New.Journalism.Review

Here are a few reflective thoughts about assessing student blog posts. Students were asked to contribute to a class blog as part of the online journalism unit that I teach. Eleven theoretical questions were posted on the blog and students were asked to choose five questions and post opinion articles (no more than 800 words each). This was completed over the course of a semester.

Planning the assessment:

The blog assignment had to achieve a number of objectives:

• Devleop practical skills in using a CMS – WordPress. 
• Develop practical blog writing skills and a consistent style.
• Demonstrate understanding of online journalism and convergence theoretical issues (previously this had been addressed by setting a good old-fashioned essay)

I begun by looking at marking criteria – such as  The Rubric For Assessing Reflective Writing from San Diego State University.

A few ideas that were considered and rejected:

• Using the blog service in Moodle (the VLE). The university uses a VLE called MyCourse (based on Moodle). It works brilliantly, but I felt its blogging tools were a little basic for our level three students. We wanted something more ‘industry’.
• Using Blogger and Typepad: Blogger is free, allows multiple authors (which I required) and could be made private – but design templates too restrictive.Typepad is viewed as being quite ‘industry’  – Sky News, Daily Mail and The Times use it – but there were costs involved.

…………………..it was decided to use WordPress.It proved to be reliable, robust and flexible. Students accessed it from home and through the university firewall.

Blogging about theoretical issues
Students were asked to contribute to a class blog. In other classes, I had done tests where I asked students to set up and design their own individual blogs.They then blogged on topics of their own choosing. This hadn’t worked.

Setting up a class blog allowed me to view all contributions in one place. Students were asked to blog on quite narrow, theoretical, topics. This "forced" them to research, reflect upon, and to form carefully considered analytical pieces. The blog had to address theory to comply with the unit’s learning outcomes.

We also wanted to see students comment on other blog postings and make links to reliable sources of information. This could include websites, audio and video.

They were encouraged
to take time to compose their entries as they would do when writing an
opinion article for a magazine or newspaper. Speed was not a priority for this particular assignment.

Blogs can be used to address plenty of learning outcomes.

• Critical reflection: I heard Jonathan Hewett talk last summer at an AJE conference about using blogs to encourage critical reflection on a postgrad journalism course at City University, London.
  Jonathan’s ideas were inspirational and I’m keen to develop some of his
  techniques further.
• Paul Bradshaw of Birmingham City University has used blogs to encourage journalistic transparency.
  This could be employed to ‘track’ how journalism students approach investigations – What sources do they
  choose to contact? What sources to they overlook or choose to ignore? Can they defend
  their selections? How methodical is the investigative process?
• The Bivings Report gives 16 ways the media can use blogs. Lots of food for thought here. Blogs are a conversation and we need students to interact more with the local community.
• How the BBC News uses Blogs: Report by Alfred Hermida

What worked / what didn’t.

From looking at the general standard of the assignments.

1) Learning the CMS technology: Good.Most students developed a good understanding of the technology, categories, tags, uploading images and video etc. That said, we had a couple of students who repeatedly forgot their passwords (ahhhhhhh!).
2) Addressing theoretical issues: OK/Good.All students  had to think through a number of theoretical issues, although quality of research could be improved.
3) Developing good blog writing style: Poor.Complete confusion over audience and appropriate style. This was mostly the tutors fault!

Some reflective thoughts:

• Students not used to blogging. Always a surprise. In a group of 20 only three admitted to running their own blogs and only around five read blogs regularly. Terms like "RSS", "Wiki" and  "SEO" need explanation!
• Writing a blog post is different to writing on a Facebook page: This is something I need to reinforce next year. ‘Text speak’ is not acceptable. 
• Seven questions down to five:  It became clear that it was  taking the students too long to research and  write well composed analytical posts. Fewer questions improved the quality of response very quickly.
• Blog was private (password protected): This was the hardest decision:
  • Pro: Allows students to make mistakes and experiment with different styles.The blog was a learning tool after all. 
  • Pro: It allowed the tutor to speak more freely to the students and open conversation to occur between students. (there was very little conversation in reality though – see later).
  • Con: Students confused about audience – some appeared to write in a way that they thought would please the tutor. We couldn’t examine page impressions or hit counts for postings.
  • Con: No conversation with the ‘outside world’.
• Students confused about appropriate blog style: We looked at many blog post styles, but there are very few editorial standards. Students were looking at theoretical issues, so some adopted an academic style of writing which probably wasn’t appropriate for a blog. This needs far more clarity.

