Per Arne Godejord

Nord University
Norway

REACHING HEARTS AND MINDS EXPLORING LEARNING

USING BLOGS, WIKI, TWITTER AND WALKTHROUGHS

Abstract
This paper describes an ongoing project investigating the use of blogs and wiki as
main tools for delivering lectures both in connection with the concept of flipped
classroom and in e-learning courses connected to Computer Science. All lectur-
ing blogs within the project are rooted in Kolbs symbolic and perceptual learning
ideas, and in MASVIS (in Norwegian MAKVIS); Aset of principles focusing
on Motivation, Activation, Specification, Variation and Individualization. The
project has been going on since 2006 at both Nesna University College and Nord-
Trondelag University College. In the last stages of the project, focus is on how
the use of blogs to deliver lectures, Twitter, Paper.li and SoundCloud as tools for
creating student products and content sharing, as well as facilitating student to
student and student to lecturer interactions. The project is also looking into the
use of walkthroughs as away of organizing acourse to facilitate better learning
and ahigher degree of motivation.
Since its start in 2006 the project has been investigating: 1)The blog as
supplement to other lecturing tools used within and outside LMS in distance
education; 2)The use of various Web 2.0 tools for distributing, and binding to-
gether, video, sound and written lectures in distance education; 3)The use of real
life projects in distance education; 4)The use of blogs as learning space, both de-
livering lectures in various forms as well as engaging students in interactions with
other students and the lecturer; 5)The use of blogs within the concept of flipped
classroom; 6)The use of Twitter, Paper.li and SoundCloud as tools for engaging
students in dialogue and content creation; 7)The use of walkthroughs as guide
for managing acourse.
The conclusion so far is that while blogs and wikis seems to function well
as distributing lectures in various forms, both to students on campus and distance
education students, it is difficult to engage students in interactions and content
86Per Arne Godejord

creation online unless required as part of student tasks. The project will close at
the end of 2016, and results will be analysed and presented.

Keywords: flipped classroom, blended learning, intrinsic motivation, gamification.

Introduction
The last decade has seen arapid development and growth in the use of computer-
based communication and information sharing. Internet or the Net as its some-
times called, has proven to be perhaps the most popular mass communication
medium in the world. As with the phone and the television most of the society
has readily adopted the technology, and its spread internationally and its penetra-
tion into almost every corner of the educational system and family life, as well as
work, is often described as arevolution. As one of the first countries outside the
United States to be connected to the ARPANET (NORSAR, 2015), Norway has
quickly developed its use of Internet from apurely researchers tool to being second
on the list of European countries where Internet is used daily by its population.
In the early stages of Internet as apopular tool for teaching, it was an almost
universal belief that this was the tool that would revolutionize learning, and as we
moved towards the end of the 20th century, the rapid technological change chal-
lenged the old system of teaching.
Already students could follow acourse and take an exam without actually
being at auniversity or acollege. In Norway, many educational institutions started
the process of developing distance education programs. Today distance education
is quite common, and often we see various teaching methods integrated within
some sort of Learning Management System. The latest addition to this way of
distributing higher education is the concept of xMOOC and cMOOC. This new
acronym stands for Massive Open Online Course and signifies online courses aimed
at unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional
course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide
interactive user forums that help build acommunity for students, professors, and
teaching assistants. Though said to be arecent development in distance education,
which began to emerge in 2012, it is in fact just, what many university colleges,
both in Norway and in other countries, have been doing since the emergence of
Web 2.0, including the interactive user forums.
The advocates of MOOCs point out that traditional online courses charge
tuition carry credit and limit enrolment to afew dozen to ensure interaction with
instructors. The MOOC, on the other hand, is usually free, credit-less and mas-
sive. In Norway, where online courses are usually free of charge and institutions
need students to take credit points in order to get fundings from the government,
MOOC as such may not be that awe-inspiring. However, their focus on high
 Reaching hearts and minds exploring learning using blogs...87

quality audio-visual lectures and large masses of students might encourage the
development of more online courses in English, thus, increasing the possibili-
ties of internationalisation of Norwegian higher education, especially in smaller
University Colleges.

