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.