In the introduction to the UAL PG Cert programme, someone asked how much writing would be needed? The reply was, not to worry (equating writing with anxiety?) as smaller written tasks were used to align with the reflective unit aims. So why might a reflective blog align more directly with the reflective learning aims of a PG cert than a longer form essay/paper?
I am course leader for MA Performance: Society, which uses reflective blogs as forms of assessment in several units to encourage and evidence critically reflective practice. Built into its assessment model is an invite to demonstrate reflective processual engagement – careful thought about what you are doing and how – that leads to learning – here seen as evidence that something changes either in your understanding of your practice or in the practice itself.
The students on MAPS are mature, over 50% have specific learning differences and they are all experienced socially engaged artists. In Unit 1, they responded to the invite to blog by offering work in any other format such as google doc, websites, word docs and paper. Online educational specialist Lindsay Jordan argues that blogs provide ‘a route to learning that is active and interactive, independent and collaborative [and] can be conducive to reflection on situations and experiences’ (Jordan 2009:6). In blogs 1, 2 and 3, I touch on some of the complexities of these claims both through my experience of writing this blog and the polite refusal of my students to write theirs.
Learning new platforms
One of the reasons students gave for not using blog forms was that, as experienced practitioners with established ways of documenting/analysing process, they found the demand to learn a new platform to demonstrate process irritating. Hindley and Clughen (2018) note that despite digital familiarity, most students do not use blog software. They advise spending time ‘scaffolding’ the form and we are offered blogging video guides in the PG Cert. Personalising a UAL myblog to reflect an individual reflective style (media, format etc) is possible but requires investing time in the software. It’s worth noting that this was written in Word and transferred to the blog form.
Although there is a dominant narrative ‘that blogging offers a more inclusive genre of writing than traditional forms of academic scholarship’ (Hindley and Clughen 2018:84), it also brings additional technical and time demands, that can act as barriers for PG and mature students. As the course encourages responsive and individual modes of engagement, we allowed these different forms of submissions: their reflective blogs were still reflective, but not blogs. What I missed, and would change next time, is using their resistance as an opportunity to look at the relationship between assessment form and learning outcomes. This would be an interesting way to explore parallel drives for inclusive practices within HE and social practice contexts (See Education Act of 1993, Tomlinson report 1996).
References
Hindley, D. and Clughen, L. (2018) ‘Yay! Not another academic essay!’ Blogging as an alternative academic genre. Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Vol 11:1, pp 83-7
Jordan, L. (2009) Engaging students in the curriculum through the use of blogs; how and why? In: The Fourth International Blended Learning Conference, 17th-18th June 2009, University of Hertfordshire.