Blogs to Communicate with Our Members

OUSA is looking at instituting a blog on its homepage to improve communication with our members. It is hard, however, to point out to people the amount of work that is required for a blog to be useful. At this stage, the powers that be envisage the blog will be updated weekly. However this is nowhere near often enough to keep people engaging with the blog. Indeed, when Twitter was offered as an alternative (since the micro-blogging style is much easier to update) this will apparently make the page too cluttered. Also, the blog itself will be a micro blog. If it is going to be a micro blog then why is it a blog?

Such Dramatic Changes?

I stumbled upon Steve Rosenbaum's article about "5 Trends that Will Change Media in '09." Whilst it is all very well and good to gaze into our crystal ball, we should do so be carefully looking back at what has passed. In particular, the growth of e-books.

Other than the legacy of the physical experience (the paper of the New York Times, the Album Covers of old records, the binding of books) the reality is that digital delivery is better for the planet, and has both the long-tail efficiencies and creative freedom that gives digital creators the ability to lower costs (and therefore price). MIddlemen who don't add value should beware, Digital Goods delivery doesn't require both a wholesale and a retail seller.

I know Rosenbaum is talking about much more than e-books here - and I agree with him that providing digital content provides much more freedom, freedoms offered by sites such as soundclick - this may not be the case for things such as books. I remember that one of the things often touted by eBook advocates is that they will reduce the costs for the end user. The reality is that the production costs of books are actually very low; the largest proportion of the money you pay for a book goes into the publisher's coffers. This solution is simple you say: just get rid of the publisher. However, are we to rely on information that does not have at least some verifiability?

Also, at present, there is very little in the way of gadgets to read eBooks on. Sure, Amazon has Kindle but apart from that there is very little out there that can even come close the to superiority of paper. One reason the codex design has persisted for so long is that it is actually of incredibly superior design. Until an eBook reader can come close to the brilliant design of a pBook I don't think there will be such an explosion of eBooks. After all, we are still waiting...

Spotlight Session Notes

I realise this post is a little late but there are still some things I need to mention about last week's Spotlight on Teaching and Learning. I found the second day of symposium a little un-inspiring so in this post I will focus on the event of the first day. Obviously, I found the last paper session of the day - Blogs and Wikis in Learning: Sharing the Experience, another Library sponsored session - the most inspiring. This session was a Panel Discussion featuring Anton Angelo (Student and Information Technology Services, University of Otago), Charlotte Brown (Reference Department, Central Library, University of Otago), Erika Pearson (Media, Film, and Communications Studies, University of Otago), and Noel Waite (Design Studies, University of Otago). Each of these speakers focused on some aspect of incorporating Web 2.0 technologies into teaching students.

I was particularly impressed by Dr Pearson. For a paper on cybersocieties, Dr Pearson set the students the task of blogging regularly. These posts were then assessed at the end of the semester. This was yet another instance of blogs working. Although there were still different levels of engagement - but it should be remembered that traditional teaching methods have the different levels of engagement - the students seemed to accept the challenge. Of course, with a blog it is easy for the lecturer to post comments that serve as further prompting for the students rather than them developing their assessment in solitude and therefore having only one chance to "get it right."

What I found most interesting was the flexibility that blogs allowed for in learning. For instance, most of the comments and even posts were made in the middle of the night. This has great implications for student involvement since - with an open forum on the Internet - we can deliver classes which are tailored to students' lives; we can have a virtual tutorial at 3am in the morning! It was also interesting that on-line participation increased off-line communication. Particularly with students whose first language is not English or they are just shy, they can post what they want to say on their blog and then this can give people in the class better insight into their personality and these points of convergence can stimulate greater in-class involvement. This is rather surprising since there seems to be a prevalent view that on-line participation re-enforces physical isolation. It seems that this is not always the case.

There seemed a great need to explain why blogs are a suitable assessment tools. To me it seems as if we have to spend all our energy in justifying ourselves then what is going to be left for actually doing the work. This just hints at the blatant paranoia about emerging methods/tools. It seems as if we are still so stuck in the "old ways" that when something new comes along our first duty is to attack it - beyond the point of constructive critique - since we are too afraid to dabble and get our feet wet. Indeed, some of the students of Dr Pearson's paper failed to have a sense of play in their blogs. This was because they did not realise the full potential of the "simple" operations of the medium. It seems strange that young people are coming to university without a sense of adventure when it comes to Web 2.0 technologies.

