Blogging as virtual co-learning environment in international course context

Co-learning, also known as collaborative learning, is a method of learning and teaching in which ateam of learners together explore a significant question or create a meaningful project. A group oflearners working together over the Internet on a shared assignment of creating a blog is an example ofa virtual co-learning environment [1]. According to Järvenpää et al. [2], a virtual team member's trust inhis/her team operates as a moderator, indirectly affecting the relationships between teamcommunication and perceptual learning outcomes. Therefore, we first executed team-buildingexercises in virtual teams. Secondly, we instructed students to use blogging tools and create their ownblog pages. Thirdly, we carried out a survey among students to assess the learning experiences insuch a virtual co-learning environment. We have experimented with blogging as a co-learningenvironment among university students in the international course context. These experiments wereconducted among a group of 39 students enrolled on an international knowledge managementgraduate course. We observed team building in virtual teams via team-building exercises [2]. Weassessed 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 andintroduce live links to some sample blog pages.