The use of e-learning techniques

in flipped classroom practice
Much of the literature on e-learning is merely adescription of what the teacher
could do or has done online, while the student experience of those activities goes
largely undocumented. However, astudy by Alexander & McKenzie shows us
anumber of major issues concerning e-learning from the student perspective
(F.Rennie, 2009, pp. 196-203). In the online course of ICT and Learning at Nesna
University College group work and cooperation was encouraged, but all works
delivered for final assessment had to be individual. In the study by Alexander &
McKenzie we see that, regardless of the learning design being used in the projects,
those students who did not have apositive experience of working in groups did
not appear to have achieved the desired learning outcomes and were very nega-
tive about their experience. Only asmall number of students reported previous
experience of group work, yet few of the faculty provided students with any kind
of preparation for this experience (F. Rennie, 2009). In the online course ICT and
Learning at Nesna University College it was more or less assumed that the students
had previous knowledge of how to work in groups, as well as how to cooperate,
and no specific instructions on how to do this were provided. We saw that even
if some students did work in groups either online or, if they lived close to one
another, in real life most preferred to work individually. This assumption was
also held as for the ordinary Computer Science courses at both Nesna University
College and Nord-Trondelag University College. In online courses, as well as in
ordinary face-to-face courses, there will always be acertain degree of resistance
to new forms of learning, in particular amongst groups of students who are not
experienced learners (F. Rennie, 2009).
Many such students believe that the best form of learning occurs when
teachers give lectures, and they might resist all attempts by teachers to involve
them in activities that facilitated knowledge construction rather than reception of
information. This specific behavioural pattern from students was witnessed also
within the various courses of ICT and Learning, and the course of Social Infor-
matics, though the majority of the students were appreciative that they were given
tasks that made them reflect on various topics in aprofessional way.
As for learning outcome, we related our definition of learning to the con-
ception of Marton et al. that learning is increasing ones knowledge, with the
main focus on broadening both students knowledge and awareness. However, we
88Per Arne Godejord

also wanted to create understanding for the pedagogical issues involving various
Internet related tools and, therefore, focused on developing problem and project
based learning activities within the online course of ICT for teachers.

Blogs and wikis as learning spaces

This paper outlines the use of blogs, wiki and Twitter in four different college
courses at Nord-Trondelag University College and Nesna University College:
Social Informatics (on campus), Game culture and collaboration technologies
(on campus), Introduction to IT Management (gathering based) and ICT and
Learning (distance education). During the project, seven blogs and one wiki have
been established. Two of the blogs are in English and the wiki both in English and
Norwegian. This is partly done in order to get the students used to the fact that
English is the lingua franca of Computer Science, and partly to be able to use the
material in the lecturers own international work.
One blog using English was also established in order to connect the Com-
puter Science students at Nesna University College with their colleagues at the Rob
Kling Center for Social Informatics (RKCSI), Indiana University Bloomington,
where it was listed under Student Opportunities as Participating in Per Arne
Godejords Social Informatics Blog from ca. 2008 up until 2012.
Only one wiki was constructed, but, even if its main focus was on topics
concerning the course in Social Informatics, it encompassed the relevant topics
also for ICT and Learning, Game culture and collaboration technologies, and
Introduction to IT Management.
In order to ensure that the wiki would be agood academic resource for the
students, it was put forward for evaluation and review to Intute in 2009. Intute
was launched in 2006 as abest of the Web service and was created to enable lec-
turers, researchers and students to discover and access quality Internet resources
(Intute, 2011).
Each resource was evaluated and categorised by subject specialists based at
UK universities. The wiki created for Social Informatics at Nesna University Col-
lege were evaluated by subject specialists from University of Bristol in partnership
with the University of Birmingham, UK, and accepted for listing on the Intute web
page on resources for education and research in Social Sciences subject: Social
Informatics (Intute, 2009).
According to D.A. Kolb (1984), there are four learning environments sup-
porting various learning styles. These are the affective, symbolic, perceptual and
behavioural learning environments. A.S. Richmond & R. Cummings (2005, pp.45-
54) advise that the online course designer accommodates all types of learning styles,
and should consider how to incorporate each of Kolbs learning environments. In
 Reaching hearts and minds exploring learning using blogs...89

