Enhancing students writing skill through the use of blogs

Faculty of Arts, Education & Human Development
Assignment Cover Sheet

Family Name: Nguyen

Unit Code:

First Name: Thi Thanh Huong

Student ID Number:
4462435

Unit Title: EVALUATION

AED5008

Assignment Title: ENHANCING STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL THROUGH THE USE OF BLOGS
Name of Lecturer: Michael Watts
Date Submitted: 25/07/2014

Tutorial Group (Day & Time):
Student Contact Telephone No./Student Email
Address:
Telephone No:
Email address:


Plagiarism and Collusion
Plagiarism is a practice that involves the using of another person’s intellectual output and
presenting it as one’s own’. This includes the presentation of work that has been copied, in whole or
part, from other sources (including other students’ work, published books or periodicals, or unpublished

works or unauthorized collaboration with other persons), without due acknowledgement.
onsequences of Plagiarism and Collusion
A student found guilty of plagiarism will be subject to some or all of the following:
Referral to Course Coordinator for: counseling; submission of further work; use of the services of
Student Learning Unit; the placing of a record of the alleged infringement on the student’s file.
Referral of the matter to the Head of School for: issuing of written warning; re-submission of
work for assessment or the undertaking of another form of assessment such as an oral or unseen
examination; allocation of a fail grade to part or all of the assessment; allocation a fail grade to the
subject.
Referral of the matter to the Dean for: suspension from the course; official disciplinary action by the
University Disciplinary Committee.


Assignment Title:
ENHANCING STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL THROUGH THE USE OF ONLINE
PEER FEEDBACK – A STUDY IN THE CONTEXT OF THAIBINH MEDICAL
UNIVERSITY

•

INTRODUCTION

This paper is going to present an evaluation of the research on using blogs to give peer feedback
and its effect on students‟ writing skill, which was carried out in the context of Thai Binh
Medical University. In this paper, an overview of the rationale for the innovation, the procedure
in which the innovation was conducted, the research methodology and methods is going to be
demonstrated. A summary of the research findings, along with a reflection on the innovation and
the research process is also discussed.
•

Rationale for the innovation

Since its existence, the Internet has demonstrated significant impacts on every field of life,
including education. In most of the universities in Vietnam, the access of the Internet has never
been so easy for students. Most students now have their own computer which can get access to
the Internet almost everywhere, at school, in the library, at home or even in a café. Students have
a wider choice of approaching their study, from finding study materials in online sources instead
of borrowing books from libraries, working in groups through creating forums instead of having
to meet face to face, attending an online course instead of a traditional course which requires
them to be present at class, etc. With such significant role the Internet has on students‟ life, the
researcher has thought of some possible ways to make use of the Internet to assist students in


their study. In fact, students now also spend a majority of their time for social networks such as
blogs, Facebook or Twitter. They use social networks as a means to express their feelings, share
information and socializing. The ideas of using social networks such as blogs in a language
classroom, was accordingly proposed.
Using blogs in language teaching is, in fact, not a new approach as it has been proposed by many
other researchers. One of the most frequent uses of blogs can be found in writing class, where
students are supposed to post their writing on their blogs, give and receive comments and
feedback via blogs, instead of using the traditional pen-and-paper method when students are
required to write their essays on paper and hand in to the teachers (Tanti 2012).
The impacts of using blogs in writing class have been discussed in many previous studies. It has
been proved that online feedback has certain benefits to students‟ language learning. Results
from previous study has pointed out that teaching writing through blogs helped develop students‟
writing skill, enhance their mutual interaction, give them more motivation and confidence in
writing and develop a variety of related skills like computer skills, critical thinking and
communicative skills (Noytim 2009, Cequena 2013, Fellner & Apple 2006, Kashini et al. 2013).
However, not always has consensus been reached. Researchers actually share different
viewpoints in some aspects in the benefits of giving feedback on blogs. For example, it was

