Abstract
During the middle school years, students often experience a drop in academic performance as peer relationships begin to take precedence over relationships with teachers and parents. At the same time, students this age have the opportunity to begin learning a second language at school, an academic endeavor. This quasi-experimental study explored the potential benefits of using a secure blogging site to increase middle school student participation, thereby increasing student success as they begin to learn Spanish as a second language. Twenty-four participants from 11 through 13 years of age were divided into two groups with half of them collaborating using a secure Moodle site hosted on a school computer. The other half worked on the same assignments without using AD. Data collected from survey results, bi-weekly quiz results, teacher observation, and interviews demonstrate that students enjoy blogging, spent extra time working on Spanish, and gained confidence in their ability to read and understand Spanish. Most students improved in their Spanish writing skills over the course of the study. The intervention group posted slightly higher gains than the control group on posttests and scored significantly higher on bi-weekly quizzes. The difference between pretests and posttests were too close to form definite conclusions as to the long-term academic benefits of using asynchronous discussion technology for student collaboration. The results indicate further research studies into the potential benefits of this pedagogy.