Procedures

In 2001, an interactive writing project was introduced in UTM via a weblog named Gameplan (http://gameplan.blogspot.com), a shared weblog that acts as a learning journal. The Students involved in this project were students who registered for Language Games in the Classroom course, an elective course for TESL students at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. The main purpose of the interactive writing project was to update class members on the progress of the class Language Camp projects.

In the weblog, the students reflected on works related to their class projects. Mostly, the students posted informal reports of what they had contributed to their class Language Camp projects. The students had to post a minimum of five one-hundred-words entries on the weblog. The marks were given based on the completion of task and the amount of comments made by readers on the entries. Students were encouraged to read each other’s entries and give comments. At the same time, they were also allowed to promote their weblog in order to attract public comments.

The weblog empowered students to publish their thoughts for the whole world to read. The instructor understood the students better because they interacted beyond the boundary of the classroom setting. Project members immediately addressed problems expressed by others in the weblog. Classmates and public readers were presented with true anecdotes and witty commentaries. Students started to grow awareness of the audiences (instructor, classmate and the world) when writing.
Few students were discovered to set their own weblog and continue updating their weblog even though the semester is over. New students taking the course could immediately read last semesters’ entries for reference. This gives evidence that weblog writing can provide a sustainable learning experience.