the project described in this paper, the construction of the online learning envi-
ronments for the various courses were to alarge degree rooted in the symbolic
and perceptual learning ideas. Both the wiki and the blogs were focused on online
reading and lectures made in the classical ex cathedra style, even if they were shorter
than ordinary real life lectures. The lectures where constructed as amixture of blog
posts containing links to further reading, video lectures placed on YouTube and
then embedded, podcasts and slide shares, and usually either focused on theories
and broader concepts or the lecturers interpretation of the various topics. Twit-
ter was used to engage in dialogue with the students, and additionally it was also
possible for students to partake in constructing the Social informatics Wiki and
commenting on individual blog lectures.
There are many different pedagogical methods and didactical beliefs that can
make the use of Social Media apositive space for learning (M. Bower, J.G.Hed-
berg & A.Kuswara, 2010, pp. 177-198). In this project, the various blogs and
the wiki were mainly designed in accordance with the transmissive approach, as
lectures were broadcasted to the students in various ways, aiming at presenting
information so as to reach visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic learning preferences
(A. Zapalska & D. Brozik, 2006, pp. 325-335). The use of Twitter and Paper.li
were meant to engage students in discussions and product development and were
rooted in constructionists ideas.
In the environment created by these Web 2.0 tools the lecturer was the
expert and taskmaster (A.S. Richmond & R. Cummings, 2005). It was first when
the students were given specific tasks to solve, that the lecturer chanced posture
into that of acoach and giving personalized feedback to the individual student.
E-Portfolio assessment is used in all courses (O. Dysthe & K. Engelsen, 2004,
pp.239-258), utilising LMS for uploading of products from students and distribu-
tion of personalized feedback from the lecturer.
Akey feature of the wiki and the blogs developed for the various courses was
that they were all based on creating an asynchronous learning environment. The idea
was to offer instructional assistance and learning activities that met the demands,
pace and interest of individual students. For those students who also received
classroom lecturing, the resources gave them opportunities to either prepare them
for an upcoming lecture or reflect on agiven lecture afterwards. According to Jean
B. Mandernach (2006, pp. 41-50) asynchronous environments allows for prepared,
individualised, thoughtful interactions that are free from the constraints of time.
Therefore all activities that would have demanded synchronous attention
from the online students, like webinars, or online meetings via Skype or Adobe
Connect was avoided. In addition, the use of Twitter was meant to be based on
the individual students own pace and attendance, even if synchronous discussions
did appear in some instances.
90Per Arne Godejord

At an early stage of the project (2007) students taking part in the distance
education course were asked how they felt that the use of blog posts, podcasts,
slide shares and videos as tools for transmitting lectures influenced their motiva-
tion and their feeling of learning achievement. The majority answered that they
were both greatly motivated and felt that these tools helped them in their learn-
ing process. The students taking the course Introduction to IT Management at
Nord-Trondelag University College were not subjected to aformal survey, but had
the opportunity to comment on the course via the blog (2013). Only two students
did so. The course was praised for the possibility given by the use of blog to move
back and forth between lectures at the students own pace and leisure, and that the
combination of the various Web 2.0 tools used was in accordance with current
technological trends. Further work with blogs as learning spaces will be followed
with more in-depth surveys. The project will close at the end of 2016, and results
will be analysed and presented.

