Writing Blog Posts Helps Students Connect Experiential Learning to the Workplace

TL;DR

This study shows that guided blog posts help CS students reflect deeply on their work-based learning experiences, enhancing their understanding and communication of technical skills and growth.

Contribution

It introduces a structured blog post approach to improve reflection and communication in experiential CS learning, with evidence of deep reflection across key constructs.

Findings

Students produced deep reflections on problem-solving and collaboration.

Thematic analysis revealed four key themes in student blog posts.

Students demonstrated comprehensive understanding of their technical and growth experiences.

Abstract

Undergraduates in work-based learning experiences often produce meaningful contributions as viewed by their supervisors, yet report a negative perception of their contributions because they struggled during the process or produced only a few lines of code change. As a result, many omit these contributions from their resumes and job interviews, losing a meaningful signal of technical ability. This study examines how guided blog posts help CS students in work based learning experiences reflect on what they learned and contextualize their experiences. It also evaluates the depth of reflection produced. The study included twenty-five juniors and seniors studying CS at CTCs and other affordable local colleges. All participated in one cohort during Fall 2024. Each student was assigned a simple open source issue to solve from a popular open source project over the course of several weeks with the help of an industry mentor. While working on the project, students drafted a LinkedIn blog post using a five-section outline covering project mission, assigned issue, technical architecture, challenges faced, and submitted solution. We conducted a thematic analysis of the published posts and measured reflection depth using Mejia and Turns's Knowledge Gain instrument. Four themes emerged from the posts: identifying problem solving techniques, growth mindset, the challenges and benefits of collaborative development, and the impacts of their contribution on users. Additionally, students demonstrated deep reflection across all four Knowledge Gain constructs. Structured blog posts offer a low-cost addition to experiential CS learning such as capstones, micro-internships, internships, and apprenticeships. This study is descriptive; future work should compare outcomes against a control group.