Running head: THE EFFECTS OF BLOGGING1

The Effects of Blogging on Reading and Writing Skills in Secondary Education: A Research
Prospectus

Lori Bevan, Francine Butler, David Lord, Timothy Masters, Maryellen Tissandier, Holly Witte

Liberty University

EDUC639
Dr. Jennifer Courduff
December 7, 2014

THE EFFECTS OF BLOGGING

Abstract
A literature review on social media use in education showed that the use of social media was
beneficial to students. Numerous studies found that the use of blogging produced an increase in
the reading and writing skills of students and showed an improvement in the content of their
writings. Since all students use the skills of reading and writing in their educational pursuits,
finding a tool that would help to increase those skills would prove beneficial on a very wide
scale. As a review of previous research has revealed, there was a lack of quantitative studies on
this subject from which to obtain any statistical information as to the degree of improvement that
was offered through blogging. This study is an attempt to fill part of that gap and to help
establish a baseline of information from which future studies could be based.

Keywords: blogging, social media, reading skills, writing skills, improvement, educational
benefit, educational technology

THE EFFECTS OF BLOGGING

Background/Brief Review of Literature

Different types of social media were examined through a review of literature on the topic
of social media use in education. The research came back with the same results that the use of
social media was beneficial for all students (Fageeh, 2011); (Glymph, 2012). There was one type
of social media that the research stated was extremely beneficial to reading and writing, which
was blogging. The use of blogs in the classrooms represents a new approach to teaching writing
that is developing and changing daily (Davis &McGrail , 2011 p.415).
Current research into the use of blogging to increase reading and writing skills was
limited in nature. The majority of research revolved mainly around college students and their
writing skills in a qualitative form. The question arose as to what would be found if the research
were to be a quantitative study which examined the reading and writing skills of high school
students and the effects of blogging on those skills. Anderson (2010) found that blogging and
computerized journaling are effective tools for writing skill development; however, research has
not revealed which specific populations of students are aided by blogging or journaling, nor has
research revealed the specific writing skills that are most likely to be improved by these
practices.
This study derived a gap in the literature regarding the use of blogging to increase
reading and writing skills in high school. The research and study will focus on Warrensville
Heights City School District in Cleveland, Ohio.
According to the state of Ohio, the Ohio Graduation Test results for the past three years,
these schools have been below the states average. The states passing average scores in reading
were 89.4%, and in writing they were 88%.The states non-passing scores in reading were
10.6%, and, 12.0% in writing. For the school included in the study, the Ohio Graduation Test

THE EFFECTS OF BLOGGING

results were 29.3% in reading, and 25.4%in writing (see appendix for Ohio Graduation Test data
for students).
This study will examine the results of 10th grade classes in reading and writing. There
will be both controlled groups and experimental groups. Blogging will be used as a way for the
experimental groups to enhance their reading and writing skills as measured by the Ohio
Graduation Test, as well as in class assessments to monitor any improvement.
Studies have shown that using a blog increased reading and writing skills among students
(Silviyanti & Yusuf , 2014 p. 31), Students' grades in the writing tests increased and the content
of their writings improved after this activity was implemented. In addition, research suggested
that an awareness of an audience can correlate with the quality of writing (Davis & McGrail,
2011).
According to the constructivist theory, a students learning is an active process in which
learners build new ideas or concepts based upon their present and past knowledge (Bruner,
1996). That theory focused on student-centered learning. That type of learning allows students
to develop their own learning goals, thereby filling in gaps in their knowledge or understanding
(Seng, 2014, p. 146). Creating and using a blog coincides with student-centered learning and
should, according to research, create a beneficial environment for the student.
Another theory that was relevant to any use of social media in education was
Connectivism. Conceptually, learning involves the connecting and strengthening of links
between concepts and ideas; socially, learning involves interacting with other individuals across
technological networks (Dunaway, 2011, p. 676). Under the theory of connectivism, the
student uses prior knowledge to make connections with the newly obtained knowledge for the
purpose of learning.