• Providing informal feedback was a nightmare: It took ages to post comments on posts as they appeared (and nearly killed the tutor).
• Students reluctant to comment: They wanted to read my comments relating to their posts, but appeared unwilling to provide peer feedback. This was worrying for level 3 students. There was little in the way of ‘conversation’.
• Students concerned that assessed work could be read by their peers prior to submission: It’s rare for students to be able to read each other’s assignments before hand-in. And it was clear this unnerved a few of them. It was clear to see that some students worked consistently throughout the semester and created fantastic posts, whilst weaker ones left it to last minute. The site was very busy the 12 hours before deadline!

Do it again?

Yes, but with changes. Blogs have many uses in teaching and it is essential that journalism students are encouraged to create their own blogs. 

The exercise worked well in terms of learning the technology and getting students to reflect upon research. It’s a mostly a student-centered approach, despite the fact they were unwilling to provide peer feedback.

You have to be extremely precise in what you are asking for and this is something to work on!

The idea…a brief summary

I’ve just completed the PGCLT HE course. It took ages, but I got there in the end. A key part of the course develops skills in ‘reflective practice’. A short definition can be found on Wikipedia or a detailed version can be found at infed. The general idea is that reflection on past experience leads to improvements in action and professional development.

Work by Schön has given reflective practice currency. A few professions have adopted it as a way for staff to demonstrate continuing professional development (CPD), particularly in the legal profession and in the health service.

Reflection could be used in the training of journalists

Reflection could be widely used in the training of journalists and other media professionals.

Attempting to get hard-bitten hacks to take time out to reflect may be a futile exercise. It certainly won’t be easy. The pressure on deadlines and constraints on budgets often mean that journalists are working flat out.

It would require a massive cultural shift. The world of journalism is very transient. Once a magazine has gone to bed or a newspaper story has been filed you move on to the next deadline. You don’t sit around discussing it all day, unless a reader, PR or interviewee makes a complaint.

Those working at the coalface don’t have time to reflect…

Critics of reflection, of which there are many, see it as just ‘navel gazing’. And when reflection is done badly it can certainly be viewed as self-indulgent rubbish. It is also seen by some as being an activity which is best suited for those working in the ‘soft’ professions – public sector areas like higher education, social work and the health service.

But I believe that all new journalists should blog. This may not sound like a particularly new idea – a lot of publishers force their journalists to write blog content for narrow-minded commercial reasons.

Blogging as a form of reflection

What I advocate is something different. New journalists should have private blogs and use them to record reflective thoughts. It could also be used as a way of proving CPD. OK, so CPD is not a word you tend to hear in newsrooms. Career development? Does it exist in journalism? This is a problem that needs to be addressed as well.

Few journalists take time to consider their roles and the purpose of journalism. When writing news stories journalists should reflect on the research sources they choose to consult and the people they choose to interview (or omit). New journalists often source their stories from a relatively small pool of contacts and are heavily reliant on PR contacts – this needs to be challenged. The traditional ‘top down’ approach for sourcing stories also needs to be challenged. Some claim to instinctively ‘know’ what to serve up to the reader. When challenged, you find that this ‘logic’ is based on out of date information (a ‘focus group’ carried out 20 years ago) or reader stereotypes.

Paul Bradshaw asks his students to blog at UCE Birmingham. He highlights how they can be used to provide ‘journalistic transparency’.

Many of the blogs, such as Muddle Through Together (or how a music journalist gets to grips with writing for the Net), showcase some fantastic reflective writing.

