Blogs: The New University Workspace?

I’m coming from a student perspective, as someone who might, for example, be using a unit blog without maintaining it. Although the posts so far have focussed more on the place of blogging for academic staff, for students it also has the potential to be a particularly useful tool for both academic and more social, collaborative aspects of their units. Obviously, as with most ideas and grand notions surrounding blogging, and indeed with the use of new technologies in education, there is no guarantee that this potential will be realised; for one, demonstrating that blogs are relevant, critical to the unit, and encouraging students to engage with the site will determine how successful blogging can be in courses. As with any multimedia or computer-based project, student reactions and abilities may range from blogging novices to those who have spent years playing around with blogs, from computer illiterates to those who see the project more as a gimmick than an academic exercise. However, blogging does offer a great deal to units, for academic staff and for students, not just in submitting content to the site, but also through the participatory and community aspects to blogs.

There are a number of different sides to blogging mentioned in the other posts that are particularly relevant to students getting the most out of using blogs; certainly the public/private debate mentioned by first Mark Pegrum and then Alison Bartlett is especially pertinent, as students increasingly familiar with the internet, social networking sites such as MySpace, and writing for friends only (whether with actual privacy controls or just intended for a small group of people) enter the university system. This issue is something I’d like to cover in more detail in another post - given the different approaches provided by UWA to blogging, ranging from public and with no real subject focus featured in posts in cases such as the Node, run by Student Services, to the public, but slightly narrower in scope for both content and authors, blogs of the Graduate Research School’s MyResearchSpace, to private and relating to particular units in the case of the current Blog.Arts sites, there is scope for students to post very different content to blogs run by the university.

Despite the public/private discussion, I do feel that the very presence of an audience is one of the great aspects of blogs for student work. Regardless of whether it is a restricted group, such as the members of a tutorial, or potentially anyone browsing the internet, the fact remains that someone other than the tutor marking your work is able to read whatever you decide to post on the blog. While this can be daunting, particularly when you are not used to getting feedback from other people or are not confident in your own abilities, becoming comfortable with writing for an audience can be useful for improving study habits at undergrad level and be handy preparation for any further study, possibly leading into honours and postgrad courses.

However, one problem can be motivating, engaging, convincing students that blogging is relevant and useful. With the different functions and outcomes provided by blogs, they can be far more than just another web-based learning module. In supporting different types of content, as Tama Leaver pointed out, blogs give students the ability to work to their own strengths or interests without being restricted to pure text. Obviously, what students are able to do can be determined by the unit co-ordinator, but there is vast potential for projects or assignments to be more than a few hundred words (plus references) by each student on the same subject. Giving students the freedom to include images, video, audio, animation, interactivity, additional documents, links to other resources, dynamic data embedded within posts can allow them to extend themselves and submit a different kind of project, in content, tone, and presentation, to a research essay. Those students not confident or not as interested in writing as, for example, working with video, can then use additional materials in their work, all supported by the blogging infrastructure, and still with the same capacity for feedback from tutors, peers, and the community involved in that particular blog or network of blogs.

Personally, I find the potential of blogging, be it for academic, social, political, or personal purposes, to be extremely exciting, even if I’m far more enthustiastic about its capabilities than I should be! From a student perspective, good use of blogs - wherein there is a high level of engagement by both students and staff - for such purposes as assessments, discussions, organisation, hosting and cataloguing projects and their progress, or working on particular topics or outcomes, could well play an important role in students’ academic, and in some respects social, development. However, as has been mentioned in other posts, there are issues concerning student blogs, and considerations for staff and students to bear in mind when posting - particularly when being hosted on a UWA server and thus representing the university in image, if not in views - that should not be forgotten while imagining the potential of blogs.