Using Weblog to Enhance Students’ Motivation and Engagement in

the Introduction to Journalism Class

Rina Marnita AS

, Vicha Faradika

Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Andalas, Padang, Indonesia

Keywords: Weblog.Teaching Aid, Motivation, Journalism.

Abstract: Motivation, what causes someone to act, both extrinsically and intrinsically, is very significant in determining

the achievement of the objectives of a learning. An action class research which employ web blog as a teaching

aid was conducted to examine students’ motivation and engagement in the Introduction to Journalism class.

Eighty -five students enrolled in the Introduction on Journalism course were treated as the participants of the

research. The students were assigned to make a web blog as a place to place their writings to be read by their

friends and the public. The students’ involvement or engagement in the course is assessed from the number

of the task they do, the quality of their writing while their motivation is seen from their feedback about the

class at the end of the course. The research shows that 45% of the students got a very good grade (≥86); 27%

good (≥80-85), and 19% fairly good (≥76-79), 5% passed, and 5% failed. Both the learning achievement and

the students’ comments indicate that using web blog as a teaching aid has satisfactorily made students engaged

in the class and are enthusiastic about news writing.

1 INTRODUCTION

Journalism is the activity or profession of writing for

newspapers, magazines or news websites or preparing

news to be broadcast (Oxford, 2016). Introduction to

Journalism is a compulsory subject for students of

English Department of Faculty of Humanities,

Andalas University. The learning objectives of the

course are 1) to introduce students to journalism; 2)

enable them to write news of certain types, and 3)

provide them with some experience in journalistic

activities.

Journalism is a form of communication, but it's

distinct from other forms. It is unique because it's a

one-way message, or story, from the journalist to the

audience. It's most unique because the message isn't

the journalist's personal story or subjective thoughts.

Instead, the journalist acts as a conduit, narrating an

objective story about something that happened or is

happening, based on his or her observations and

discoveries. This type of storytelling comes in many

different forms, including:

1. Breaking news

2. Feature stories

3. Investigative reports

4. Editorials

5. Reviews

6. Blogs

The students appears to have limited knowledge

of journalism. And, when they are asked whether they

want to work as a journalist the answer was primarily

‘no’. One study (Alkazemi et.al., 2017) shows that

journalism is the second lowest top career choices to

the students of a senior high school in Ghana,

although 38% of 2000 sample students state that

journalist is a prestigious profession. In fact, today

journalism seems to have a peculiar fascination for

young people in seeking careers (Alkazemi et.al.,

2017). A recent study by Acheampong (2017) on the

students’ motivation on mass communication class

shows that most respondents have a positive view on

journalism education.

Thus, in order to make ‘Introduction to

Journalism’ course interesting to all students, a

teaching method that may attract their attention to

engage in the class is required. A class action research

was done to study whether or not blog may improve

students’ motivation and engagement in the

Introduction to Journalism class. It is particularly to

examine the effect of using weblog as an online media

to the students’ participation (motivation and

engagement) in the class activities and to the

students’ achievement in the learning objectives.

Here, blog is treated as a media for students to write

Marnita AS, R. and Faradika, V.

Using Weblog to Enhance Students’ Motivation and Engagement in the Introduction to Journalism Class.

DOI: 10.5220/0008681901510155

In Improving Educational Quality Toward International Standard (ICED-QA 2018), pages 151-155

ISBN: 978-989-758-392-6

151

their tasks and one tool for the lecturer to assess the

students’ learning achievement.

In psychological perspective, motivation is

described as “a state that energizes, directs and

sustains behavior” (Acheampong, 2017). It is a term

that is used to refer to factors that activate, direct, and

sustain goal-directed behavior (Alkazemi, 2017), and

is believed as ‘always be at the heart of teaching and

learning (Kormos and Csizér, 2008). Motivation is

the main reason that inspires a person to move

forward (Kormos and Csizér, 2008). It is described

(Kormos and Csizér, 2008; Lo and Hyland, 2007;

Ryan, 2000; Ryan and Deci, 2000) that one’s

motivation might be stimulated or inspired by others

or events (extrinsic motivation) or it may come from

within the individual (intrinsic motivation).

