WRITING AND WEBLOGS: THE DIMENSION OF INTERACTION

Lus Filipe Barbeiro

School of Education and Social Sciences Polytechnic Institute of Leiria (PORTUGAL)
barbeiro@ipleiria.pt
Abstract
The dimension of interactivity is one of the most striking features of Web 2.0. In addition to the
dissemination of pupils texts, the possibility of leaving a comment on a post justifies the introduction of
weblogs in educational settings. This possibility raises certain questions concerning the functions that
the comments fulfil within a learning community. The comments provide authors with feedback on their
texts, and give readers the opportunity to express their opinions and personal experiences, interacting
with authors and other commentators. Are these possibilities being implemented in educational
weblogs? In order to answer this question, we performed an analysis of the comments on a weblog
that addresses a community of primary schools, the weblog Interescolas (Interschools). This blog
was created in association with projects promoting the use of the Internet and mobilises a diversity of
participants, namely pupils, teachers, and project monitors and coordinators. The results show a small
number of comments per post and a limited depth of interaction, considering the development of
conversations between the participants through comments. However, the cases that did occur reveal
some strategies that promote interaction and its potential for learning.
Keywords: writing, interaction, weblogs, comment, primary education.
1 INTRODUCTION
The dimensions of participation, interaction and distribution [1] are among the characteristics
associated with Web 2.0. Rather than sell finished products or artefacts, Internet companies are
selling services with which users can create their own products and disseminate these on the web,
and interact with others. The potential of weblogs becomes salient in this environment. They permit
the creation and dissemination of products, which are generally written texts, and encourage
participation and interaction through comments [2,3,4,5]. Blogs can mobilize different degrees of
involvement and participation, ranging from regular authorship to occasional visits, with or without
comments. Leaving a comment on a post makes the reader an active participant and opens up the
possibility of further interaction with the author or other commentators. The potential of weblog
comments is related to the bifacial nature of reading and writing: readers are invited to participate by
giving their own views and opinions in response to posts, while the author has access to feedback
from a wide audience in cyberspace [6]. This kind of interaction is not limited to the expression of initial
reactions; bloggers can continue, deepening discussions and the exchange of opinions [3]. In this
way, readers can raise their level of competence in critical reading and authors can benefit from new
perspectives that they can incorporate into their own creative processes.
The characteristics of comments, as discursive genre, are quite different from the characteristics of the
posted texts. Blog comments promote informal interaction [2,4,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. Interaction can
initially take the form of a reaction and then develop through new answers or comments as further
reactions bring readers into a "conversation", either about the text itself or triggered by the text.
Besides getting their work published, bloggers expect to receive comments from others [2,11]. One of
the most frequent activities of bloggers is checking whether their posts have been commented on [13].
The comments may be the result of spontaneous reactions or may be the answer to a task embedded
in a learning activity. There are some school projects that take this approach. For example, S. Yang
[6] presents a project involving future teachers, in which the participants were called upon to publish
their reflections about the subject they were studying (theories of teaching) and to comment on other
students reflections. The results confirm that blogs constitute a good way to promote learning through
critical reflection, and that the commenting activity can play a relevant role in this process. The results
of Wang, Woo & Zhao [14], based on an interactive learning environment hosted on e-blogger and
involving posts and interaction through comments, also confirmed that writing online reflections and
interacting with peers has the potential to promote students critical thinking.
Proceedings of INTED2011 Conference.
7-9 March 2011, Valencia, Spain.
ISBN:978-84-614-7423-3
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According to Xie, Ke & Sharma, keeping a blog resulted in an increase in reflective thinking in college
students. Nevertheless, these authors did not find significant differences between the experimental
group, for whom blog maintenance was accompanied by interaction and peer feedback through
comments, and the control group, for whom this interaction did not exist. The authors attribute the
growth of reflective thinking to writing (When students are writing, in order to produce an articulate
statement they need to first construct ideas in their mind, p. 22), in accordance to the positions of
Britton [16]. As for the absence of a significant contrast between the groups with and without
feedback, the authors seek an explanation in the low level of reflective thinking found in many of the
comments studied (A closer look at the peer feedback in the study revealed that students did not
engage in meaningful or constructive feedback activity. Their comments were more social (such as
good job, I agree) rather than providing informative or constructive prompting. p. 23). Miura &
Yamashita [4] also point to the relevance of social factors. Their results suggest that communication
with readers who gave positive feedback strongly encouraged blog authors to continue writing (p.