found out in the study by Noytim (2009) that using blogs to give feedback enabled students to
receive numerous comments from different people at the same time, which provided students
with chances to self-assess their writing and basing on the feedback to upgrade their writing
quality. However, it was realized in the study by Wu (2006) that as the feedback was public
online, most of them were complimentary and blessings, which were not of much benefit to


students. Contrast viewpoints were also presented when discussing about the benefits of online
feedback. It was claimed that using blogs to give feedback enabled students to improve their
writings in terms of content, organization and vocabulary use (Taki & Fadarshari 2012). Through
receiving online feedback, students were pointed out the mistakes in their writing and better their
subsequent writing versions. Nevertheless, Kashani et al. (2013) expressed the disapproval when
regarding online feedback as ambiguous and incomprehensible. She expressed the advocacy of
the traditional method of giving feedback, explaining that by giving feedback face to face,
students could clarify their peer‟s comments and avoid the misinterpretation of feedback.
Previous study was carried out in different context, with the involvement of different subjects
and approaching the issues in different ways; thus, it is understandable that consensus are not
always reached. This innovation was, therefore, conducted in the context of Thai Binh Medical
University to examine the effects of online feedback on students‟ at this institution in particular
and also seek the answers to how students may react to the use of blogs in learning writing skill.
The innovation aimed at addressing the two research questions.
•

What are the effects of online peer feedback on the writing skill of students at Thai
Binh Medical University?

•

What are students’ perceptions of the use of blogs in writing lessons?
•

Summary of the innovation

This innovation was carried out in Thaibinh Medical University, which is one of the biggest
educational institutions in Thai Binh province. Students studying at this university mostly come
from Thai Binh province and other surrounding provinces. They are trained to work in medical


services; thus, English is not their major. Not every student at this university has their own
computer, especially first-year students when the need of using computer in their study is not
high. However, students can get access to computer and Internet from the computer labs and the
library of the school. Free Wi-Fi is also available to students at university. Each of the students is
provided with an account and password, which is often related to their students ID, and they can
use their account to access to free Wi-Fi at school. Apart from the computer labs and library
which provide students with access to computer and Internet, students can easily find Internet
shops and café around the campus where they can also have access to computer and Internet at
any time. In fact, the researcher had calculated the possibility of students‟ getting access to the
computer and Internet before deciding to apply online peer feedback in teaching writing skill.
The participants of this innovation were 16 students who were studying at second year. In this
innovation, students were supposed to read, comprehend, and give feedback to their friends‟
writing; thus, the participants were supposed to reach a certain level of language proficiency.
Second-year students at this university, who were expected to be of Pre-intermediate language
level, were believed to be proficient enough to meet the requirements of the study. Furthermore,
second-year students at Thai Binh Medical University had all experienced a short course in
computer and network; hence, their computer skills were believed to meet the demand of the
research.
16 students were divided into four groups of four. Students worked and gave comments to one
another in their group. The researcher divided students into groups to make sure each student
could receive the equal number of comments and avoid the situation in which one students
received too much attention from their classmate while the other‟s writing was not paid attention

at all. The innovation took place in 8 weeks; then the groups changed their member after every


two weeks. This was done to enable students to receive and give feedback to classmates of
different language level. Students were also reminded of the way in giving feedback to their
peers. They were warned that too general feedback was not accepted such as “Good” or “Welldone” or “Need improvement” as these types of feedback was of little or no benefit to their peer.
The feedback had to be detailed and focus on both form and content of the writing.
At the beginning of the innovation, the participants were still instructed with skills in creating
and using blogs. This short training session was done to make sure students had no difficulty in
using blogs to give feedback. Students also practiced creating and using blogs under the
instruction and guidance of an IT teacher. When all were sure about the skills in using blogs, the
first lesson in writing was delivered to them in the second week of the innovation.
Writing lessons were delivered in a computer lab at university. At the end of each lesson, when
students were instructed with the theory on essay writing, they were asked to write a task at class
on the computer and post their writing on their created personal blogs. The class work involved
students‟ essay writing and posting on blogs; the activities involving reading peers‟ writing,
giving feedback, and editing the writing basing on the feedback were assigned to students as
homework since the researcher believed that with plenty of time at home, students could read
their peer‟s writing closely to give detailed feedback. For those who received feedback, they
would have time to consider their peer feedback to corporate in their subsequent writing.
•

