Student experience as Text

Blogging allows class participants to better know and understand one another. Also, blogging allows for more of the personal experience of each student to become part of the class knowledge; there is rarely enough time for all personal reflections to be addressed in a traditional class time. Blogging expands the space and time available for class participants to share their experiences

The following is from Shiang-Kwei Wang and Hui-Yin Hsua. “Reflections on Using Blogs to Expand In-class Discussion.” TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning. 52.3 (May 2008): 81-85

The authors studied a blogging project that was used in pre-service teacher training. What they found was that students generally liked the blogging, because it "enabled them to share knowledge and experiences as well as to express their feelings and thoughts outside the classroom discussion" (83). Those results are common and even to be expected. But there was another result that is interesting:

“From the in depth stories or postings contributed by their classmates, [students who blogged] became aware of their peers’ opinions and were able to confront perspectives on reading and diversity issues better than in the face-to-face environment.” (Wang and Hsua 83)

In this study, the authors found that the blog helped students to grapple with ideas and concepts that were not best served in the classroom. The blog, then, does not merely augment what goes on in the classroom; in some instances, it can create an entirely new opportunity for communication, understanding and growth. Students themselves were providing the "texts" from which learning occurred, not books, not a teacher's lecture, not published or peer reviwed articles. That is an incredible statement of voice and authority.

Women's Ways of Knowing and Web 2.0

In Women's Ways of Knowing, Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule describe the different possibilities of female intellectual awareness (knowing) from silence, to received knowledge, to subjective knowledge, to procedural knowledge, to constructed knowledge. It is the constructed knowledge that fits quite well into Web 2.0 capabilities such as social networking, blogging, creating wikis, podcasting, and more. In this last "way of knowing", women, the authors assert, are able to create "the optimum setting so that half baked, emergent ideas can grow" (144) and they are able to identify and use “a way of connecting to others and acquiring and communicating new knowledge” (145).

Connecting, innovating, incubating, listening, providing context, seeking, recording, sharing, and declaring: all of these activities are reflected in the technology tools that are a part of eLearning. The student who comments on a blog puts her voice into publication, into the public sphere, into a conversation with anyone and everyone who reads the blog. The student who contributes to a class wiki is physically and mentally engaged in the act of producing knowledge, of recording and communicating intellectual growth, of collaborating with others to create. The student who uses coursework posted on Open Source sites is able to control the pace and the content of her learning.

Source:
Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R., and Tarule, J. M. (1997). Women's ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind. Tenth anniversary edition. New York: Basic Books.

The Power of Blogs in Intellectual "Ownership"

Blogs offer the opportunity for continual revision in the public sphere. The author has the opportunity to publish, then revisit the published text and change it as often as desired. This change may be precipitated by comments that viewers of the blog leave in connection with a particular entry, or the changes may be the result of the writer’s desire to sharpen and to hone their text. In either case, revision is a clear option, and one that the writer is able to take advantage of in the public sphere. The old post is replaced by the new post; the more thoughtful, cohesive “post” is what the world sees.

Writing traditional papers that are handed in to a professor is a linear, private transaction. The student writes, then gives a finished product to the teacher. Perhaps there are drafts along the way, lesser transactions of handing the draft to a tutor, to a peer reviewer, or to the professor for preliminary feedback. In any of these instances, the student is required to relinquish control over his or her document by rendering a static, finished product to an authority, thereby delimiting the development of the writing product by completing a transaction with an audience.

Writing blog entries expands the transaction between student producer and audience. In space and in time, the student is the primary agent of the text; the student’s voice remains dominant. The student never relinquishes his or her position as knower, as writer, as thinker, as reviser – as creator of the blog, “owner” of the domain. Others may comment on certain thoughts or ideas, but these comments are physically relegated to a secondary space on the Blog, the comment box. It matters that anyone and everyone can read these comments, because the comments are then subject to analysis and criticism (very unlike traditional teacher grading). The student has the opportunity to revisit and grow his or her ideas immediately by engaging these comments.

Exciting Resources for Instructors

1) The Open Learning Initiative from Carnegie Mellon University is a free offering of courses ranging from Biology to Economics to French. I entered into the French module and performed some of the exercises - they were quite engaging and would be an extremely useful addition to any French course in their student-directed pacing, self-testing, and real-life (video) simulations.

Professors who are interested in using some of the OLI models (Causal and Statistical Reasoning, Economics, French I, French II, Logic, Statistics)must register and pay a small fee. However, there are also resources for building courses and opportunities for students (or any interested individual) to participate in these courses.

2) From Merlot (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching), ideas for course enhancement and a Virtual Instructional Design helper

Training in Web 2.0 for Higher Ed

This is perhaps a taste of what we have been looking for, from the Higher Education 2.0 Blog:

Training modules for using Web 2.o in the college classroom!

This resource can help us to understand what it is we should know and students should know...not an end in and of itself, but a helpful resource for defining our needs: podcasting, blogging, using wikis, and general conceptual frameworks for these tools.

Conversation, Voice, and Technology in the Classroom

Through the Educause website, I found the following article that will provide a great basis for describing the need for integrated technology. I have highlighted the key points - that which clearly supports the current mission.

Other writers and researchers have focused on the idea that while alone, in front of a computer, a student may find more of a voice that they would in the classroom. That surely describes me as a sophomore who was embarrassed by how much I loved my literature studies. And this private, cyber-public participation does not preclude physical-public participation. In fact, becoming comfortable with one's voice via technology may effectively, if slowly, build a shy student's confidence.

Sarah Robbins-Bell writes
"Today’s moderately tech-savvy student is accustomed to having a voice. Social networks (e.g., Facebook), instant messaging, blogs, and virtual worlds not only allow conversation but rely on it. After all, what would a service like YouTube or Digg look like if no one contributed content and no one commented? Instead, these popular social media services feature high levels of participation, numerous contributions and discussions, and even detailed debates.
We know that the demographics of Facebook, Digg, Fark, and World of Warcraft are the same as the general demographics of college/university students. So, why don’t we see the same levels of participation in the social media that are used in the classroom (typically, learning management systems) as are evident in the social media that students engage in voluntarily? I think the problem is that our pedagogy often isn’t ready for an increase in conversation."

Robbins-Bell goes on to explain that part of what makes online learning so compelling is the element of constant development in space and time that occurs in games, on social networking sites, etc. Young people become devoted to these 21st century endeavors, she posits, because they must do so if they wish to keep up with what is going on. The world keeps developing and evolving around them, and if they fail to check in, they become lost, irrelevant, late, confused.