The interdisciplinary use of blogs and online communities in higher education

Description

Abstract:

With online learning developing rapidly in higher education we have experimented with methods to embed blogs and online communities into our courses to enhance learning for staff and students. We provide a critical analysis of the approach used to analyse multi-sensory content on blogs and communities whilst demonstrating how they have been utilised across the Initial Teacher Education Division at The University of Northampton. By sharing a series of case studies we model the strengths and limitations of the practices adopted and demonstrate how reflexivity, communities of practice and the adoption of 21st century teaching and learning strategies fuel learning. We show how blogs and communities have enhanced interdisciplinary subject teaching, staff development and student engagement, and we draw conclusions about how tools can be used in combination to support learning. We have taken some first steps towards developing a framework for analysing our multimodal blog and community posts. Our next step is to apply this methodology across cases in order to match learning themes and digital tools. Our use of blogs and communities goes some way towards aligning educational practice with ways in which digital technology is changing disciplines outside schools. This practice has resulted in changing social interactions and online collaborations within the workplace. Our longer term aim is to document fluid and continuous learning journeys across a combination of locations, times, technologies and social settings in higher education. The emphasis of our cases has been on active knowledge building using collaborative technologies, moving away from teacher-directed pedagogy to generate a flexible learner-directed approach.

Period	9 Jul 2015 → 11 Jul 2015
Event title	The International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education (ICICTE 2015)
Event type	Conference
Location	GreeceShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International