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.

DIL Report

Digital Information Literacy Project Report

Neal Barber

Throughout this project, I have spent time experimenting with Web 2.0 applications and considering how those applications can be mobilised for Library and/or Theatre Studies purposes. My original aim was to look at the use of on-line tools for both creating and publicising the results of theatre. However, throughout the project I found my focus changing - as is inherent in reflective practice - to have a greater focus on teaching the skills students require for literacy in a digital world.

A major focus of this project was to engage with Web 2.0 applications reflectively. To this end, my blog - Information is Not Knowledge - has charted my progress throughout. To aid in finding information related to this project, I have added the tag "DIL" to each post. However, the reflective nature of this project also feeds into the Theatre Studies Programme's new focus on reflective practice; a blog is an incredibly valuable tool in this process.

Recommendations for the Library:

• Create a teaching session for Postgraduate students that helps orient them to Web 2.0 applications and, particularly, how to apply them to a formal learning situation and how to create research communities on-line.
• Create shot tutorial vod-casts using on-line video editors which library staff can use in face-to-face teaching as well as in virtual reference situations.
• Create a presence in Blip-TV.
• Draft a Web 2.0 Research guide.
• Further explore how we can use Delicious in the Subject Guides. To this end, we can start by creating a list of links to academic blogs.
• Mobilise blogs to improve communication between the library and our patrons and inter-departmentally within the library.
• Create a Creative Commons guide and attendant resource list.
• Support academic departments to mobilise the appropriate tools for their specific situations.

Recommendations for Theatre Studies:

• Staff to set up and maintain personal blogs.
• Staff to maintain a departmental blog.
• That students be encouraged to use Web 2.0 applications for their reflective practice.
• Use an on-line office suite to collaboratively create documents.¹

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this project and I hope that we can continue to work together to further this project and help our patrons become more fluent in Web 2.0 applications. Should you wish for clarification of anything in this report please do not hesitate to contact me.

Technorati Tags report,DIL,spotlight

Making Connections

Apart from becoming rather bogged down with information - or should that be blogged down? - my reading about blogging in tertiary eduction is starting to make some connections. For our Advanced Directing paper, a large proportion of our grade was for a reflective journal. We were supposed to make frequent entries into this journal but were not given much guidance about what these entries were supposed to look like. This was a conscious decision on the part of the lecturer - and a decision I actually agreed with - since she did not want us to just copy an exemplar. However, as a student, such a decision does not help the student. We were looking for concrete guidance and were not terribly interested in the dogmatic philosophy behind the assessment. On the other hand, we were not given any guidance - in the form of articles to read - on why we were doing this assignment and what we were supposed to be getting out of it.

This journal was supposed to be a record of our learning throughout the year. Since such a large proportion of our grade rested on it, however, the lecturer checked it once during the year. This was the only feedback we received before the journal became due. There was little incentive for us to share our journals - or entries from them - to get an idea of what our peers were doing. Also, because we were not encouraged to share the journals, many of us fell into the trap of not writing in them frequently but rather back-dating a lot of entries after we realised that months had gone by without writing anything.

It seems that a blog would have been an ideal solution to this problem. Not only would this have provided us with more guidance from what our peers were doing but it would also have fulfilled the spirit of the exercise more fully since having a public record would have kept us honest about our posting. These blogs could have also helped increase our collegiality - particularly important since there were only 5 of us in the class - and increase our number as we became part of a much wider community.