Using walkthroughs
for organizing acourse
First year students, many without any experience in higher education, will not
always grasp how to manage their chosen course. As alecturer you may start with
explaining things to them f2f, but there is another way, and it stems from computer
games. It is called awalkthrough.
Awalkthrough is afan made strategy guide for aspecific computer game,
which walks you through the game level by level. Since todays commercial games
often are quite complex, awalkthrough can be ahelpful tool to find your way
through the various levels. In the same way, awalkthrough can guide abewildered
first year student through the various stages of your course.
In the spring of 2015, Iwas responsible for SPO1510 Gaming Culture,
acourse that was part of 1st year bachelors degree program in Game and experi-
ence technology, at Nord-Trondelag University College.
Iused flipped classroom and tried to focus on discussions on various topics
and the obligatory tasks that the students had to deliver as part of their portfolio.
Since the class consisted of quite anumber of Icelandic students, all lecturing and
lecture resources were in English.
Idecided to explain the course and the focus on portfolio work by giving
them awritten walkthrough, designed the same way as acomputer game walk-
through. Idivided the course, or rather course work, into seven acts and all with
one clear objective.
The objectives that the walkthrough focused on were as follows:
Showing your presences, both in classrooms and online;
 Reaching hearts and minds exploring learning using blogs...91

Create a profile on Twitter, and then use it to create a Paper.li account, and
create aprofile on SoundCloud;
Make three 3 content related tweets aday;
Upload to SoundCloud a recording of yourself, talking about your favourite
video game;
Make one 1 game review of agame of your own choosing and upload
it to SoundCloud;
Write ashort essay on ethics and computer games (minimum 5 pages,
maximum 10 pages);
Upload three of your mandatory assignments for final assessment.
J.Sener (2007) suggests that amove towards learner-generated content has
the potential to change education for the better, among other things by increasing
student engagement. By flipping the classroom and focusing on individual work
and content creation among the students, Ihoped to achieve an increase in my
students engagement.
Ialso wanted to give the students the learning experience, which lies in
empowering the students to create their own content, thinking skills, and, hope-
fully, resulting in products of lasting value to students individually, and their peers.
Examples of such products where the various Paper.li, and SoundCloud editions.
According to Mark J.W. Lee et. al. (2007) the primary purpose of learner-
generated content is to stimulate amore permanent knowledge growth within
the individual learners. One purpose connected with the general aims of higher
education is to make students used to utilise various tools in aprofessional way.
For the course SPO15010 Gaming culture Ichose to focus on three different
types of social media, which could all be interconnected; Twitter, Paper.li and
SoundCloud. The students were given specific tasks concerning these social me-
dia tools. For Twitter it was to make aTwitter profile and tweet about computer
games, game culture, game and ethics, game design etc. They also had to follow
video games suppliers, developers, gamers, some or all of their fellow students,
and the lecturer. As for Paper.li they were to create apaper.li using their gaming
Twitter profiles, and set it to automatically tweet the latest edition so that their
Twitter profiles had one paper.li edition tweet per day. Finally, they were to make
themselves aSoundCloud profile and upload two recordings in accordance with
the mandatory tasks given at the start of the semester.

Reaching Hearts and Minds

in Computer Science education
Students, like all human beings, are inherently active and curious. The desire to learn
something new, to explore and discover, is intrinsic to the nature of us all. Still, those
92Per Arne Godejord

