Design and Evaluation of a Socially Enhanced Classroom Blog to Promote Student Learning in Higher Education

As college students today become savvy users of social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google +1, teachers are taking this opportunity to motivate learning and foster engagement through the use of Web 2.0 software such as classroom blogs. This study discusses why social learning matters in education, and how can social technology help promote student learning. The study demonstrates how to design, implement and evaluate a socially enhanced classroom blog for higher education through a case study. The evaluation result shows significant, positive correlations between the use of socially enhanced blogs and student learning, which were measured in aspects of student perceived learning, social interaction, satisfaction, community of practice, and actual learning results.