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In classrooms today, we saw students struggle to read basic text. Regular and special
education students needed to increase their reading skills. They needed some path which would
lead to an improvement in their reading skills, yet still allow them to enjoy what they read. By
allowing students to express and discuss their interests in a blog, as well as to show their
comprehension of their reading, a benefit should be derived and provide an enhancement to their
reading and writing skills. This would have the added benefit of creating a student-centered
learning environment; which was supported by the constructivist learning theory.
In addition, academic writing skills have become a thing of the past. Students were still
required to write, but their attention to detail and how to write correctly for academic purposes
had become deficient. According to Justice (2013, p. 1), many of our students do not seem to
have the first clue about how to write for academic purposes. If an effective tool existed which
could improve the students writing skills, it should be utilized to its fullest extent.
Since blogging has been shown to enhance writing skills in different areas of education
according to several qualitative studies, its use could be assumed to be of value. Creating blogs
that contained material of interest to the student was one way to engage the students interests
and possibly enhance the learning of proper reading and writing skills with high school students.
Problem Statement
Every state has some form of state standards in place to hold teachers, students, and
districts accountable for their abilities. Glancing over the Ohio Graduation Test state test scores
one can see that reading and writing skills were not developing, in some schools. According to
the data (Appendix A) the school district in Warrensville Heights was one of the districts that
was falling below the states average in reading and writing.

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Purpose Statement
The purpose of this qualitative study is to identify the benefits or lack of benefits in
reading and writing skills, with the high school population, obtained through blogging within the
classroom. It will allow for statistical facts and review of state numbers, according to state
testing, and form a baseline of findings which can be used in future studies in relation to the use
of blogging in secondary education.
Significance of the Study
With the acknowledgement of the lack of quantitative research on the effects of blogging
on the reading and writing skills of students, as identified through a literature review on social
media in education (Bevan et al., 2014), this study is to provide statistics that could be used as a
baseline and to guide future qualitative research on the effects of blogging on the reading and
writing skills of students.
Research Questions
1- Will weekly blogging increase secondary students academic performance in the areas of
reading and writing skills?
2- Will the practice of repetitive writing through the use of blogs increase secondary students
grammatical abilities, syntax usage, and reading comprehension as reflected in state testing
performance?
Research Hypothesis (es) in Null Form
1- Weekly blogging exercises where secondary students must write blog entries and critique peer
entries will not increase the academic performance of the students reading and writing skills.
2- Secondary student grammatical abilities, syntax usage, and reading comprehension will not be
reflected positively in the state testing performance.

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Identification of Variables
Independent Variable: Blog exercises that were predefined to include writing, reading,
collaboration, and critiquing
Dependent Variable: Set curriculums that Warrensville Heights City School has already set to
use for sophomore English Language Arts.
Control Group: Of the four sophomore English Language Arts classes, one will use only the
English Language Arts curriculum with no additional supplement to the curriculum.
Research Design
Research will be quantitative and will utilize the longitudinal research design method.
The study will follow four 10th grade English Language Arts classes at Warrensville Heights
City School District in Cleveland, OH for the 2015-2016 academic year. Using benchmark
assessments, the study will track quarterly changes to student academic performance in the areas
of reading, writing, grammar, syntax usage, and reading comprehension. The study will collect
the state average reading and writing scores from the 2014 - 2015 Ohio Graduation Test and
compare the state averages to the 2015 - 2016 Ohio Graduation Test reading and writings scores
of the four 10th grade English Language Arts classes at Warrensville Heights City School District
in Cleveland, OH that will be tracked in this study. All students in the four 10th grade English
Language Arts classes at Warrensville Heights City School District in Cleveland, OH will
participate in a pre-study and post-study survey to determine their level of technology
understanding, usage, and previous blogging experience.

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Participants/ Sampling
The participants that will be in this study are sophomore high school students attending
Warrensville Heights City School District, Cleveland, Ohio. There are 120 sophomores enrolled
at Warrensville Heights City School District that will be selected for this study. There are 72
females and 58 males in the study group.
Setting
The study will be conducted at Warrensville Heights City School District in Cleveland,
OH. Students in the study attend the Cuyahoga County High School and are 10th grade students
of varying abilities. The implementation of blogging will take place in three out of four English
Language Arts classes. In order for blogging to be successful in the classroom every student will
have access to a tablet, laptop, or desktop.
Students will create a blog using Google Blogger and will be required to post an initial
blog post once a week on a given topic or prompt along with completing two reply posts to their
peers blogs weekly. Highly qualified educators with a technology background will lead the
classrooms of students that are participating in this study. Students will receive instruction at the
beginning of the school year on how to create and use a blog. The study will continue over the
course of the 2015-2016 school year.
Instrumentation
Students will begin the study by completing a survey to see what their level of
technology use is and if they have used blogging in the past or are currently blogging. Based on
the Ohio Graduation Test mentioned above, we will take their scores from before the study and
compare with their scores after using blogging for the length of one school year. This study will
allow for pre-data and post-data to be used in determining the value of blogging among a certain