THE RESEARCH

The innovation took place in 8 weeks. To address the two issues in the innovation, including the
impacts of online peer feedback on students‟ writing skills and the ways in which peer feedback


can be conducted to achieve the best results, data was collected from three qualitative research
methods namely students‟ writing analysis, observations and interviews.

Data for the innovation was obtained firstly from the students‟ writing analysis. As proposed by
Dahlberg and McCaign (2010), “documentary analysis is the systematic scrutiny of the content
of documents to identify patterns of change or development on specific issues; content can be the
language, tone or terminology used…” (p.124). The analysis of students‟ writings also focused
on exploring the content of the multiple-draft writing to identify any change or improvement that
students could make during the time the innovation took place. As earlier mentioned, students
were required to write one essay a week, posted it on their blogs to receive feedback from their
peers, basing on the feedback to revise their writing and handed in the final writing version in the
following week. After 8 weeks of the innovation, students had 8 writing versions of 4 different
topics. These writings were collected by the researcher to analyze to identify whether there was
any improvement in students‟ writing skills at the end of the innovation.
The second data collection instruments used in this innovation was the teacher observation.
Observation was conducted as an informative of collecting qualitative data (Dahlberg &
McCaign, 2010). Observation is a popular method which implicates the involvement of the
researcher as the one who directly involves in the activities. With regard to this innovation, the
researcher also functioned as the teacher of the innovation, who delivered the writing class; thus,
observation could easily be conducted by the researcher. The observation was performed both
on-the-spot and outside the class. During the period when students did their writing and posted it
on blogs, observation was made with the aim to examine their attitude, engagement, and time
spent on the activities. The teacher was also supposed to observe closely the activities that
occurred on students‟ blogs and make note of the way students‟ gave comments, responded to


comments and incorporated the comments in the subsequent writings. Data gained from the
observation is supposed to answer the second research question, which was related to students‟
perceptions of the use of blogs in writing lessons.
If the data gathered from students‟ writing analysis reflected the impact of online peer feedback
on students‟ writing skills in terms of the improvement in writing quality, the data obtained from
the teacher observation of the process in which online feedback was given and received reflected
students‟ attitude towards the activities. The third data collection method was gained from

interview with students. The interview was expected to gather data about the impact of online
peer feedback on students‟ writing performance in terms of both the improvement in writing
quality and students‟ attitudes to the activities. Data from the interview were triangulated with
the data from writing analysis and observation to verify the reliability of data gathered from the
two first sources.
The researcher decided to conduct interview instead of questionnaire because using interview
helped create a more impulsive interaction and elasticity for both the interviewer and
interviewees in comparison with using questionnaire. Normally in a questionnaire, the
respondents were given a list of questions and asked to give their answer by ticking in the correct
box. The information gathered from questionnaire; thus; may not be comprehensive. The use of
open-ended questions in the interview enabled the interviewees to present their viewpoints more
freely and informatively. The interview also enabled the interviewers to clarify any ambiguous
information from the interviewees to avoid misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Findings
from the interview, accordingly, were considered to be more in-depth and reliable.