Motivation may be affected by one’s self

determination, the ability to make choices and

exercise a high degree of control. It is described

(Ryan, 2000) that self-determination can be supported

by providing students with opportunities to be

challenged and then increasing students' interest,

competence, creativity and desire to be challenged

and increase students’ engagement in their study.

In education, student engagement refers ‘to the

degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and

passion that students show when they are learning or

being taught, which extends to the level of motivation

they have to learn and progress in their education’ [4].

Several research have proved that motivation is

essential in learning process and affect students’

engagement in the class activity (Oxford and Shearin,

1994; Ryan, 2000). Alkazemi (2017) has done a

research to observe students’ perspective toward

journalism and career as a journalist, and find that

jounalism is not popular to the students and beeing a

jurnalist is not the main choise of career. A contrast

result is shown by Acheampong (2017) who did a

survey on the motivation of Kuwaiti students who

intend to major in mass communication. They have

faced a long process that begins in high school. The

finding depicts that all respondents viewed the field

of journalism positively and journalism education in

a positive light. The two research show that students

from different places and different exposure to

journalism may differ in viewing journalism or

journalism education.

A study by Jodai and Zafarghandi (2013)

investigates the effect of motivational factors on

English achievement in an intensive English course

attended by 164 Iranian male military staff (aged

from 20 to 30). The study which adopts a

contextualized version of the mini-Attitude

Motivation Test Battery (α=.70) uses four principal

variables, which are motivation, integrativeness,

organizational influence, and anxiety. The finding

shows that ‘integrativeness predicted the motivation

to learn English positively, and that motivation was a

positive predictor of English achievement’.

Blog has been considered as one of a great

educational tools in classroom teaching and is

considered as an ‘online journal’ that an individual

can continuously update with his or her own words,

ideas, and thoughts through software that enables one

to easily do so (Cambell, 2003). It gives students

complete freedom to publish content on the web. A

study by has proved that students viewed Weblog as

‘giving an opportunity and freedom for self-

expression in English and writing for both a local and

global audience’, It also can foster creative, analytical

and critical thinking skills, creates social interaction

and good relationships between writer and reader, and

supports the learning community (Cambell, 2003).

2 METHODS

2.1 Research Design

The participant of the research is 85 students of

English Department who take ‘Introduction to

Journalism’ course. They are enrolled in the 3

semester of the 2016/2017 academic year.

- Every student is assigned to make a web blog

and post the class assignments and teaching

materials on the blog.

- The students are assigned to write at least 3 news

in different forms (photo news, feature story,

and broadcasting news). There is no restriction

as to the topic of the news to allow the students

choose topic of their interest. All the

assignments have to be posted on their blog.

- Besides posting their works on journalism, the

students are also assigned to post the teaching

materials obtained from the internet.

2.2 Assessment

The Marking System follows the system used by the

University. One’s achievement is valued using

number system, ranging from 0 to 100. The numbers

are then transformed into a letter system, ranging

from A to E. The value of each letter is based on 5

points scale basis. Thus, the highest grade is A, which

has a value ≥ 86 and the lowest is E (failed), which is

≤ 45,

Students’ engagement in the class activities is

assessed from 1). Number of Posting/Writing, 2).

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152

Diversity of Topics, and 3). Blog Performance.

Students’ engagement is also assessed from their

attendance during the semester and punctuation in the

dateline set to post every task/writing on the blog.

Both contributes 10% to the final grade.

The number of posting/writing. The number of

writing is seen from the number of task posted on

every student’ blog. There are 5 tasks given during

the semester: two news, one feature story, one

opinion, and one broadcasting news (news based on a

video-taped interview). The highest grade is given to

those who do at least three works. Those who write

more that the compulsory tasks are considered as the

motivated students and those who write less is less

motivated.

Diversity of topics. The diversity of the topic is

assessed from the students’ choice of the topics of the

news or opinion based on the event in the surrounding

(university life or neighborhood situation) to the

international events or news. Those who write on

relatively the same topic is considered as less

interested in the class activity.

