Weblogging as a Learning Tool: A Classroom Study

Informed Consent Form

You are invited to participate in a study of the use of weblogs as a writing and learning activity.  Weblogs are emerging as a potential tool for helping students reflect on course material in a public way that encourages feedback, and they seem to have the potential to motivate student writing and learning.  This study is being conducted by Dr. Kevin Brooks, assistant professor of English, NDSU, Cindy Nichols, Lecturer in the department of English, NDSU, and Sybil Priebe, graduate student, department of English, NDSU.

You have been selected because of your enrollment in a course that will use weblogging as a significant component in the course.  This study will be conducted over two years, and will involve approximately 100 students each semester in a variety of courses.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of weblogging as a writing and learning activity. Weblogging resembles familiar learning activities—journaling and notecard collection in particular.  Our study will attempt to determine the extent to which weblogging facilitates both of these activities, the extent to which it motivates students to write and share ideas, and the extent to which students are able to integrate the work they do on weblogs into more formal writing exercises.  Positive findings will suggest the applicability of weblogging for English classes, and encourage further study of weblogging in other courses.  Negative findings will suggest ways in which contemporary information technologies, despite considerable potential, do not always fit easily into students' notion of writing and learning.  The study may also suggest findings that simply cannot be anticipated at this time. 

As a participant, you will be asked to weblog on a regular basis as part of your course requirement, and you will be asked to share your weblog with the researchers. Researchers will be most concerned with assessing the amount of writing that you do, the type of weblogging you are drawn to, the quality of reflections in log entries, and the integration (or lack of integration) of logged material into other course work. 

You may also be asked to formally reflect on the uses of weblogging in education through an essay assignment.  These reflections will serve an academic purpose of asking students to write recommendation reports, and they will serve the researchers as open-ended responses to the question: do you see significant, positive potential for uses of weblogging in higher education?  Researchers will collect these reflections and use student observations in reporting on this research.  Attitudes about weblogging (positive or negative) will not affect the grading of these assignments. 

All efforts will be made to maintain confidentiality, and all names of students will be changed whenever this research is reported on.  Materials created by this project are the property of NDSU and the investigators.  You may have access to information collected on or about you by making a written request to the principal investigator (Brooks).  This right of access extends only to information collected on or about you and not to information collected on or about others participating in the project. All materials collected from this project will be destroyed five years after the research has been completed, or when the researchers are no longer actively working on this project, whichever comes first.

Potential risks or discomforts resulting from participation in this project are negligible.  Potential benefits are the sharing of ideas about the potential benefits and drawbacks of using weblogs as a learning tool.  These ideas will be shared with the NDSU English department, and quite likely the larger scholarly community.

Your participation is voluntary.  If you decide to participate, you are free to withdraw your consent and to discontinue participation at any time.  You should feel free to ask questions at any time during the study.  If you have questions about this study, you can contact Kevin Brooks, (701) 231-7146 (Kevin.Brooks@ndsu.nodak.edu).  If you have questions about the rights of research subjects, contact the NDSU IRB Office, (701) 231-7035.