Thursday, October 23, 2014
Blogs and Discussion Posts
Truthfully, I have been struggling with this blog assignment. The purpose of this assignment seems to be to utilize two Web 2.0 technologies to reflect on our course material as well as comment on our classmates' reflections. There is a lot of research that points to blogs and learning journals as helpful reflective tools for students (and instructors) to track growth in content understanding as well as learning skills and critical thinking (Pang, 2009). Through reading and commenting on the blog posts of other students, students can track their classmates' progress and compare it against their own. This "transparency -- in the sense of allowing individuals to observe, compare themselves with, and emulate others -- is a feature of many social networking and Web 2.0 applications" and can give students helpful insight into their learning community (Poellhuber & Anderson, 2011, p. 105).
My question is, however, aren't our conference posts in LEO (UMUC's learning management system) a type of learning journal? In class, we are required to share regular reflections on our texts as well as comment on the discussion posts of our classmates. The purpose of these discussion posts are: to demonstrate comprehension of the material through critical thinking, and to encourage a discussion between students that results in the collective building of understanding of topics and themes as directed by the instructor. Reading these posts gives us insight into our classmates' background and experience with the class materials. Reviewing our earlier posts also gives us helpful insight into our own growth and the material that we've learned throughout the class.
If, then, our discussion posts are similar to a learning journal, is the purpose of this assignment to simply to practice using a Web 2.0 technology? And should we be copying and pasting our conference posts from class into our learning journal in our e-portfolio (for our capstone) so that we can review them after our class is finished? Thoughts?
References:
Pang, L. (2009). Application of Blogs to Support Reflective Learning Journals. DE Oracle @ UMUC. Retrieved from http://cdm16240.contentdm.oclc.org.ezproxy.umuc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p16240coll5/id/83
Poellhuber, B., & Anderson, T. (2011). Distance students' readiness for social media and collaboration. International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning, 12(6), 102-125. Retrieved through http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=EJ963934
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Hi Cheryl,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your thoughtful post, and for the references.
I do not like threaded discussion boards for many, many reasons, but one is that they are ephemeral -- as soon as the course is over (or deleted), you lose them. In the case of LEO, you can't even sort out your own posts (to do as you suggested -- save them in your e-portfolio). The nice thing about blogs is that you can save your own work, as well as the responses to it. You are in control -- not the teacher (or the LMS).
There is an article I used for the first paper in which you might be interested:
Tu, C.H., Blocher, M., & Gallagher, L. (2010). Asynchronous network discussions as organizational scaffold learning: Threaded vs. flat-structured discussion boards. Journal of Educational Technology Development & Exchange, 3(1), 43-56.
They make several arguments about "flat" discussion formats, like Blogs, versus threaded discussions that I think are really interesting. One is worth quoting:
Tu et al. argue that flat discussions create a “more authentic learner-centered experience”, because they “require learners to organize, manage, and regulate their own discussion learning structures by using other social and network mechanisms” (p. 46).
Of course, there is one advantage of threaded discussion boards: they allow comment screens to expand out, so that we don't have to comment with only five likes available at any one time! (Thanks, Blogger...)
I plan to read the rest of your posts, so you may hear from me again.
Alice
Hi Cheryl,
ReplyDeleteI have to say I am in agreement with you on this assignment. While I have found reading your and other students posts interesting and thought provoking, for writing my own, I have found myself slipping back into the discussion board mindset of answering what I perceived to be "the question" at the time, and writing thoughtfully about that topic, but have struggled to make it at all personal.
That said, I think giving the class experience in blogging and the way in which blogs can be used in a classroom environment is important and for people with other learning styles then my own it has probably been extremely rewarding. I personally really like the way in which the discussion boards from the class can be responded to and read in order of responses, and I think that might be the part of the blog that I don't find as engaging. It was interesting to me that Alice found the lack of ability to sort out your own posts to be something in LEO she missed as I really don't find my own posts to be all that interesting without the context and responses provided from my classmates. I think it does all come back to differing learning styles and differences of opinion on how social media and technology is used in the classroom. I for one find using twitter in an educational sense to be intrusive and unhelpful, but so many people seem to like it that I can definitely see the merits for some!