1452). The results of Xie et al. [15] and Miura & Yamashita [4] confirm the salience of the
interpersonal or social dimension and launch the challenge of finding strategies through which to
increase the contribution of blog comments to learning.
In this article, we intend to analyse the blog Interescolas, seeking a basis on which to develop
proposals for the use of weblogs and commenting activity to facilitate writing development and
learning in general. Our analysis will focus on the dimension of interaction. Given the interactive
potential of the blog, we want to know to what extent interaction between the participants, authors and
commentators was achieved, the role it can play in learning, and the strategies that can be
implemented in order to promote this role.
2 MATERIAL AND METHODS
2.1 Setting: the blog Interescolas
The weblog Interescolas (http://www.interescolas.esecs.ipleiria.pt) constitutes an initiative promoted in
association with two programmes: the CBTIC@EB1 and PNEP projects. The CBTIC@EB1 project
(Basic ICT Skills in Primary Schools) was developed in 2006. The aim of the Project was to promote
the use of ICT in primary schools. The PNEP programme (Programa Nacional de Ensino do
Portugus / Portuguese National Programme for Language Learning) is a programme of continuous
training of primary teachers in the discipline of Portuguese language. It includes as one of its goals the
increased use of ICT in association with language learning. It has been being developed since
2007/08.
The creation of the Interescolas weblog took place in January 2006 in the context of the CBTIC@EB1
project at the School of Education in Leiria. It was intended to provide space for participation, diffusion
and interaction, taking advantage of the potential of ICT. From the beginning, the promoters of the
blog invited the various participants in the project to take part: the members of the coordinating team,
the monitors who were responsible for the training in the primary schools, the teachers, the pupils, and
the Internet public in general. The Interescolas blog became the main webpage of the project and the
place where pupils could see their work published. It was not intended as an instructional platform
directed at teachers and pupils, but as a project for the diffusion of pupils work in association with
learning. As a shared project, the blog gave the pupils from the primary schools involved the
guarantee that they would be read by their peers at other schools. The fact that texts originated from a
large number of different schools and participants and the possibility of leaving comments transformed
the blog into an open space devoted to participation, reflection and interaction among participants.
The participants to whom the blog was directly addressed, the different members of the CBTIC
programme, were regularly invited to contribute to the contents of the blog. A total of 242 schools
participated in the blog in the form of posts.
When the CBTIC@EB1 project ended (in December 2006), the blog went through a period of reduced
activity. It was reanimated in October 2007, with the launch of PNEP. Having been incorporated into
this programme, it remained active through the school years 2007/08 and 2008/09. The blog team
included the coordinators of the programme, the teacher trainers who conducted the training sessions
at schools and the school teachers who were the trainees. All of them were allowed to publish and edit
their own articles, in addition to the activity of commenting, which was accessible to all
visitors/readers. The comments were made visible only after approval by the coordinating team of the
programme.
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2.2 Corpus
The corpus under analysis consists of 660 texts (posts) and 1046 comments that were published on
the Interescolas blog. Our corpus of comments comprises all the comments that were received and
validated from the launch (31 January 2006) until 31 December 2009. From the total, 489 posts
(corresponding to 74%) are authored by pupils and 171 (26%) by teachers. Concerning the comments
it was possible to assign 420 (41%) to pupils, 287 (24%) to teachers, while a large amount (333,
corresponding to 32%) is not assignable.
The analysis of the corpus concerns the distribution of the texts and comments with regard to the
frequency of comments, and to the level of interaction. As for the level of interaction, our analysis
distinguishes the following levels: 1) comment on the post, 2) interaction consisting of: a) response
from the post author(s) to a comment, and b) response from a commentator to another commentator
(i.e. interaction between commentators).
3 RESULTS
3.1 Posts and reaction: the frequency of comments
The presence of comments is not universal or uniform throughout the blog. Not all posts receive
comments; on the other hand, there are some posts that stand out as having a large number of
comments. On average, the number of comments is 1.6 per text. However, there are a large
proportion of posts (47.7%) that do not receive any comment (Table 1). Next, the most frequent
interval presents between 1 and 3 comments. Together, these two intervals represent 88.8% of the
cases. There are 9 cases that received between 10 and 19 comments and 6 with 20 or more
comments. The maximum number of comments received by a post is 44.