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set of high school students. The pre-assessments and post-assessments will be given for each
quarter and will come from the benchmark assessments within the curriculum that was purchased
for 10th grade ELA classes. These data sets will then be compared to determine any
improvement and the level of improvement from the use of blogging as it relates to the skills of
reading and proper writing skills. Teachers will also use a blogging rubric (see appendix) to
assess students writing skills. Teachers will record grades into a spreadsheet to see the growth
or lack of growth in students writing skills.
Procedures/ Data Collection
Using the Ohios New Learning Standards for Reading and Writing, all four Grade 10
teachers will use a benchmark assessment. All sophomores will participate in the benchmark
assessment evaluating writing and reading skill levels at the beginning of the 2015-2016 school
year. These scores will be evaluated and assigned a grade value that will be compared to the
students past achieved grades in ELA to identify outliers to the benchmark test. Students that
achieved much higher or much lower on the benchmark than expected in comparison to their
grades will not be counted during the experiment. Once students are evaluated, those that are
considered valid for the experiment will be divided into four categories as equally as possible,
including a full range of achievement levels in each class. One class will be assigned as the
control class.
At the beginning of the year, the control class will be taught only using the agreed
curriculum for reading and writing; no supplemental tools. The experimental groups will be
taught using the standard curriculum but students will participate in blogging exercises that will
require students to read and write their own blogs and then respond to peer blogs in a manner

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10

that exercises critical thinking skills. Students will be graded on their participation of these
blogging exercises but students that participate will not receive a failing grade.
At the end of the year, students will take another benchmark test to evaluate if students
that participated in the blogging exercises had a greater improvement on reading and writing
skills in comparison to the students that did not participate in blogging exercises. Achieved
grades in the classes will be evaluated again to make sure students were reaching their potential
and the reading and writing portions of the Annual Ohio Graduation Test will be evaluated for
improvement, as well.
Data Analysis
Data will be measured using the charts from Appendix A and Appendix B to compare
and measure results from the state average 2014-2015 Ohio Graduation Test scores and the
2015-2016 Ohio Graduation Test scores from the four 10th grade English Language Arts classes
at Warrensville Heights City School District in Cleveland, OH. Benchmark assessment data will
be compared and measured in accordance with the rubric located in Appendix C. Pre-study
survey data collected for the assessment of technology understanding, usage, and previous
blogging experience will be evaluated and compared to results logged in Appendix A, Appendix
B, and Appendix C. Based on the data collected, survey results will show if a students prior
knowledge of technology understanding, usage, and previous blogging experience influenced
benchmarking assessments and/or annual scores on the 2015-2016 Ohio Graduation Test.
Assumptions and Limitations
This study is relying on the assumptions that the study group will be a representation of
the general population of the school district, and possibly the state of Ohio. This is predicated on
the examination tools that will be utilized to generate the data to determine whether any

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11

improvement was made in the reading and writing skills of the examination group when using
blogging as part of their curriculum. The use of a single grade level is to control the data by
limiting the study to the group to one that has obtained a certain level in their education which
will be common with all of the participants.
The size of the sample is one, not just of convenience, but involved limiting the cost of
doing this study. The cost is primarily due to the cost of administering and evaluating the
assessments that were needed to generate the data of the study. That included the correlation of
score values for each assessment for each group in the study.
The length of the study is limited to a single year. This is reasonable due to the use of
this study to establish a baseline for future studies to build on. Given the length that will be
utilized, there is some control over the novelty of the use of blogging in the classroom.
The study is further limited by the lack of data from other quantitative studies that this
study could be compared with. As such, the value of this study is to provide a set of data that
future studies could use in broadening the examination of the use of one type of social media in
the improvement of a students reading and writing skills.
Future studies may be used to expand the size of the study group to encompass more than
one grade level and different geographical areas to compare outcomes. Also, different
assessments used may yield more data on how much improvement was or was not made, as well
as how rapid the change in abilities may occur.

