Forum .LRN Q&A: Re: Using web logs for learning

I would be VERY curious to have the links to the studies being referred to here, such as the Gilroy article.
I should say that my understanding is not from a survey of how forums and blogs are being used, but from an analysis of how they might be used effectively based on pre-web studies in the teaching of writing at the university level.
For example, the behavioralist studies show increases in learning due to the reinforcements of group work and informal conversations to the point that, when it comes to writing, there is some empirical evidence showing that students write LESS well after attending a series of lectures, a bit better when spending the same amount of time doing fill-in-the-blank exercises, and a whole lot better having spent their time drinking coffee with their pals and talking about it.
Studies in the cognitive psychology tradition focus on how differently stories can be told and learned from in the company of others and where the learning problem is to move students from compulsive/authoritarian to more relativist psychologies and worldviews.
Hence, I would explore forum use as it might be integrated into successful and pedagogically-sound learning activities.
I also like the forum because I am in Germanay.  More than all other portlets, the forum most closely resembles the academic seminar: the sanctum sanctorium of academic freedom and learning, the neo-humanist pearl in the middle of absolutism.
In addition, many here see e-learning in terms I characterize as "reserve desk, typewriters, and toilet paper", meaning as a solution to the Bologna Agreement and the B.A. whereby we can dispose of student claims to university access on the cheap, substituting capital for labor, and then get rid of them.
In this context, the seminar is the royal road to the professorial unconscious, and I am shooting for the high ground: I want them to learn how to use it for their best students, and precisely as understand Carl Robert Blesius has doctors contributing to forums on dermatology: because forums can contribute to the formation of strong peer groups chracterized by diversity of opinion, high disciplinary standards, and the love and rewards of a good conversation.

I would be interested in the study that found students learned more from talking to each other that lectures. It parallels a U.S. study that found that a vast majority of employees felt they gained most of their work-related knowledge by chance from informal conversations, mostly stories, and not from procedure manuals or formal training (Wensley, 1998).  The complete reference and related discussion in a posting in my blog - http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2004/05/stories_and_org.html  Thanks for mentioning this. I was trained as a cognitive psychologist and looked at how media influence thinking.  However, I still am interested in what the behaviorist might say.