Table 1 Frequency of comments per post
Interval No. %
0 315 47.7
[1 - 3] 271 41.1
[4 - 6] 44 6.7
[7 - 9] 15 2.3
[10 - 19] 9 1.4
[20 6 0.9
(maximum: 44)

If we take a closer look at the posts that attracted a higher number of comments, we find that
particular types of posts provoked more comments. These were posts that consisted of a traditional
text genre (such as rhymes, riddles, etc.), which gave rise to comments presenting new examples of
the same text paradigm. In the case of riddles, we must also consider that, in addition to presenting
new examples, the comments also function as a way for the readers to make their attempts at
guessing the answers to the riddles. The post with the highest number of comments is one particular
post that presents a riddle to the readers of the blog. Among the total of 44 comments, 39 contain new
puzzles and the remaining 5 consist of answers to the riddle presented in the post or to the riddles in
previous comments. In addition to this post, there are two others of the same kind in this subset of
posts with a high number of comments: one presenting a series of rhymes using people's names (38
comments that add new name rhymes) and another presenting a tongue-twister (28 comments with 26
new examples). The paradigm of traditional text genres is thus activated through these posts and this
activation extends to the comments.
Another productive field for comments is found in posts that focus on current issues, such as
ecological concerns. The posts whose theme is the issue of water, A importncia da gua (The
importance of water), and A utilidade da gua (The utility of water) are the next most commented
posts, with 25 and 23 comments respectively.
The sixth post to have over 20 comments combines some of the features already described with new
characteristics. This specific post presents a collection of traditional games, which gives rise to the
presentation of new games, extending the paradigm as happened with riddles, rhymes and tongue-
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twisters. However, it also gives rise to the expression of gratitude to the authors for the usefulness that
the games had for school work that the visitors had to accomplish, and some comments ask for new
games or descriptions of specific games in order for these to be included in those school projects.
Such expressions of thanks and requests come from pupils at all school levels. The identification of
the Interescolas blog as being relevant for ongoing school projects is found in relation to other posts
and topics, too. In general, the traces of these visits in the comments show the readers' appreciation
and recognition of the authors' work.
3.2 Comments: reaction and interaction
The results for depth of interaction are presented in Table 2. These results clearly show that a large
proportion of the comments remain at the first level, i.e., they are direct comments on the post that do
not involve any other comments that might be present. The sequence of posts, if any, is therefore
predominantly additive, parallel, and non-interactive across the different posts. The percentages for
this level are very high (above 90%).
However, there are cases where we can find some interaction, in which the authors respond to
comments or comment on other comments. In the next section, we will take a closer look at these
cases, in order to explore which strategies can lead to interaction.

Table 2 Level of interaction
Reaction Interaction
Direct comment to the post


Response from the
post author(s)

Interaction between
commentators
1015 (97.0%) 5 (0.5%) 26 (2.5%)

3.3 Strategies for interaction
The results in Table 2 show the very limited depth of the interaction that takes place on the blog.
However, some cases of deeper interaction occur, and these deserve a fuller analysis in order to
reveal strategies that can be adopted in connection with the use of ICT and, specifically, weblogs in
schools. These strategies include ending the post with questions, putting questions to the authors in
the comments, suggesting text reformulation, commenting or responding to the previous comments,
and continuing a story in the comments.
In the previous section, we concluded that certain kinds of posts attract more comments. This applies
to posts that present texts from traditional genres (rhymes, riddles, tongue-twisters) or that focus on
current issues. However, regardless of the topic, there are some posts that adopt certain strategies in
order to get comments from readers.
The most common strategy is the presentation of questions or challenges at the end of the post. One
such example appears in the post "The frog", published by a group of third-grade pupils. The pupils
report on the unexpected appearance of a frog in the schoolyard:


A r [The frog
Ol a todos!
Ontem vimos uma r no recreio da nossa
escola.
Era grande, castanha e tinha pintinhas
castanho-escuras.
