Academic blogs: A platform for sharing information and disseminating knowledge

Abstract

In this article, keywords are analysed in a corpus comprising two academic blogs in higher education, specifically dealing with issues of Open Distance Learning (ODL). WordSmith Tools was used to extract keywords from the blogs, and the thematically significant keywords were then analysed. The keywords were grouped according to three classes. Firstly, the first person pronoun ‘I’ was discussed to analyse the style and authorial voice in the blogs. Next, localised keywords that occur frequently in specific blog posts were discussed. Thirdly, keywords related to the theme of higher education such as ‘students’ and ‘distance’ were analysed. The final section of the findings looked at issues of power in these blogs. The findings show that Siemens’ and Prinsloo’s academic blogs are an accessible source of information regarding higher education that have the potential to be successfully integrated into teaching and learning.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2013, 31(3): 375–387