Blog Performance. The students’ blog

performance is used to assess student’s interest in the

activity of writing and journalism. It is measured from

the design of the blog such as the use of color, picture

and supporting media (such as pictures, caricatures,

video or music) and the size and type of font used that

may affect the readability of the text. They are

marked as very interesting, interesting, and less

interesting.

The motivation of the students in the course is

seen from the students’ comments about the course

written as the feedback to the methods used and the

class in general. A response is categorized positive if

it uses a verb or an adjective to express a positive

opinion or feeling toward something like the verb

‘like’, ‘interest’, ‘enjoy’ or adjectives ‘interesting’,

‘good’, ‘excited’, etc.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The result of the class action research is described

from the two main aspects being assessed.

3.1 Number of Posting.

The number of postings is seen from the number of

writing posted by the students on their blog. The

compulsory writing is 5. Of 85 students, 4 did not

follow the class at all and thus were considered failed.

The lowest number of posting or writing is 3, the

highest is 7. Table 1 shows that 40 (47%) of the

students posted more than what is required, and 22

(26%) posted less than the minimum number

assigned.

Table1: Number of Posting on the students’ blog

Number of posting

Number of Students

∑ =85

Table I shows that only 11.9% of the total students do

the assignment as the minimum requirements. They

are students who retake the subjects. About 55% of

the students do the assignment above the minimum

requirement, of which 21.6 % has more than what is

required.

3.2 Diversity on topics

The topic of the students’ writings varies. The topic

ranges from events or situations found in various

places in the university to those in overseas, such as

Korea and US.

3.3 Blog Performance

It is found that all students’ writings about news or

future stories are supported by at least one picture or

photo. Of 85 students, 22 use videos for their news or

future stories and the teaching materials. Only one

blog used music as the background of the blog. Figure

1 presents the students’ grade for blog performance.

Figure 1: Students’ Final Grade

D C- C- B- B- B+ A- A

Number of Student

Grade

Using Weblog to Enhance Students’ Motivation and Engagement in the Introduction to Journalism Class

153

Figure 1. shows the distribution of students final

grade calculated in the end of the class. As it can be

seen from the figure, 45% of the students got a very

good grade (≥86) ; 27% got good grade (≥80-85),

19% got fairly good grade (≥76-79), 5% passed, and

5% failed.

3.4 Students Motivation in the course

The students’ comments about the class as stated in

their feedback to the class varies significantly. The

number of response belong to the positive response is

83%, neutral is 10% and negative is 7% and the

content of the statement as shown in the students’

responses below:

 Because of that, I know how to write a news

in blog

 I began to understand how to make the news

well and correctly

 I feel this class is much trained me in doing a

research like knowing the right way of

interviewing, writing a news with precise

and accurate.

 This class goes as what I expected and I’m

very satisfied. I have learnt about the

necessary things about journalism, but I still

want to learn more about this subject.

 the first i feel heavy to write the blog but after

i realized that this blog can make me string

beautiful words

 this class is interesting and helped me with

my writing and conversation skill. This class

also gives me an understanding of what is

journalism and what its role in society. The

class was taken very enjoyably.

Similarly, a negative response is viewed from the

adjective used and the content of the statement.

There are only 4 students whose comments falls to

the negative type. The statements are:

 It's just that this class is not conducive

because the number of students is too much

 Class is crowded

 It is better to have two classes in the future

 I cannot learn a lot as the class is too

crowded. I cannot hear the voice of the

lecture because students at the back are

noisy.

Neutral. Statements that describe the aim of

creating the blog or do not contain a particular

judgment about the class or method used are

considered neutral. There are two students who

have no specific view of the class.

 I make this blog for the Introduction to

journalistic tasks.

 This is blog is aimed to fulfil my task in

Introduction to Journalism class.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This small research has proved that:

1. weblog as a teaching aid can improve most

students’ engagements in the ‘Introduction to

Journalism’ class. Although only a few students

claim that they are interested in working as a

journalist, using blog as a tool in teaching

journalism can enhance students’ engagement in

the class activity and result in a good

achievement in the learning objectives.

2. Weblog appears as an appropriate teaching tool

to involve students in writing activities. Most of

the students claim that the activity of writing

news is an enjoyable thing.

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