Week One, 'Blogging to Learn, Learning to Blog'

When you read the outline of your university subject often or not you don't expect a blog to be apart of your assessment. In recent years blogging has become an element of some university assessment. Why blogging you may ask? Believe it or not, but blogging is an excellent way for a student delve into the ideas of the course content on an interactive level. The text 'Blogging to Learn, Learning to Blog', written by Jean Burgess argues the introduction of blogging into the curriculum allows the students to "experiment and take ownership, rather than merely emulate models handed down by the instructor"(Burgess, J. 2006, pg.107).


To explain, Burgess discusses the university curriculum in terms of needing to catch up to modern technologies and modern forms of literature. With the rapid increase in online literature evident in blogs, forums, etc; university assessment still remains in the past. Plain, boring and bland formative assessment is based on a model form decades ago. It has not deviated from the essay, review, report and so on... black and white print on paper; a tactile object. Burgess talks about how students should be encouraged to be involved and active in knowledge. He also states students should becomes literate in not only formal literacies but also what she calls creative literacies and network literacies (technology).  He argues students who engage with blogging as an assessment component go beyond the required basic blog, interacting with templates, inserting links relating to the concept and determine their style of writing, length and depth.


Blogging has become a very open and customisable to personal taste. Students have become so stuck in the repetitive and restricted formal nature of the essay, that when faced with a medium that is so widespread in customisability, students end up lost in the technology. Those student who are presented with medium and don't understand how to utilise the technology to their advantage often reject the idea of blogging as formative assessment. Burgess discovered those of her students which english was not their first language, excelled due to the interactivity of commenting on other student's blogs and finding a voice other than their essay voice. He also found the students where commenting on each other's blogs and further discussing the content creating their own online classroom by learning from each other. In her findings he states students who use blogs increase their engagement and sense of ownership of the learning process.


Personally as a university student I never expected blogs to be part of my assessment. Before I came to uni I had never read a blog let alone owned and written one. After using the medium once of twice I found my 'blog voice'. I didn't realise how free your writing could be and to what extent you can ramble, however still maintaing coherency, and somehow get a better grade. It seems lectures and tutors prefer to heavily hear the students opinion and own voice within their blog. I agree with out a doubt blogs are a great form of assessment. You can still write formally in a blog, however the purpose is to write your opinion, your point of view, not a regurgitation of what the lecture has told you.

This cartoon reminds me of LOL CATS