Clare Fenwick – @csf0961
Mary Briggs – @mjb9756
Oxford Brookes University
This paper describes the implementation of a summative blogging assignment within a BA Primary Teacher Education degree. It is the reflection on the first cycle of action research into an assessment approach that is beginning to be recognised in Higher Education (Freeman & Brett, 2012; Garcia, Elbeltagi, Brown, & Dungay, 2015; Ion, Cano, Silva, & Iranzo, 2012). The blogging assignment is part one of a two-part second year assignment constituting 20% of the overall mark for a Level 5 15 credit module, the second part being a literature review. The module runs throughout the second year; autumn focuses on developing digital skills, spring is school based training, with the literature review in the summer term. The blogging assignment is introduced at the beginning of the year, the assessed post will be based on reflections of their teaching practice and they use the feedback to inform their literature review.
This assignment was introduced in 2014-15 and the first iteration identified key issues recognised in the literature. Academic staff and students’ concerns about blogging as a valid academic practice (O’Byrne & Murrell, 2014; Walker, 2006), the potential for students to transgress professional boundaries when sharing content online (Killeavy & Moloney, 2010; Wood, 2012), assumptions of students’ digital skills base (White & Le Cornu, 2011) and student’s lack of recognition of the differences between blogging and other social media for academic practices in contrast to being a social activity. Pragmatic issues that needed developing were; a submission process that allowed for close academic feedback, an easy use of hyperlinks along and the control of the submission and return of work, without unduly increasing the workload for the marker.
The assignment requires students to write a reflective post and demonstrate a constructive dialogue by commenting on two education based blog posts drawing on academic literature to support their comments. This provides the opportunity to assess academic writing skills alongside digital skills. When the assignment is introduced many students exhibit anxiety, often manifest as belligerence, they challenge the validity of blogging often displaying learned dependence (Diener & Dweck, 1980) with statements like ‘technology does not like me’. It is clear that students need to develop their confidence in their digital skills which we suggest requires a shift in attitudes towards technology across the programme. Students also need an understanding of academic blogging and teacher’s use of blogs. Recognising that blogging could have a positive impact on their professional development by becoming part of a community with an awareness of the views of others. To develop the required skills and confidence formative tasks were introduced such as finding and sharing educational blogs, writing a post for feedback to inform their assessed post. For those who question the validity of blogging it is worth considering that the academic writing skills required for a successful academic blog are very similar to those that will lead to higher grades in the literature review, indeed the 500 word count means that they need to distil these skills.
References:
Diener, C. I., & Dweck, C. S. (1980). An analysis of learned helplessness: II. The processing of success. Journal of personality and social psychology, 39(5), 940.
Freeman, W., & Brett, C. (2012). Prompting authentic blogging practice in an online graduate course Computers & Education, 29, 1032 – 1041.
Garcia, E., Elbeltagi, I., Brown, M., & Dungay, K. (2015). The implications of a connectivist learning blog model and the changing role of teaching and learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 46(4), 877-894.
Ion, G., Cano, E., Silva, B.-P., & Iranzo, P. (2012). Using Blogs as Assessment Tool in Higher Education: An Experience in the Catalan Higher Education Context. Proceedings of the European Conference on e-Learning, 238-248.
Killeavy, M., & Moloney, A. (2010). Reflection in a social space: Can blogging support reflective practice for beginning teachers? Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(4), 1070-1076. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2009.11.002
O’Byrne, B., & Murrell, S. (2014). Evaluating multimodal literacies in student blogs. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(5), 926-940. doi:10.1111/bjet.12093
Walker, J. (2006). Blogging from inside the Ivory Tower In A. Bruns & J. Jacobs (Eds.), Uses of Blogs (pp. 127 – 138). New York Peter Lang Publishing
White, D. S., & Le Cornu, A. (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday.