ALD in HE 2012 conference workshop: design considerations in setting up a group blog to support reflection on practice in an online MA programme in professional communication

1. ALDinHE 2012 CONFERENCE
REFLECTIVE BLOGGING
A-F Dujardin, Sheffield Hallam University

2. Outline
1. Talking point: case study based on practice
2. Three key concepts
1. Reflection
2. Blogging
3. Community
3. Socio-technical concerns
1. Blog settings
2. Pedagogy
4. Digital literacies

3. Share your views
Workshop blog
http://aldinhereflectiveblogging.wordpress.com/

4. Hand-out
Motivators Barriers Enablers
Design
Support
Assessment
(Adapted from Ardichvili 2008)

5. Context
Mature
e-learners
Professional
people
Reflection
on practice
as a way of
pooling
experience
Digital
immigrants?

6. What factors could influence blog use?
Motivators Barriers Enablers
Design Topic relevance Privacy Training
Cultural factors Task briefing
(‘face’, modesty)
Support Reciprocity Social capital Seeding the blog
Emotional Vulnerability Trust
support Comments
Examples
Assessment Sociability as Scholarliness Clear criteria
criterion Formative f/back

7. Blogging
Reflection
Community
Three key concepts

8. What is a blog?
Subjective annotations to the Web
(Mortensen and Walker 2002)
The blog concept is about three things:
frequency, brevity and personality
(Williams 2001)
A tool for interpersonal communication
and mass communication (Bortree
2005)

9. Reflection
Kolb
Cycle
Schön (1995) A form of mental processing …
Reflection as mechanism for
that we use to fulfil a purpose or
professional development to achieve an anticipated outcome
Moon (1999, 2010) … applied to relatively complicated
or unstructured ideas …
Map of the process
largely based on the further
Role of dialogue with peers
processing of knowledge and
Role of emotion
understanding and possibly
Reflective writing
emotions that we already possess

10. Community
Community of practice
An activity system about which
Lave and Wenger (1991) participants share understanding about
Wenger (1998, 2000) what they are doing and what it means in
Virtual community their lives
Rheingold (1994)
Preece (2000)
Cultural aggregations that emerge from
Virtual community of
the Net when enough people carry on
practice
those public discussions… to form webs
Ardichvili (2008) of personal relationships

11. Settings Pedagogy
Socio-technical concerns

12. Blog settings (1)
 Private vs public?

13. Settings (2): sharing blog posts

14. Settings (3)
Personal space Community space
 Metaphor of the  Metaphor of the
diary community
 Privacy?  Vulnerability vs
 Usability of looking feedback
at peers’ blogs  Usability: all posts
visible

15. Pedagogy
 Authenticity of the  Assessment
reflective task(s)  Can reflection be
 Connection to practice assessed?
 Peers’ role: a ‘real’  High / medium / low
audience stakes
 Tutor support  A demanding task
 ‘seeding the  Reconsider ‘usual’
practice
community’
 Criteria
 Modelling posts and
 Reflection
responses (Hattie and Smith 1995)
 Formative feedback  Connection
 ‘Like’  Sociability (Preece
2000)

16. Digital literacies
(Sharpe and Beetham 2010)

17. Conclusion
 Supports a pedagogy for the network society
 Participation
 Personalisation
 Productivity (McLoughlin and Lee 2008)
 Confidence and competence in a core Web
2.0 skills (employability)

18. References
 Alterio, M. (2004) Collaborative journalling as a professional development tool. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 28 (3): 321-332.
 Ardichvili, A. (2008) Learning and knowledge sharing in virtual communities of practice: motivators, barriers, and enablers. Advances in Developing
Human Resources, 10 (4): 541-554.
 Bortree, D.S. (2005 ) Presentation of self on the web: An ethnographic study of teenage girls' weblogs. Education, Communication & Information, 5 (1):
25-39.
 Boud, D. & Walker, D. (1998) Promoting reflection in professional courses: the challenge of context. Studies in Higher Education, 23 (2): 191-206.
 Hattie, N. & Smith, D. (1995) Reflection in teacher education - towards definition and implementation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 11 (1): 33-49.
 Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 McLoughlin, C. & Lee, M.J.W. (2008) The three P's of pedagogy for the networked society: personalization, participation, and productivity. International
Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 20 (1): 10-27.
 Moon, J.A. (1999) Reflection in Learning and Professional Development: Theory and Practice. London: Kogan Page.
 Moon, J.A. (2010) Using Story In Higher Education and Professional Development. London: Routledge.
 Mortensen, T. & Walker, J. (2002) Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research tool. In: Morrison, A. (Ed.) Researching ICTs in
context. Oslo: InterMedia Report, University of Oslo. Pp. 249-279
 Preece, J. (2000) Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. New York, NY: Wiley.
 Rheingold, H. (1994) A slice of life in my virtual community. In: Harasim, L. M. (Ed.) Global Networks: Computers and International Communication.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp. 57-80
 Schön, D. (1995) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. 2nd ed., Averbury: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
 Sharpe, R. & Beetham, H. (2010) Understanding students’ uses of technology for learning: towards creative appropriation. In: Sharpe, R., Beetham, H.
& de Freitas, S. (Eds.) Rethinking Learning for a Digital Age. London: Routledge. Pp. 85-99
 Siles, I. (2011) The rise of blogging: Articulation as a dynamic of technological stabilization. New Media & Society, (online first).
 Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 Wenger, E. (2000) Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization, 7 (2): 225-246.