H807-5. Blogging as innovation

After reading about Rogers' innovation framework, I would like to explore how my recent blogging project fits into the various categories.

In the Autumn 2009 semester, I asked my 51 students to set up their own blogs. They were to post once a week for 14 weeks about our course. They could analyse our readings, comment on what was taking place in lessons, discuss our course themes more broadly, make connections between Freshman English and their other courses and so on. I deliberately kept the requirement quite vague in order not to stifle their creativity, but I was always ready to offer suggestions to anyone who was feeling stuck, and I modelled what was expected by keeping my own course blog. All my students' blogs were linked to mine, so I was able to provide almost instant feedback on nearly every post throughout the semester.

So here is a retrospective analysis of my rationale for introducing the project.

Relative advantage:
Blogging is advantageous because it allows us to extend our very limited classroom hours and keeps students engaged with the material. We meet our Freshman English students for just 3 50-minute class periods per week. Since all of their other courses (History, Turkish Literature, Social and Political Science, Natural Science and Maths) are lecture and exam-based, the students are used to being passive in the classroom and have little inkling of process learning. All students are given laptops and have wireless access on campus, and part of the university's mission statement is to promote technological innovation. It enables greater contact between student and instructor as well as frequent and personalised feedback, and encourages student responsibility. The amount of writing practice provided to students at this university is very limited indeed; blogging allows them to practise their writing skills, but in a more relaxed, less structured manner than in an essay. Although we have a lot of class discussions, these are inevitably dominated by the most fluent students; blogging gives every student a chance to participate, and at their own pace.

Compatibility:
This project fits in completely with my teaching values: constructivism, dialogic learning, formative assessment, the importance of affective factors, reflection, writing as thought...

Complexity:
In technological terms, complexity was very low; Blogger is probably the easiest blogging application. I wrote a detailed blogging guide and uploaded it to our VLE; I introduced the project during class time and helped students set up their blogs and understand how they worked; I also provided ongoing IT support via email, or when students dropped by my office.

The complexity lay in knowing how exactly to use a blog: the required register for blog posts; the awareness and understanding of audience; the degree of personalisation expected and/or allowed; how to move beyond mere summary of class material; how to add depth to posts with hyperlinks and so forth. And time management seems to have been the main hindrance for many students.

Trialability:
I must confess, I skipped this stage in the sense that I simply dove in and introduced blogging as an assessed course component. It probably would have been best to do it with just one section first, either as an extra credit option or using volunteers, and I did consider this, but in all honesty I could not see how I would be able to maintain enough motivation that way, given the students' insane class schedule, their grinding round of endless exams and their disgust for any type of 'homework'. So I 'forced' them. But I'm glad I did; preliminary analysis of the feedback I collected suggests that the project was more than a fair success. I suppose I could be viewed as somewhat of a renegade by both colleagues and students...frankly, I don't care: I believed in the project enough to take the risk of failure. (I recognise that I am in the fortunate position of having enough freedom to become a renegade in the first place...) I was very flexible with the marking criteria so as not to disadvantage students, and I combined the blog itself (10% of final mark) with an 'I-Blog paper' or deep reflection on the experience of blogging (10% of final mark); nearly all students achieved 100% on this paper since they needed only openly and honestly answer the questions set and achieve the minimum word count of 750 words.

Observability:
Now this is an interesting one. The students' blogs are all open to the public, but I wonder exactly what is perceived by outside readers. Certainly the students made enough statements about how much they were benefitting from keeping their blogs, but as with all educational technology, the 'benefits' greatly depend on what one understands by learning. I think the I-Blog papers provide much more obvious evidence of the advantages to students.

+ my 75-word summary:

The relative advantage of asking students to keep their own blogs is the extension of classroom hours it affords. It is entirely compatible with my constructivist teaching values. The technology is not complex at all and ongoing support can be provided by a single teacher. The project was trialled by balancing blogging and reflection and using flexible marking criteria, and any Internet user can observe the students' effort and enthusiasm in posting to their blogs.