48_Acceptance on Blog Usage

Acceptance on Blog Usage: The Roles of technology Acceptance, Social Influence and Knowledge Sharing Motivation

Chin-Lung Hsu, Judy Chuan-Chuan Lin, November 2007, Science Direct

The appeal of this article, where yet again a new model or framework of reference emerges around the use of a technology tool from Web 2.0 is the focus on key factors that appear to drive the use and adoption of blogs amongst young adults. In addition to the model example and the key factors, some interesting facts emerge and could prove interesting to consider is adopting blogs for ESL online deliveries as meaningful tasks for students.

Highlights include:

1. The average time spent by a blog reader on a blog page is about 2 minutes (not in an educational environment but as personal pleasure reading time).
2. Consider blogs an act of sharing knowledge (which the article sustains is mostly unselfish sharing) and by default a tool for socialization. A very specific way of socializing online.
3. The study in the article focused on the relationship between attitudes versus blogs' usefulness, ease of use and enjoyment and how these affect intention of use and commitment to continue using the blog (as readers and creators)
4. Participating in a blog does not seem to be directly related to the expectation that one is going to be rewarded by the task.

Other than these key elements, the direct connections to the actual topic of this blog seem loose. The idea behind my interest in the topic is mainly to consider research at specific aspects of online tools that can directly be used in ESL learning environments. Blogs, as written production tasks, can be the ultimate way to propose to students the opportunity to create personal stories and reflections on their learning and experiences. the article seems to stress the importance of ease of use of the tool and ways to ensure the experience is a pleasant one. One aspect can be technically attended to and practice usually fills in the gap - while the other aspect, the one relating to the enjoyment may prove more challenging, until a certain level of language skill is actually achieved.