James, M. (2007/8). Driving learning through blogging: Students’ perceptions of a reading journal blog assessment task. PRism 5(1&2): http://praxis.massey.ac.nz/prism_online_journ.html 1 Driving learning through blogging: Students’ perceptions of a reading journal blog assessment task. Melanie James University of Newcastle, Australia Abstract In 2007, a new assessment task, a reading journal blog, was introduced to undergraduate public relations courses at the University of Newcastle on Australia’s East coast. It was designed to address two challenges: firstly to encourage student engagement with the required course readings to facilitate student learning; and secondly to equip students with the technical skills of blogging. There is evidence suggesting that this type of assessment task increases student engagement with required course reading, that the assessment task could have wider application than in public relations courses, and that it facilitates the development of students’ technical skills in using new media. In this paper the context and design of the assessment task and the results of a student survey are presented. In addition to discussing the research findings, ways to further develop the assessment task are explored. i Introduction This research project stems from a constructivist approach to learning – an approach that focuses on teachers providing opportunities for students to construct contextual meaning rather than students predominantly being passive receivers of information (Anderson, Krathwohl, Airasian, Cruikshank, Mayer & Pintrich, 2001). As in many other undergraduate courses, first and second year public relations students were required to substantially engage with the theoretical concepts and underpinnings of the field through a programme of directed reading throughout their studies. The directed reading aimed to facilitate students constructing new knowledge through making connections between the new information and what they already knew; and this in turn aimed to inform the class discussions and project work scheduled throughout the semester (Martin, Prosser, Trigwell, Ramsden, & Benjamin, 2000). The readings were also designed to introduce students to the specialised language of the public relations discipline to help to shape the way that students conceptualise and research public relations (Lattuca, 2006). Reading to learn has long been a feature of higher education (Guthrie, 1982, cited in Maclellan, 1997). The first challenge addressed here, was to increase students’ compliance with completing required reading as this