Ela estava a esconder-se.
Algum sabe como coberto o corpo das
rs?
Esperamos que respondam pergunta.
Hello everyone! Yesterday we saw a
frog in the playground of our school. It
was big, brown and had dark brown
flecks.
She was hiding.
Does anyone know how the body of
frogs is covered?
We expect you to answer the question.]

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The last sentence is a direct appeal to the readers to provide answers through comments. As a result,
within three days of the publication of this post, there were six comments with replies. This type of
strategy is found in other posts. Another example is the post "Penguins", which presents the film with
the same title and which ends with the question "And what you know about penguins?". Some of the
answers, as with the text "The Frog", are the result of researching information on the Internet. In the
whole corpus, 16 posts present this strategy of including questions and challenges at the end. Almost
all of them (14) get some answers to the questions.
In the case of the strategy just described, the search for interaction emerges from the post itself. In
other cases, that search occurs in the comments, which may also present questions to the authors (19
cases). The number of responses is lower (5 cases). This may be due to the interschool nature of the
Interescolas blog. The connection of the authors (pupils) to the blog is shared with many others. It may
be that the authors did not regularly check whether there were any comments. In the five cases of
authors responses through comments presented in Table 2, the authors return to the blog to give
additional information or opinions through comments results from direct appeals by commentators.
One example arises with the post conversa com Jos Fanha (Talking to ... Jos Fanha". The
authors, pupils from the 3rd and 4th grades, report on a visit to the Municipal Library, where they took
part in a meeting with the writer Jos Fanha (a Portuguese writer of children's books). In their text, the
pupils mention certain aspects of the writer's life, his children, his previous professions, his dreams for
the world, etc. But they do not mention the books he wrote. In a comment, a member of the
programme's coordinating team asks them questions about the writer's books, which book they
preferred, and invites them to choose a poem to share on the blog. In response, the authors talk about
the writer's book that they had worked on at school before meeting him, reveal their preferences, and
choose an extract from the book they read in class. The comment now presents relevant information
about the book and about the activity of reading that was carried out in class. This case shows the
potential of comments for further explanation of knowledge, calling pupils to increase the level of
relevant information explicitly presented to the reader.
In another example, the comment involves the reader participating in the process of rewriting the text
by making suggestions. This applies to the post O Outono bom ("Autumn is good ..."). In this
post, two pupils present two acrostics, one with the word "Outono" ("Autumn") and another with the
word "Bolinho" ("Small cake"). However, there were two lines in which neither pupil could form the
acrostic with the initial letters of the first words, which caused them to use the second letter of the
words tUdo ("all") and lIndo ("beautiful)." In the comment, the member of the coordinating team
suggests that they continue to search for words in order to rewrite these two verses. Three days later,
responding to the challenge, pupils from the same class present new versions of the acrostic using the
words Uva ("grape") and Imagino ("Imagine") instead of the previous ones.
For comments that focus primarily on other comments, rather than on the initial post, we find the
following in the corpus: answers to riddles presented in previous comments and appreciation of those
riddles and rhymes as well as more interactive content, such as expressions of agreement with
previous comments and responses that give information and express opinions that have been
requested through comments. In one case, some pupils from a primary school use a comment on a
more recent post to announce that they are forming a band. They reveal the bands name ("Boys &
Girls") and ask readers if they like the name. They get some comments congratulating them and
expressing agreement with the name.
Finally, comments can also be used to continue and expand a story that began in the post. This
happens in the case of the story As aventuras de um rato de computador ("The adventures of a
computer mouse"), which pupils in a school began and published on the blog, ending their text with
the question "E agora amigos, o que ter acontecido?" ("Now friends, what happened?") for readers to
continue.
4 DISCUSSION
The possibility of interacting through comments is one of the dimensions commonly invoked in favor of
the use of blogs in education [2,3,4,6]. The results of our analysis of comments on the Interescolas
blog reveal this potential but also some limitations on the use of blogs in schools.
The first issue that arises from the results concerns the number of comments that the posts get.
