Weblogs and Discourse. Weblogs as a transformational technology for higher education and academic research, Blogtalk Conference Paper, Vienna, May 23rd-24th 2003, by Oliver Wrede:

“This paper discusses different questions of weblogs in context of higher education. It is focussing on three loosely coupled questions:
1. How can the weblog format improve discourse?
2. How it can weblogs support teaching at universities?
3. What are the insitutional benefits of weblogs in universities?
It seems obvious that these questions relate to each other and therefore probably should be discussed in context. The document grew out of a wild collection of speculative thoughts and notes. It is also based on some daily experience with weblogs in an educational setting.” [1]

[1] http://weblogs.design.fh-aachen.de/owrede/publikationen/weblogs_and_discourse