Interview is delivered to students at the end of the innovation, with the involvement of all the
participants. The language used in the interview was Vietnamese as students of second-year who
were non-English major, may not be able to express their viewpoint precisely using a foreign
language. The use of Vietnamese in the interview also provided students with a relaxing
atmosphere in which they could express their opinion freely and comfortably.
All the participants in the interviews were informed about the recording during the interview.
They were also ensured that the recordings were used for the research purposes and they would
be mentioned as anonymously. This should be emphasized to students to avoid their reluctance
in giving criticism or negative comments about the innovation.
In addition, throughout the interview, the researcher was supposed to pay close attention to
students‟ attitude. With regard to Vietnamese culture, where “face-saving” culture is highly
appreciated, students were not used to giving negative comments or criticizing their teachers as
they considered those actions to be disrespected to their teachers (Nguyen, 1986, cited in Ellis,
1994). Normally in an interview conducted by teachers to their own students, students may

hesitate or avoid making direct criticism to their teachers as well as the teaching activities for
fear that they may disappoint or offend their teachers. Realizing this, the teacher who functioned
as the interviewer in this innovation had clarified the purpose of the interview to all the
participants. She emphasized that all constructive feedback about the innovation were welcome,
regardless of it was negative or positive one. Feedback on the limitation and weaknesses of the
innovation was even more appreciated as it helped the researcher realize the shortcomings of the
innovation and could learn from the mistakes and restriction to make necessary changes for the
better implementation of the innovation next time.


•

RESEARCH DATA ANLYSES

The innovation aimed at exploring the effects of online peer feedback on blogs on students‟
writing skills, along with examining students‟ perceptions of the use of blogs in learning writing
skills. Data collected from three sources namely teachers‟ observation, students‟ writing analysis
and interview with students at the end of the innovation. Findings from the innovation were
addressed into three categories namely effects of blogs on students‟ writing skills in terms of
students‟ writing quality and students‟ engagement in the class activities and lastly the
perceptions of students towards the application of blogs in teaching writing.
•

Students’ writing quality

Results of students‟ writing quality were obtained from two data sources namely the students‟
writing analysis and the interview.
Students performed 8 writings during the 8 weeks of innovation, in which they covered the four
writing topics. Each writing topic was written in two drafts, including one draft students wrote
right in class and posted on their blogs, and the other draft was written after they received

feedback from their peers and revised the writing. The writing analysis was conducted by
comparing the first and second writing draft of students in each topic and by comparing the first
draft of the first topic in week 1 and the fourth topic in week 7. The first comparison made
between the first and second writing version was to explore whether there was any improvement
from the first to the revised draft after students received feedback from their friends.
Furthermore, the second comparison of the writing of the first topic with that of the fourth topic
aimed to figure out whether students made any improvement in their writing skill throughout the
innovation.


When comparing the first and second writing draft of all 16 students over the four writing task, it
was found out that the writing quality of all students experienced significant change. The second
draft of all the writings were of better quality than the first draft, although the extent to which the
writings were improved varied from students to students. It was realized that those who were of
lower language proficiency made more significant improvement than those who were of higher
level. In addition, when analyzing the students‟ writing, the researcher based on two major
criteria to evaluate, namely form and content, in which form refers to grammar, vocabulary and
punctuation while content refers to ideas and organization. The analysis reflected that
improvement was mostly found in terms of form, rather than content. Fewer mistakes in form
(grammar, vocabulary and punctuation) were found in the second draft of most students‟ writing;
however, in terms of content, not much change was made in the second draft in comparison with
the first one.
It was obvious from the writing analysis that improvement in writing quality was seen in the
second draft compared with the first one. However, as the researcher just made comparison
between the first and second writing drafts of students independently without reference to the
peer feedback that they received; she also did not calculate how many mistakes was incorporated
from the peer feedback; therefore, it would be hard to make instant conclusion that all the
improvement in the second draft was resulted from the online peer feedback. Confirmation may
be needed when analyzing results from the interviews.
Apart from the comparison made between students‟ first and second draft of all writing tasks, the

researcher also chose to compare the first writing task with the final one to identify the
improvement that students might make throughout the innovation. It was found out from the
second comparison that 9 out of 16 students made improvement in their writing of the first draft