of us who have been working in the field of teaching for alonger period of time
have more than once witnessed students who seem to be completely disinterested
from day one, or who lose interest during the course. And this is especially true as
for Computer Science students who suddenly had to divert their attention from
fascinating technical issues to ethical themes.
At Nesna University College, we decided to try to reach the students Hearts
and Minds by using a project from the real world, involving the serious and
unpleasant topic of sexual abuse of children on Internet. The project was named
Getting involved and we enlisted the cooperation of Save the Children Norway
and the National Criminal Investigation Service (P.A. Godejord, 2007, pp. 446-
451). Later, at Nord-Trondelag University College we tried to reach out to the
gamer generation by constructing awalkthrough describing the course of Gaming
Culture in away similar to the strategy guides of Computer Games.
There are many theories of what motivates people, but in this particular
project, the work on intrinsic motivation and self-determination by E.L. Deci and
R.M. Ryan (1985) was central. Self-determination theory is an approach to human
motivation and personality that investigates the basis for peoples self-motivation
and personality integration (R.M. Ryan & E.L. Deci, 2000, pp. 68-78).
Motivation was also an important factor for Jewett and Kling (1996): Our
objective, then, is to design acourse Kling select topics, materials, and activi-
ties which will develop the students internal motivation toward the course. At
the minimum, we want to reach them in away that will resonate with their own
interests.
At best, we want each student to have asense of discovery to find anew
and exciting way of understanding computerization in their personal and profes-
sional lives. Jewett and Klings focus on internal and external motivation cor-
responds with E.L. Deci and R.M. Ryans work on intrinsic motivation and self-
determination (E.L. Deci & R.M. Ryan, 1985; R.M. Ryan & E.L. Deci, 2000).
Many students are naturally enthusiastic about learning, but there are also
some that need their instructors to inspire, challenge, and stimulate them. They
want to learn, but they also want to feel that learning is meaningful for them and
their situation: Do you, as ateacher, know what meaningful knowledge is? Do
you, as ateacher, know what kind of knowledge is important to me as astudent?
The question is difficult, but if you have no answers, why should Ibe your student?
(Dale, 1989). Unfortunately, there is no single magical answer to these questions,
but in my view we are along way towards an answer if we are able to involve both
the hearts and minds of our students.
There are many factors that affect the students motivation to work and to
learn: interest in the subject matter, perception of its usefulness, general desire to
achieve, self-confidence and self-esteem, and patience and persistence. However,
 Reaching hearts and minds exploring learning using blogs...93

not all students are motivated by the same values, needs, or desires. Some of the
students will be motivated by extrinsic incentives: the approval of others, overcom-
ing challenges, etc.
The challenge for the lecturers involved in both Computer Science was
to address the students in such away as to enhance their intrinsic motivation
for learning. This was important because research has shown us that intrinsically
motivated learning is superior to extrinsically motivated learning (E.L. Deci &
R.M. Ryan, 1985).
The use of project-based teaching, the use of walkthrough, video lectures,
podcasts, slide share, wiki and blogs as amotivational tool, were all based on
astudy by Benware and E.L. Deci in 1984. The results from this study indicated
that the subjects who learned asubject with expectation of putting their learning
to active use were more intrinsically motivated than those who learned without
that expectation.
One of the focus points of both Project Getting Involved and the use of
walkthroughs was to make the students active participants in learning various
topics, whether they were gathered in alecture room or not. In the real life pro-
ject, the students used their learning to develop reports for the Save the Children
Norway and the National Criminal Investigation Service. The students subjected
to the walkthrough, and various other tools of aflipped classroom, created their
own professional content linked to various topics of the gaming world. In other
words, they used their acquired knowledge in apractical way; thereby providing
new knowledge to the participating organizations and experiencing that working
with ethical themes are useful in connections with information technology. This is
in accordance with Kolb and Frys (1975) definition of what they called the per-
ceptual learning environment, where the main goal is to identify and understand
relationships among concepts.

Conclusion
While online instructors usually do not engage with students in face-to-face in-
teractions, those who engage in flipping the classroom do. While online instruc-
tors may be more concerned with the mechanics of delivering the various online
courses than with the individual needs of students (A.S. Richmond and R.Cum-
mings, 2005), the instructor who flips the classroom usually keeps the individual
student in mind. Since the needs and learning styles of students may vary largely,
athoughtful approach to course design and implementation should be chosen
to not only improve the quality of the course delivery but also enhance student
learning. Whether one takes part in an online course or in aflipped classroom
situation, students have to take more responsibilities for the pace and structure of
94Per Arne Godejord

their studies. It also demands an up to date approach from the instructor, so as to

ensure that the course really reaches the students hearts and minds.
The use of blogs, wikis, video lectures, slide share, audio lectures and walk-
throughs, should focus on providing the students with professional resources for
enhancing both their understanding for the various topics presented, but also
their ability for critical thinking and active involvement in preparing themselves
for alife as professionals.

