An Empirical Study of the Factors Affecting Weblog Success in Higher Education

The use of classroom blogs in higher education serves to engage and motivate students as well as to help them build a professional online profile and connect with fellow classmates. Although many studies have focused on the implementation and benefits of blogging in education, few have investigated best practices in design, which can have a critical impact upon success. In this study, we proposed a success model for classroom blogs considering the impact of system quality, information quality and user aspects to the net benefit, with an emphasis on user experience design. Finally, we evaluated this model by studying a classroom blog used by 146 college students over the course of 3 academic quarters.