The key question is how
much do you reveal online? This is where things get interesting. By its nature, reflective writing is very personal. What do you reveal online? What do you self-censor?  Journalists need to work in an environment where they don’t get crucified for making mistakes.

Can it work?

It would take a massive shift in culture. I’m not expecting editors to start asking their staff to reflect anytime soon. Let’s face it, there are always far more pressing deadlines.  It’s even harder to talk about CPD when journalists are fearing for their jobs.

But hopefully we can move away from the idea that these are just ‘trendy teaching methods’, advocated by academics with far too much time on their hands.

Solent Uni is switching to the Moodle VLE. It’s hoped that the system will be ready for the students by September 2007. I’m looking forward to developing some good interactive learning material over the summer. I’m also looking forward to playing around with the blog and wiki stuff.  All journalism students need to blog and should be able to write and edit wiki content. 

Moodle is the brainchild of Martin Dougiamas (Curtin University, Perth, Australia). Apparently, it was born out of frustration with WebCT (a commerical VLE which is still used by City University, London and many others). He was irritated that WebCT didn’t allow him to access source code and it was pretty expensive to implement.

Moodle is rapidly growing in popularity. A few articles and data…

• The Open University has decided to adopt Moodle and that has to be a good sign. After all, it knows a thing or two about e-learning. Its set to upload 900 hours of e-learning material for its 180,000 students. As this article on ZDnet mentions (Moodle tackles E-Learning muddle),  the OU selected Moodle based on functionality (not cost). Other unis to adopt Moodle include: Bath Uni, Royal Holloway, Glasgow Uni, UCE Birmingham and UCL.   

• There is no conclusive information about market share. The UK government-funded OSS Watch Survey reported that Moodle was the VLE of choice for 56% of UK FE institutions. But other research suggests that whilst Moodle has more "installations", Blackboard/WebCT (combined) has more "users". See Epic (2006: The Year For Moodle) for more stats.

• According to research into web traffic (compiled December 05 – Jan 06 by Justin Tilton):  Blackboard was leader in terms of website hits. Moodle came in second -  beating VLEs such as WebCT,  Angel, ATutor, Desire2Learn and Sakai.  See bar chart (this is on Moodle: so go in as a guest)

For an interesting comparison of VLE software, see the excellent blog by Emma Duke-Williams (Uni of Portsmouth) -  Blogging IT and Education

This looks interesting. Mark Briggs is writing a book "Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive in the Digital Age" and is posting the drafts online for comment.

It seems that Bournemouth Uni is adopting Blackboard as its VLE. It is probably about time that we did the same and ditched the dodo (i.e. Learnwise).

I’ve not tried Moodle – but it’s Open Source and we like the sound of that! Feel free to donate at the site or you can help the cause of open source and buy a Moodle T-Shirt! Moodle aims to embrace pedagogy i.e. the art (or science?) of teaching. A lot of VLE’s (and, yes, this particularly applies to Learnwise) were designed by geeks in the labs of computer science departments. Geeks understand the interfaces that they create, the only problem is that nobody else does.

The creator of Moodle, Martin Dougiamus, is a geek as well (he works or worked in IT at Curtin Uni , Western Australia). But unlike the creators of Learnwise he knows quite a lot about designing usable interfaces and ‘student-centred learning’.  See an example of Moodle in use at UCE Birmingham.

There are a couple of other open source systems rattling around – most notably Boddington – you have to love the name! (from Leeds University) and Sakai (from somewhere in the US).

Blackboard is commercial, but apparently is quite easy to use and suits those soon-to-become-very important distance learners. But it is not all good news for Blackboard, the shock news is that the OU (Open University) has recently ditched Blackboard for Moodle. Why? It seems that price was a factor.

What we really need is a clear leader. What unis don’t want to be doing is training staff up, only for a better system to come along a year later. But nobody is using Learnwise these days. So it should be RIP to this VLE.  I, for one, will dance on its grave.