Community Blogs and Marketing Education: Assessing Students' Perceptio n

Weblogs or just blogs are increasingly used in higher education. Several studies suggest that blogs can be a great way to share knowledge, improve learning and interactivity, but the review of the literature revealed that blogging remains the object of inconsistent and mixed research findings. The purpose of this study is to review the potential of blogs as complementary learning spaces in higher education and present the five-years' experience of Bimarketing group blog to assist traditional teaching activities. The results show that students find blogging a useful learning tool, and that blogs can effectively be used to support learning activities for longer than one semester. However, instructors must be prepared to find ways to motivate students to keep participating, since the sense of community was not as strong as expected. The findings are important both theoretically and practically as they provide a framework and a benchmark against which other blogging experiences can be gauged.