Mishne & Glance [3] call attention to the scarcity of quantitative studies on blog comments. The study
by Herring, Scheidt, Bonus & Wright [17], which examined a random sample of 203 weblogs on the
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Internet, found a relatively small number of comments (an average of 0.3 comments per post). The
authors emphasize that most of the posts had not received any comments at all. As a corollary, they
note that "in general, the evidence of readers commenting on blog entries is less than previous claims
about blog interactivity and community had led us to expect." (p. 8). In their study, Mishne & Glance [3]
used a much larger sample (36044 blogs), 10132 of which had comments. The results show a value
higher than that of Herring et al. (2004) for the number of comments per post: 0.9. In our study, the
average number of comments per post is even higher: 1.6. If we look for an explanation for this higher
value, we should point to a peculiarity of our corpus: both the study of Herring et al. [17] and that of
Mishne & Glance [3] collected the blogs in their samples in a broad way, on the Internet, without any
restriction to a specific area. Therefore, these areas are very diverse.
In our study, we examined a blog that is clearly in the area of education. Is this an indication that the
blogs in the area of education receive a higher number of comments? We must remember that the
study focuses on a single blog. In another study [18], (we analyzed a larger sample, consisting of 270
primary schools blogs. In that study, the mean scores for comments per post is 0.6, which is lower
than the values reported by Mishne & Glance [3]. Thus, the hypothesis of a greater number of
comments on blogs in educational contexts should be further investigated. Perhaps the different
categories of blogs should be taken into account with regard to the educational context in which they
appear, the dynamics of the teachers involved and the type of administration that is adopted. Anyway,
as a particular case, the Interescolas blog presents a higher number of comments per post than that of
Mishne & Glance [3], although the extent of that difference is not very great. On the other hand, in our
analysis of the Interescolas blog we also find the presence of a large number of posts without
comments (47.7%) - this value is 36% in Barbeiro [18] and much higher in Mishne & Glance [3]: 85%.
In the case of the Interescolas weblog, the larger number of comments per post may be due to two
interrelated factors: i) the interschool nature of this weblog, ii) and the blog link to training activities in
ICT and Portuguese language. As for the first factor, the blog brought together in the same project a
large number of schools (in association with the CBTIC and PNEP programmes). This was reinforced
by visits by the trainers to classrooms, and contributed to pupils and teachers feeling closer to their
colleagues in other schools and entering into interaction with them by commenting on their posts. The
fact that this blog was linked to ICT training enabled trainers to include some content and activities
related to the blog as a teaching tool, in which interaction could play an important role. These activities
relied on the guidance and cooperation of monitors or trainers, especially in the CBTIC programme.
The activities that were implemented included the dimension of interaction. They showed that it is
possible to include comments in the process of teaching and learning. Teachers play a key role in this
inclusion, organizing and directing the activity of commenting when reading the weblog texts. This kind
of activity can become part of the regular use of ICT in school, together with the activities of reading /
researching and writing / publishing on the Internet.
The second question concerns the level of interaction that is achieved. When we consider the
educational use of weblogs, it is not just a matter of the number of comments per post but also of
mobilizing the potential for construing knowledge of interaction among different participants, authors
and a diversity of readers. In their study, Herring et al. [17] argue that the interactive potential
associated with this ICT tool is not always confirmed ("Consistent with earlier findings, the frequency
of links and comments in blog entries remained low. This finding is contrary to the popular
characterization of the blogosphere as interconnected and conversational, p. 12). Accordingly, the
results of our analysis of the Interescolas blog showed a low level of interaction in the form of
"conversations" between authors and readers or between different readers (commentators). However,
the presence of some episodes of interaction that go beyond reaction to the initial post shows that it is
possible to develop this interaction. This may involve questions or comments from readers to authors.
It may also involve questions, comments and responses among the different commentators. For this
interaction to develop, it is necessary that participants return regularly to the blog and the post. In the
case of individual blogs or blogs involving a whole class, this happens quite easily. In the case of the
Interescolas blog, which was a transversal one connecting a large number of schools, this was not
assured. In fact, even if an email alert was received that there had been a comment, it was not certain
that the teacher and the class would return to the post to read and respond to the comment in order to
continue interaction. For this to happen, at least initially, the teacher should establish working methods
in the class to ensure regular visits to check for comments and consider the replies that should be
given. The regularity of visits to the blog can also widen participation because pupils can leave
comments on other posts. The teacher's guidance may also increase the adoption of strategies that
can be followed in comments to promote interaction (as is the case with questions to the authors or to
other visitors; in turn, this strategy will motivate further visits to check for the presence of responses).
