ulises mejias

(See Updates at the end of the post) Can a certain type of academic blogging be a more adequate form of literature review than the traditional chapter in a dissertation? In this post, I employ the rubric proposed by Boote & Beile (2005) to determine whether blogging can be considered a form of literature review. I also make some suggestions for how blogging may be incorporated formally into the research and writing activities of some doctoral students, although it certainly might not be useful to others. I am not suggesting that this single post is my literature review; I am merely providing a map that outlines how my blogging during the past years constitutes a form of ongoing literature review.

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(Updates at the end of the post) I’m trying to put together some criteria for the summative evaluation of wikis as a learning technology. Perhaps you can take a look at what I have just brainstormed and provide some suggestions.

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Before we forget all about the label Social Software and move on to Web 2.0, 3.0, or whatever comes next, I think it would be useful to dwell a little bit on the use of the word ’social’ as applied in this term. What does it mean for software to be social? Intuitively, we know that Social Software is software that fulfills some sort of social function, allowing us to form social connections, and perform social activities that give shape to social groups. But as evidenced by the number of times I just used the word ’social’ to define Social Software, it is clear that what we have here is a tautology: by taking for granted what we understand by ’social,’ the adjective in question both provides an absolute definition and at the same time manages to define nothing.

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