughan. Blended Learning in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008. Print.

Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: CUP, 1991. Print.

McCorkle, Ben. “English 109.02: Intensive Reading and Writing II, ‘Reading, Writing, Blogging.’” Composition Studies 38.1 (2010): 108-127. ProQuest. Web. 8 March 2011.

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.


Tryon, Charles. “Writing and Citizenship: Using Blogs to Teach First-Year Composition.” Pedagogy 6.1 (2006): 128-132. Print.