Group blogs: Documenting collaborative drama processes

Abstract

The use of blogging (online diaries), to support student learning and reflection has increasingly been adopted for assessment purposes in higher education. The relative ease of use and accessibility of the tools indicate that these social networking applications are, potentially, a convenient means of documenting and sharing individual student learning. There are relatively few instances, however, of the use of group blogs for this purpose, that is where ownership of the blog is a collective enterprise rather than an individual one. This case study examines the use of group blogs to support collaborative processes in drama for the activity known as playbuilding, or group devised theatre. The efficacy of the group blog is compared with the alternative it replaces - the individual, paper based journal. Using an action research methodology, the findings are based on the results of focus groups, interviews, surveys and blog entries, and raise issues about the affordances of Web 2.0 technologies, support for creative group work, student engagement and reflective practice.