Digital Collaboration in Higher Education: Hype or Guarantee for Better Learning?

© 2019 Association for Information Systems. All rights reserved.Higher education has increasingly implemented blended learning tools as supplements to traditional learning. Their aim is to foster collaboration, knowledge exchange and self-directed learning. Blog usage promises to enhance the shift from instruction-based to student-centered learning as promoted by the constructivist learning theory. Prior research has paid little attention to exploring whether blog usage actually increases learners’ performance. Thus, we investigate performance related differences between blog and non-blog users. By analyzing the influence of motivation, learning style, and creativity on non-survey performance data of 42 non-blog users as well as 57 blog users, and by furthermore conducting qualitative interviews, our research provides an in-depth understanding of the usefulness and applicability of blog usage. Despite finding evidence for the potential of blogs to increase students’ performance, the results do not show significant differences between non-blog and blog users. Our findings yield important theoretical and practical implications on how to successfully implement blogs.