of writing task 1 and that of writing task 4, but not significant. Seven other students did not or
make very little improvement in their writing skill.
It can be concluded that the use of online peer feedback on blogs had an immediate effects on
students‟ writing quality when they were pointed out mistakes made in their writing and made
instant revision. However, the long term effects of peer feedback via blogs were not significant
and had not yet been confirmed.
Results from the interview showed that when students were asked to self-evaluate their writing
skill improvement, 12 out of 16 students agreed that their writing ability was improved
throughout the innovation with the help from online peer feedback. In more details, students
reported that they could benefit both from giving and receiving feedback to their friends‟ writing.
For each of the writing task, they were supposed to read and give feedback to three other
students in their groups. The reading and giving feedback to friends‟ writing helped them reflect
to their own writings. For some of the mistakes that they were unsure, they needed to check them
from the grammar book or dictionary, which helped them learn and memorize the grammar rules
or vocabulary more. On the other hand, when receiving feedback from their peers, they agreed
that the peer feedback helped them realize their own mistakes and make adaptation in the
subsequent writing.
Among the other four students who did not agree that their writing ability was improved, two
students admitted that they did benefit a lot from peer feedback, but eight weeks was not enough
for them to make any improvement in their writing skill in general. They clarified that thanks to
the peer feedback, they could realize their mistakes to make revision in the next version;
however, when they wrote the essay by themselves in class, they still made the same mistakes.


Students claimed that may be they needed more time to be more aware of the repeated mistakes.

For the other two students, they reported that they did not make improvement in their writing and
the benefits they gained from the peer feedback were also restricted. One student admitted that
he gained benefits from receiving feedback but did not benefit much the other way round. He
claimed that doing to feedback to three other writings in one week was too much for him and he
almost did not read the writing closely to give detailed feedback. He said that it would be more
appropriate if each student was required to edit one or two writing per week as they had to spend
time learning the other subjects.
When asked about the way of giving feedback to their peers, most students agreed that they
mostly paid attention to form mistakes as they were evident and easy to recognize. They often
did not make comment on ideas and organization, which was the content feedback, due to the
fact that they sometimes did not know how to express their viewpoints in words about how to
improve their friends‟ writing in terms of content. Findings from the interview matched with
findings from the students‟ analysis in that most of the feedback addressed form mistakes rather
than content mistakes. That explained why students made more improvement in terms of form
than content. Findings from interviews also confirmed the findings from the writing analysis that
the improvement from the second writing draft compared with the first one were mostly resulted
from the peer feedback that students received in blogs. The improvement in writing quality, thus,
was thanks to the use of peer feedback.
•

Students’ engagement

Findings about the engagement of students in the activities were obtained through two data
sources namely the observation and students‟ interview.


From the observation, it was found out that all the students gave feedback to their peer
sufficiently. No students omitted or ignored their friends‟ writing. This showed that students
were largely involved in the activities. Although each student was supposed to read and
comment on three other writings, which was a big workload for them, almost all students did the

job well. The quality of the feedback was good, with almost no general comment such as
“Good”, “Well-done” or “Need improvement”. Most of the comments were detailed and
constructive.
Similar results were found in the interview with students. Students expressed their high
engagement and interest in giving feedback to their peers. They said that they devoted their time
both in class and at home to do the editing. However, students expressed their dissimilar
preference of the way feedback was delivered. Some said they preferred to give feedback in class
as they could have more concentration while doing the work at class. On the other hand, some
other expressed their preference of giving feedback at home, explaining that they had more time
to read the writing closely and also they could refer to the grammar book and dictionary to check
the writing elements that they were unsure before giving feedback.
In short, students showed high level of engagement in doing the feedback giving when posting
the writing on blogs.
•