Reflective Blogs: Redux

This morning's session at the Spotlight on Teaching and Learning went really well I thought. I was a bit apprehensive that I was going to be offering my own humble perspective on how blogs can be mobilised for student assessment. More particularly, I could not offer any information on how this would work from an academic perspective. It turned out that with the other two presentations - Fostering Learner Engagement and Cultural Understanding Through Foreign Language Blogging, Antoine Alm (Languages and Cultures, University of Otago), and The Use of a Blog as the Medium for Online Role Plays in Nutrition in Post Graduate Study, Megan Gibbons (Midwifery and Otago Institute of Sport and Adventure, Otago Polytechnic) and Sandra Elias (Midwifery, Otago Polytechnic) - my presentation actually provided a point of contrast in that it provided feedback on how learners view this experience. In this post, I will elaborate on my previous post - my presentation - and augment it with the points I raised that were not outlined in that post as well as the discussion that followed my presentation.

Further Points:

• Blogs have the potential to let students be much more honest. I know that I am much more my-self on-line than off. Posting in a blog means we do not have to worry about how people are actually viewing us.
• Blogs allow us to develop a portfolio which we can later use for things such as funding applications and for admission to certain academic programmes.
• A blog is much quicker to maintain than a manual journal.
  

Discussion Points:

• A blog can provide documentation of practice which a practice researcher can later use when they draft their contextualising document.
• Blogs provide the option to post comments. Although this could be a reasonably rare occurrence - at least it was in two instances of blogs used for assessment today - the option is still there. It is better, in my view, to provide this option rather than not. Even if students don't take it up at least there is the availability for them to comment.
• Blogs are much more customisable than discussion boards - particularly Blackboard. A blog becomes a student's own space. Although this can have a down-side in that a lot of time can be spent getting the look of a blog the way a student wants and this can distract from other studies.
• There are privacy issues with a blog. If you are going to blog about problems you encountered then you need to do so in a way that the person with whom you are having the problem cannot be publicly identified. Having said this, I found blogging about the problem let me focus on ways to solve it rather than letting me simply do my old trick of running away and hiding. Of course, there is also the phenomenon that a blog can be a more neutral way to resolve conflict: instead of confronting someone - which may exacerbate the problem - they may read your post and this may guide them in their own endeavours.

I found this session rather invigorating. I was also pleased to see academics talking about the successes they had with their assessments. It seemed a very positive step forward in mobilising this tool for educational purposes.

Reflective Blogs

Whence am I Coming?
This paper is informed by both my participation in the Digital Information Literacy Project as well as my experience as a Theatre Studies student and a director of theatre.

Digital Information Literacy Project

• Supported by the University of Otago Library
• Action Research based enquiry
• Examining how Theatre Studies and the Library can mobilise Web 2.0 technologies to increase communication.
• From this enquiry it became clear that blogs were a good (and easy) way to increase communication.

Theatre Studies

• For 400-level papers we were required to keep a journal
• Most of us had very little idea about what was expected of us - and the lecturer was understandably anxious about giving us exemplars
• We were not encouraged to share our journals and there was little incentive to write regularly

This report is coming from a student perspective; I have found blogging a useful way to informally improve my theatre practice

Blogs Provide an Alternative to Traditional Journalling

• They have the potential to keep students more "on-track" because the lecturer can keep an eye on their posting behaviour
• They have the potential for immediate feedback from both the lecturer and others in the class. Particularly when journalling is undertaken by a small class they can make the task seem less isolating
• Because they can be media-rich - allowing easy posting of pictures and video - they provide a much greater range of creative potential
• In a theatrical context - particularly when a student is creating a piece of theatre that will be shown to the public - they have the potential to heighten awareness of the audience so that audience could be much more "informed" about a production. Blogging is also a useful life-learning skill that theatre students can take with them if they continue with a theatre career.