Blog forms hold an auratic trace of journalling. They invite an externalising of an inner dialogue, which might normally remain a private part of long-form writing. Much of the writing around blogs (Jordan 2009, Hindley & Clughen 2019) aligns immediate feelings or responses with a quality of authenticity. So, in a blog, you can state your real thoughts as opposed to what are presumably less ‘real’ thoughts due to the processing required within long-form writing?
The learning premise around blogs centres on the way they allow us to bring our authentic selves, mainly positioned as vulnerable confusions and feelings about an issue, into a community of others. But blogs within HE operate within constructed rather than self-forming communities, which may also encourage a projection of self onto the page. I am aware of my performance of self in these words, for example, and the potential to be seen as resistant to blogs as an anti-elitist device.
Hindley & Clughen (2018) argue that bringing together private voices with critical discourse helps learners find their identity as researchers. MAPS students spoke positively about how the reflective blog/not blogs permitted them to bring something of themselves to the research, which is an important part of the shift from UG mapping to PG generation of knowledge. Garrison argues that a bringing of self, which he describes as a ‘social presence’ is crucial to the ‘facilitation of critical thinking’ (Garrison et al 1999 cited in Jordan 2009:4). So, despite my reservations Blogs did work as a starting place that helped develop the rigour and criticality required by these complex writing forms.
Going forward
Blogs could be used more consciously to introduce issues of positionality that run through the postfoundational perspective, MAPS encourages. In the final unit in year 2, students are invited to engage with creative/critical, ficto-critic, and autoethnographic methods, that celebrate the value of lived experience in dialogue with discourse. These approaches acknowledge feelings/vulnerability as an important way of knowing the world and blog forms could be a good starting point for thinking about where and how different types of knowledge are valued.
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, Lindsay (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.