Abstract for CoCo symposium

Are blogs an effective way to assess student reflection?

Blogging is promoted as a way to increase students’ ability to record their reflection on their knowledge development and/or their practice in real time, and thus to assess developments in their understanding. In this roundtable we will discuss the nature of blogging as a tool for reflection, but also the nature of reflection as it is practised in Higher Education. By assessing blogs or other texts that capture student responses in (or close to) real time, are we teaching students to report only acceptable reactions to events, rather than promoting honesty and awareness of real change, or the lack of change? How can we measure and assess the value of change reported by a student?

There was a full house for this discussion, and it went really well. I think that I will put an abstract in for a short paper on this topic at ALT-C in Manchester.

My summary of contributions that emerged from the discussion:

• when I assess reflection I'm looking for evidence that a student is beginning to think about how the profession operates when they go on practicum
• when I assess I'm looking for how a student is questioning their own belief system
• I don't want 'touchy-feely' reflection; I want to see how the student is intellectually grapppling with what they're doing on clinical and how their classroom learning applies to real-life situations
• I never read the 'raw' reflections as they're being written, although I check that entries are appearing regularly. I tell the students that these are a private space for them. What I read and assess is the 2000 word assignment they submit on how their field experience has changed their view of their future work environment.
• One person who reported sending students off on practicum with instructions to keep a blog (including a short workshop on how to blog, upload pictures etc) found that the students didn't use the blogs at all. Discussion centered around ways to motivate them, and included setting simple concrete tasks to start them off (eg post a picture of the place you're working; post short bios of the other staff where you're working; post summary of at least three things that happened in your first week and what you learned from them
• Two people reported at some length about their experience of students recording their experience of putting on plays in a teacher education course. The blogs were group blogs and quite a lot of the discussion was done in the blogs. They found them very successful for their needs, which were to record the students talking about the process of creating the drama.

Comments

[Sarah Stewart]

Very interesting Mary. I have been struggling with this issue (assessing reflective blogs) so appreciate your insight.

best wishes for 2009, Sarah

[Jen Ross]

Hi Mary-Helen, it's great that this was the topic of a symposium - and thanks for the summary of discussion - really interesting. I wonder if there was any discussion of blogging as a practice which now has some cultural meanings which could either augment or interfere with reflective practice as lecturers intend it? That's something I've been thinking about a bit and am quite interested in. For example, one of my interviewees talked about thinking that her postings were 'about blog-post length', when I asked how she knew how much to write in her course blog.

Anyway - sounds like a very good topic for an ALT-C paper. I take it you'll be in the UK in September, then? If you have time, maybe we could find a city to have coffee in?