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The activity of commenting need not be limited to spontaneous and individual reactions. It can be
developed in a systematic and organized way in the classroom, as shown by the fact that the
authorship of the comments on Interescolas blog is joint authorship in a high proportion of comments
made by primary school pupils (67% of the pupils comments present joint authorship). Indeed, the
task of commenting was often carried out in the context of classroom activities that focused on the use
of ICT and were conducted by the classroom teacher or the trainer.
Pupils develop a sense of ownership towards personal and classroom weblogs and this may promote
regular contact with the blog. In the case of the Interescolas blog or similar ones, pupils above all
develop feelings of participation, even if they do not develop a sense of ownership to such a high
degree as in the case of classroom or personal blogs. Both aspects are important. The first solution
allows for greater monitoring of the blog. The second solution increases the number of visitors,
promotes participation and dissemination of work in a wider circle and allows a greater diversity of
roles. Indeed, in this second case, pupils mobilize the roles of author (in relation to their own posts),
reader (in relation to the posts by pupils from other schools or by other participants) and can also play
the role of commentator.
5 CONCLUSION
Comments, the blogosphere's tool for the achievement of interaction, are present in the Interescolas
weblog. However, the results show that the degree to which interaction was achieved remains low.
This conclusion is supported by indicators such as: i) the average number of comments on each post,
ii) the limited presence of interaction between posts authors and commentators beyond the initial
comment, iii) and also the limited interaction between the commentators. In particular the values of
these last two indicators are very low.
These results are consistent with those obtained by other studies, including those of Mishne & Glance
[3], Herring et al. [17], and Herring et al. [19]. Blog comments offer some potential for learning. This
lies in the fact that blog comments make it possible to positively reinforce the authors of posts by
expressing recognition of their participation within a community and of the dissemination of their texts.
They also make it possible to add contributions from visitors personal experience to the initial post.
Through the sequence of comments, interaction becomes possible with the authors of the post and
also with other participants and commentators. Readers may ask for additional information and
explanations, present their own points of view, and react to other opinions and direct specific requests
to the authors of the post, to the blog administrators or to the visitors in general. In the space devoted
to comments, the authors themselves may provide additional information about their post, explaining
the activity in which they were produced, and expressing how they felt during that activity or after
publishing the text. These possibilities, with respect to both visitors and authors, all emerge in the case
of the Interescolas weblog. However, the development of interaction beyond the response / comment
to the original post only appears in a few cases. Nevertheless, those that do appear indicate directions
and guidelines for the development of this dimension of interaction among participants.
In the classroom, commenting on a blog can acquire the status of an organized activity that is at the
service of the learning process. To achieve this goal, the teacher must be aware of strategies and
tasks that s/he can implement in order to guide the pupils' commenting activity. Among these
strategies we find questions to the authors or to visitors in general. Another strategy is to express the
pupils' specific links to authors, subjects or situations described in the text, when these privileged
connections exist. The pupils, as commentators, may also present their own experiences to the
readers, make suggestions about text reformulation, and so on.
When interaction is a purpose, the strategy for promoting it can be applied to the post itself, generally
through questions directed to the readers. These questions become good hooks to get comments
from readers.
Rather than being left solely to the readers immediate reaction after reading the post, the comments
on the text of the blog may be the object of previous work in class, in order to enrich and explore
possible comments that may be submitted by each pupil or group of pupils. As was seen in the
Interescolas weblog, especially in relation to the situations where commenting was implemented in the
classroom, the comments do not have to restrict authorship to individual work. Pupils can be arranged
in pairs, in small groups or in groups corresponding to the entire class in order to ponder, discuss and
jointly create the comments that they will leave on the blog concerning a particular post.
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Before submitting the comment, proposals may be communicated and explained to the class in order
to find points of convergence and differentiation. Thus, interaction will be included in the process of
writing the comment, before being achieved through the products (posts and comments) published on
the blog. This interaction can enhance the activity of commenting and the comments themselves.
From the perspective of authors, responding to the challenges posed by the comments of readers also
contributes to learning. Besides, it brings the benefit of making the reader's perspective known to
authors.
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