Students’ perceptions of online peer feedback

When they were asked whether they enjoyed learning writing through the use of blogs and
receiving peer feedback online, 14 over 16 students said yes. The most frequent reason they gave
to explain their answers was that they could benefit much from the use of online feedback. Some
students said that at first they did not like the ideas of posting their writing online and other


friends could access their writing to give comments. They were afraid that they would make silly
mistakes in the writing and would be made jokes of. However, after several weeks of the
innovation, they realized the benefits that online feedback brought to them and they changed
their ideas about that. They now felt more relaxed and confident to post their writing to ask for
comments. For the other two students who claimed that they did not like the idea, one explained
that he did not deny the benefits that online peer feedback brought to his writing performance;
however, he found it much difficult to give feedback online. If he received their friends‟ writing

in paper, he could easily mark mistakes on the paper without having to express complicated
explanation to make his friends understand what points he was commenting on. With the use of
blogs and online feedback, he could not mark on his friends‟ paper and it took him much time to
list out the mistakes together with the explanation. The other students claimed that he neither
liked the pen-and-paper feedback nor the online feedback on blogs as he found both ways
difficult for him to express his ideas or comments on his friends‟ writings. He claimed that the
best way of giving feedback was face-to-face in which two students could exchange their ideas
about an issue. These ideas of the two students who expressed their dislike of peer feedback on
blogs were worth considering as they pointed out some disadvantages of the use of online peer
feedback.
When asked about the difficulties that students had encountered when they accessed to the use of
blogs in giving feedback, students presented various answers.
First, students claimed that there should be a detailed guidance from the teacher about which
aspects of writing students should feedback on. When they were told to give feedback in general,
they were sometimes confused of what to comment on. Therefore, they often paid attention to
the evident mistakes such as grammar and vocabulary, punctuations, rather than the mistakes


related to the contents like ideas and organization. It was suggested that the teacher gave them a
checklist in which specific criteria for feedback were presented and students could base on the
criteria to give feedback.
Secondly, students also reported that the ways of giving feedback should be consistent. For
example, some students just pointed out the mistakes for their friends, some other pointed out
and provided corrections. The teachers, therefore, should be more specific in the requirement of
feedback giving, whether students were supposed to point out mistake or give correction to their
friends.
The third difficulty has already been mentioned by one student in the interview, saying that when
using blogs to give comments, it was difficult for students to keep track of the mistakes that were
pointed out. Both the feedback givers and receivers found it hard to identify and realize the
mistakes without being able to mark on the paper or on the screen. If students wrote on paper,

their friends could mark red pen on the paper. If the essays were written in Word processing,
students can use track changes to add comments. However, with blog post, students could only
add comment at the end of each post, and they often have to explain or list the mistakes again,
which was sometime ambiguous and time consuming.
In short, beneficial as the online peer feedback and the use of blogs to students‟ writing skills,
there existed certain shortcomings in this innovation, which should be considered carefully to
find out the solutions.
•
•

EVALUATION OF THE INNOVATION
Reflection on the innovation


The innovation had found the fulfilled answers to the two research questions. Results had proved
that the use of online peer feedback via blogs had significant benefits on students. First of all,
students were found to be able to improve their writing quality. Online peer feedback did have
immediate impacts on students‟ writing quality with the improvement of the revised draft thanks
to the feedback compared with the original one. Although the long term effects of online peer
feedback was not justified due to the short time of the innovation, further studies could still be
conducted with the long time enough to identify the long-term effects on students‟ writing
ability.
Online peer feedback was also proved to involve students‟ high level of engagement. From
realizing the benefits that the feedback brought to their writing, students developed more
engagement in the learning activities. It also helped raise students‟ interest in learning.
The use of online peer feedback was beneficial to students in that it enabled students to receive
more than one feedback form one peer at the same time. If students wrote their essay on paper, it
was likely that they could only receive comments from one friend only. With the use of blogs,
students posted their writing on the blogs and if it was open to public, anyone could access to the
writing and leave their comments there. The more comments students received, the more sources

of references students could refer to when revising their writing; and the quality of the writing,
therefore, was likely to be upgraded.
The innovation also helped change the attitude of both students and teachers towards the use of
blogs as a social network. Social networks, accordingly, did not restricted to be used for
entertaining only, it could also be exploited to use in teaching and learning and bring about lots
of benefits.


