Blogging as a virtual co-learning environment in the international course context

Co-learning, also known as collaborative learning, is a method of learning and teaching in which a team of learners together explore a significant question or create a meaningful project. A group of learners working together over the Internet on a shared assignment of creating a blog is an example of a virtual co-learning environment [1]. According to Järvenpää et al. [2], a virtual team member's trust in his/her team operates as a moderator, indirectly affecting the relationships between team communication and perceptual learning outcomes. Therefore, we first executed team-building exercises in virtual teams. Secondly, we instructed students to use blogging tools and create their own blog pages. Thirdly, we carried out a survey among students to assess the learning experiences in such a virtual co-learning environment. We have experimented with blogging as a co-learning environment among university students in the international course context. These experiments were conducted among a group of 39 students enrolled on an international knowledge management graduate course. We observed team building in virtual teams via team-building exercises [2]. We assessed the content of the blog pages and conducted a survey at the end of the course. In the paper, we discuss co-learning in virtual teams, introduce the results from the survey questionnaire and introduce live links to some sample blog pages.