Bibliography
Boulos M.N., Maramba I., Wheeler S. (2006), Wikis, blogs and podcasts: anew generation
of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education [in:] BMC Med.
Educ. 6, 41, pp. 1-8.
Bower M., Hedberg J.G., Kuswara A. (2010), A framework for Web 2.0 learning design [in:]
Educational Media International, 47:3.
Bower M., Kenney J., Dalgarno B., Lee M.J.W. et. al. (2014), Patterns and principles for
blended synchronous learning: Engaging remote and face-to-face learners in rich-media
real-time collaborative activities [in:] Australasian Journal of Educational Technology,
pp. 261-272.
Deci E.L. & Ryan R.M. (1985), Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human be-
havior, Plenum, New York, NY.
Dysthe O. & Engelsen K. (2004), Portfolios and assessment in teacher education in Norway:
Atheory-based discussion of different models in two sites [in:] Assessment & Evaluation
in Higher Education, 29(2).
Godejord P.A. (2007), Fighting child pornography: Exploring didactics and student engagement
in social informatics [in:] Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology, Vol. 58, Issue 3.
Kolb D.A. (1984), Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development,
Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall, New Jersey.
Lee M.J.W. & McLoughlin C. (2007), Teaching and Learning in the Web 2.0 Era: Empower-
ing Students through Learner-Generated Content, International Journal of Instructional
Technology & Distance Learning, Vol. 4,No. 10, ISSN 1550-6908.
Lemire D. (2002), Brief report: What developmental educators should know about learning
styles and cognitive styles [in:] Journal of College Reading and Learning, pp. 177-182.
Mandernach J.B. (2006), Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking: Integrating Online Tools
to Promote Critical Thinking [in:] InSight, ACollection of Faculty Scholarship, Vol.1.
Mason R. & Rennie F. (2007), Using Web 2.0 for learning in the community [in:] The Internet
and Higher Education 10.
NORSAR (Norway Seismic Array Research), NORSAR and the Internet, Retrieved
15th of January 2015, from http://www.norsar.no/norsar/about-us/History/Internet/.
Richmond A.S. & Cummings R. (2005), Implementing Kolbs learning styles into online
distance education [in:] International Journal of Technology in Teaching and Learning.
 Reaching hearts and minds exploring learning using blogs...95

Ryan R.M., Deci E.L. (2000), Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic mo-
tivation, social development, and well-being, American Psychologist, Vol. 55(1).
Sener J. (2007), In Search of Student-Generated Content in Online Education, https://www.
researchgate.net/publication/252096928_In_Search_of_StudentGenerated_Content_
in_Online_Education [22.04.2016].
Zapalska A., Brozik D. (2006), Learning styles and online education [in:] Campus-Wide
Information Systems, Vol. 23, Issue 5.

About the author

per.a.godejord@nord.no
Per Arne Godejord, Cand.Polit, is Associate Professor at the Business School, Nord Uni-
versity, Norway. He is amember of several review boards of international journals, as well
as international conferences, within the field of e-learning. His professional and research
interests are focused on Blended Learning in Computer Science and Pedagogical Informat-
ics studies, didactics of informatics, Gamification, Social Informatics, ICT and Manage-
ment, ICT and Ethics, and Social Media and Law. He is also aparticipant in the Erasmus+
project MILAGE Interactive Mathematics by Implementing Blended Learning Model
with Augmented Reality and Game Books. Per A. Godejord is the author of several books
and chapters in books, as well as lecture blogs and wikis for students. Some of his lecture
blogs and wikis have received international recognition.