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12

References
Anderson, D. B. (2010). The effect of blogging and electronic journaling on writing skills
development in high school freshmen(Order No. 3418791). Available from ProQuest
Central; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
Global; ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection. (751278604).
Bevan, L., Lord, D., Masters, T., Porter, F., Tissandier, M., & Witte, H. (2014, November 29).
Social media in education., Education, Liberty University.
Davis, A., & McGrail, E. (2011). The influence of classroom blogging on elementary student
writing. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 25(4), 415-437.
Fageeh, A. I. (2011). EFL learners' use of blogging for developing writing skills and enhancing
attitudes towards english learning: An exploratory study. Journal of Language and
Literature, 2(1), 31-48.
Glymph, O. G. (2012). The effect of the private classroom blog on the acquisition of formal
writing proficiency with spanish III high school students [Electronic version]. Retrieved
http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1601&context=doctoral
from A dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
doctor of education
Justice, J. (2013). Writing for the real world: Improving students' academic discourse with blogs
in the composition classroom(Order No. 1546024). Available from ProQuest
Dissertations & Theses Full Text; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
(1448873391). Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1448873391?accountid=12085

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13

Ohio Graduation Test results. (2014, 3). Retrieved from Ohio department of Education :
http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Testing/Testing-Results/Ohio-Graduation-Tests-OGTAssessment-Results
Silviyanti, T. M., & Yusuf, Y. Q. (2014). A one-stop class blog to promote collaborative writing
activities. Malaysian Journal of ELT Research, 10(1), 31-IV.

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Appendix
Ohio Graduation Test results for the March 2014 test, for Warrensville Heights City school
District.
A.

Warrensville Heights City School District Data

Subject

Number
Tested

% Prof.
or above

% adv.

% Accel.

% Prof.

% Basic

% Limited

Reading

106

70.8

6.6

15.1

49.1

17.0

12.3

Math

101

49.5

4.0

14.9

30.7

15.8

34.7

Writing

106

74.5

0.0

20.8

53.8

17.9

7.5

Science

105

45.7

5.7

13.3

26.7

33.3

21..0

Social
Studies

104

63.5

11.5

15.4

36.5

25.0

11.5

State of Ohios Compiled Statewide Testing Results

B.

Reading
Performance Level

Number

Percent

Advanced

26,618

20.7

Accelerated

38,466

30.0

Proficient

49,684

38.7

Basic

9,297

7.2

Limited

4,348

3.4

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15

State of Ohios Compiled Statewide Testing Results

C.

Writing
Performance Level

Number

Percent

Advanced

431

0.3

Accelerated

56,680

44.2

Proficient

55,730

43.5

Basic

10,826

8.4

Limited

4,514

3.5

*Note: Total percentage scoring Proficient or above is 89.4%. Below Proficient percentage
is 10.6%.

D.

Blog Rubric

Criteria

Unsatisfactory-0

Limited-1

Proficient- 2

Exemplary-3

Content
and
Creativity

Postings:
-show no insight,
understanding,
or reflective
thought about
the topic
- present no
focus or
cohesion
- have no
creativity or
fluency

Postings:
-provide
minimal insight,
understanding,
and reflective
thought about
the topic
- present a
specific and
limited
viewpoint that
has supporting
examples
- are brief and
not thoroughly
thought through.

Postings:
-provide
moderate insight,
understanding,
and reflective
thought about
the topic
- present a
specific and
cohesive
viewpoint that
has supporting
examples
- are generally
written
creatively
and fluently.

Postings:
-provide
comprehensive
insight,
understanding,
and reflective
thought about
the topic
- present a
focused and
cohesive
viewpoint that
has supporting
examples
- are written
creatively and
fluently.

Score

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16

Voice

Postings do not
reflect an
awareness of the
audience ,
authors voice,
or personality.

Postings reflect a
slight awareness
of audience,
authors voice,
and personality.

Postings reflect
an awareness of
audience,
authors voice,
and personality.

Postings reflect
an appealing
awareness of
audience,
authors voice,
and personality.

Text
Layout and
Graphics

Does not insert

any graphics or
multimedia.

Inserts many
graphics or
multimedia.

Inserts high
quality graphics
and multimedia.

Inserts high
quality graphics
and multimedia
to enhance the
contents visual
appeal and
increase
readability

Timeliness

Does not update

blog within the
required time
frame.

Updates blog 2-3 Updates blog 1

days late.
day late

Updates blog on
time and
frequently.

Citations

Does not include

accurate,
properly
formatted
citations.

Some of the
images, media or
text created by
others does not
include accurate,
properly
formatted
citations.

Most images,
media or text
created by others
does not include
accurate,
properly
formatted
citations.

All images,
media or text
created by others
does not include
accurate,
properly
formatted
citations.

Quality of
Writing

Blogs contains
numerous
grammatical,
spelling, or
punctuation
errors.

Blog includes
some
grammatical,
spelling, or
punctuation
errors.

Blog contains a
few
grammatical,
spelling, or
punctuation
errors.

Blog is free of
grammatical,
spelling, or
punctuation
errors.

Total