Although the use of blogs in teaching writing for students in this innovation proved to be
effective, there inevitably existed some weaknesses.
First, the teacher had anticipated the problems that might arise during the use of blogs and
decided to give students a short training course on creating and using blogs, which proved to be
efficient as there had been no problems arising during the innovation relating to the use of blogs.
However, the teacher did not anticipate the problems with students‟ giving feedback; as a result,
no training or guidance was provided to students on how to give feedback. Consequently,
students were confused of the ways in which feedback were given. They were unsure about
whether feedback should focus on form or content, and whether they should give direct or
indirect feedback. The inconsistence in feedback giving among students also resulted in the
restrictions of efficiency that peer feedback could bring to students.
•

Reflection on the research process

The research was conducted using three qualitative data source, which was the strength of the
research. The use of various data collection methods helped the researcher gather plentiful data.
In addition, findings from different data sources can be triangulated to make sure the results for
the study was reliable. For example, the writing analysis reflected that students made
improvement in their writing ability in the second writing draft compared with the first one.
However, it could not be concluded that the improvement was resulted from the online peer
feedback, as it was likely that students could resort to other measures to help them make

improvement in their writing. In the interview, students confirmed that the use of peer feedback
helped them realize their mistakes and upgrade their revised writing. Therefore, it could be
concluded basing on the two data sources that the use of online peer feedback helped improve
the writing quality for students. However, if there were no findings from the interview to cross-


check the data from the writing analysis, conclusion about students‟ improvement in writing
made from one source of data only might be unreliable. The use of three data collection methods
together enabled the researcher to obtain reliable and comprehensive results.
In the researcher process, however, still persisted some limitations that needed improvement.
First comes a relatively common problem of most of the research, which is the limit of time in
which the research took place. This research took place in eight weeks, which is a rather short
time to justify the long-term effects of online peer feedback on students‟ writing skill. Therefore,
conclusion could only be made about the ability to improve students‟ writing quality between
original and revised draft only. In order to test the long-term effects on students‟ skills, a more
in-depth researcher would need to be take place.
Secondly, the use of interview for all 16 students was really a big workload for the researchers.
The implementation of interview and the time spent on transcribing the recordings and
categorizing data was huge. Therefore, if conducting the research again, the researcher may
decide to deliver questionnaire to all the participants. The questionnaire may be designed with a
large number of open-ended questions to enable the respondents to express their ideas freely.
After collecting and analyzing the questionnaire results, the researcher will invite some
respondents who have outstanding or particular answers to sit for a more in-depth interview. By
doing so, the researcher may save time and energy for analyzing too much data; but spend her
effort on analyzing only striking features in the data.
•

CONCLUSION

The innovation was carried out with success to a certain extent. The success of the research was

brought about thanks to the careful anticipation of the problems that might arise during the


research process as well as the detailed analysis of the research context. For example, the
difficulty in terms of technical problems relating to blog using and creating was anticipated and a
short training course was delivered to students at the beginning of the innovation; therefore, no
significant problems occurred during the innovation that may harm the results of the research. In
addition, ethnic issues were also considered such as the reluctance that students may demonstrate
during the interview. Accordingly, the researcher applied necessary measures to overcome these
difficulties and results of the interview were comprehensive and in-depth. As a researcher, when
conducting an innovation, it is essential that one have to consider carefully the findings from
previous studies, identify the gap in the research in compared with the context of his own
institutions. In addition, it is also important that the researcher pay attention to the socio-cultural
context of the research setting, anticipate the possible problems and prepare in time solutions to
these problems so that the results of the research are not affected. Careful consideration of
research methods used to collect data is also essential as it is a decisive factor that influence the
success of a research.

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APPENDIX
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Can u tell me what exactly you did the writing class? Give me examples
2. Did u enjoy it? Why and tell me examples?
3. What were the difficulties that you had during the use of online peer feedback?
4. Besides difficulties, did u benefit from giving feedback to others on blog? If so, what are the
benefits?
4. How do u feel about using blogs in writing class?
5. Do u want to continue using blogs in writing class?- if yes, give reason.
- if no, give reasons.
6. What else do u want to tell me about using blogs to improve writing skill?