This is a key element: what is the value of a social democracy in your class, when all voices are equally able to participate? Is socially-constructed knowledge inherently move valuable than information pushed from a single instructor, or from knowledge constructed by a single individual in class?
In your educational context, what is the most promising/successful use of blogging? To foster community? To share and vet ideas? To piece together threaded discussions whose narratives take longer to unfold than the duration of a single class meeting?
20 comments:
blogging works well at Babson for private reflection, group commenting on a concept and professor led strategy...
Blogging is something that's been tried in our course (adult military learners) but often it's the "old dog, new tricks" paradigm!
Does anyone have any thoughts on the question of when to use a wiki whether than a blog?
New tricks indeed. The key is to find the ways to leverage what blogs are good at (threaded discussions, chronological interactions, near real-time) to extend and achieve objectives that you might not otherwise achieve. Structuring discussions and collaborations around specific resources (images, videos, audio, etc.) has worked well for us to foster this collaborative, open spirit in students.
We generally use blogs when the chronology of the discussion (the "process") is important. And we use wikis when basically only the final product is needed. For instance, sometimes I ask students to create an authoritative study guide on a certain topic (to share with the class), and in that case, only the final output is really important.
Fostering collaboration is key for us; in fact, we are mandated by the Joint Staff to achieve "affective learning". (Of course, no one knows how to define that for us...) To make matters worse, we can't even get iTunes on our work computers. I'd tell you the reason but you'd laugh.
Sorry, the last part of that comment bled over into the podcast segment.
Blogging seems to be a more encouraging way to drive participation in the discussion. We use discussion boards but the students will often lean toward doing "the minimum requirements" instead of fully developing, building, and creating new knowledge through the social interaction.
Anon--your comment about "driving participation" is right on the money. I think the million dollar question is, how do you cause students to take ownership in their own learning? How do you make them feel like they are an active learner and get to create their own learning?
Different Anonymous here...
The student generated content is exactly the kind of project that invites students to be knowledge makers whose work can be "refereed" by peers, just like real work knowledge makers do. To me, that's the highest level of learning--when learners don't just learn science but when they behave like scientists.
Driving participation
This is an area that I have been researching for sometime and have noted that to foster or to provide the 'conditions' for participation, communication or discourse, then there is not a simple answer. However there several aspects that need some consideration. One particularly area is the overarching philosophy (pedagogical architecture) that guides us through our design, delivery, evaluation and redesigning of the learning experience.
Personally, I use social constructivist theories as part of my pedagogical architecture to create the baseline 'expectations' of the learner and the teacher in the learning space. I have found when learners are more aware of what to expect in the learning experience, then they are more likely to take control and accept responsibility for their learning. One of my studies found the 75 learners were participating in asynchronous discussions everyday (Mon-Sun) between the hours of 6am to 2am (next day). Parallel to this, 'chat' synchronous discussions were taking place for some, not all the learners. The stats for this semester from another course, using the same pedagogy, is similar with an average of 36 users per day.
If it is of any interest, here is a link to an article I wrote with two colleagues in 2007 about our pedagogy; the article was published in June 2008 European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning. - 'Mode Neutral' Pedagogy . It is still work in progress with a follow up coming in E-learning journal 2008 5(3) and more planned!
It would be good to hear what your 'pedagogy' or pedagogical architecture is and how it drives participation/engagement/communication?
Driving participation
Anon, thanks for the article! I'll download and read it. As for our pedagogical architecture--we are hampered to a certain degree by not having any requirement for our course. We built the course based on Congressional direction, but as yet there is no credit or benefit. Let me think on this and frame a clearer answer.
Blogging is only democratic when all stakeholders have equivalent opportunities to participate. A gap exists between people with connectivity and those without. Discussions held in a new media environment only capture the voice of participants with access.
Holly H. at LTU
If you are interested: Wordpress is the key of open-source blog software. The software you are using right now (Blogger) is probably second.
First, I meant "king" in the previous comment.
As for social democracy, agreed. Access is the key. So the important considerations are probably the difference between face-2-face and distance learning. Our experience in distance learning has been probably alot like yours: especially when we try to reach students in more rural area, bandwidth and general connectivity can be a challenge.
But for our on-campus students, we have complete wired connectivity just like LTU, so for in-class and on-campus use, connectivity is not really an issue. Students can access the blog via their laptop, a core computer facility, or even their mobile device.
But equity is something to think about here, no doubt.
LTU People: I've posted links to blogger and wordpress (as well as Ed and Chuck's blog links) on the Bb site for the CTL
Another question arises with "facility" instead of access .. all our students (in theory) have access - how many do blogging? Have we done any surveys on campus to assess how much blog-knowledge is out there?
Not sure about blogging, but I know the folks at Univ. of Houston have done lots of work on the demographics of their students with respect to technology ownership and usage. I think some of it might contained in this paper. Their point person there has done alot to try to quantify this as a starting point for research into using various kind of technology for teaching.
I am a big fan of typepad.
Holly H. at LTU.
Thanks for brining up the differences between blogging and using a discussion board in the LMS. Besides less clicks, and providing contiguous information and scaffolding, different learning styles can participate in their own way and the objects that are built can be compiled as reusable learning objects. I know some of the big LMS people are trying to emulate this but so far they haven't been able to. Also, the consistency of the school's network can be a problem since there are times when it is being inundated.
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