Coming About

I sure have, and one of them was yesterday, listening and participating in a webinar hosted by Work Literacy, a group of professionals exploring the use of Web 2.0 in learning.

This group, which I’ve recently joined,  has also created an online dialogue about blogging which contains some very intriguing posts. Our own Erica found the info on the webinar and directed me to it … so glad she did!

I was interested right away with the session title, Developing the E-flective Practitioner: Using Blogs to Enhance Reflective Practice at the Postgraduate Level, which you can view as an hour-long recording by logging in with your name. The session was set up as a live Wimba classroom event, the first time I’ve ever used or participated in this tool, which we also have available to us here at VCU via Blackboard.

Not only was I intrigued by the term “eflective” (a play on Donald Schon’s concept of the reflective practitioner used in the title of his books), but the session sounded eerily similar to the research study that Dr. Muth and I have recently begun to explore metacognition, identity development and reflective practice among graduate students in the Adult Learning program at VCU …. we’re even using Schon’s work on reflective practice as our theoretical frame~  Wow~ It’s exciting to know others share your research interests in ways that so closely match your own … another CoP opportunity!

Paul Lowe, director of the master’s degree program in Photo Journalism and Documentary Photography at University of the Arts, London, engaged us with his talk, accompanied by exquisitely beautiful slides, which he has kindly given me pemission to share. 

The session was marked by all the interactivity possible in a live, synchronous format (it was 7 pm London time) as participants jumped in and out of the conversation with our typed and voiced questions.

So what new ideas did I get from listening to this session? Well, lots.  And plenty of questions, too. Here are some of the thoughts expressed by Lowe and some of the insights, questions, and thoughts they spurred in me.

1. The world of professional practice is ideally suited for blogging.

In the world of practice, the professional is always struggling with the “messiness” of his/her life situations and the problems that must be resolved. Blogging, because it captures our thinking in the moment, is ideally suited to wrestling with the dilemmas of professional practice.  Blogging, said Lowe, can also be an effective tool for thinking before we act, not only as reflection-in-action, or reflection-on-action.  His photo journalism students are using their blogs (a part of his master’s degree program since 2005) to capture their concerns and the problems associated with their unique art form.  So, I started thinking, what else could our students be using their blogs for?  We have them engaged in assignments, but how might they be used to explore in greater depth the dilemmas of implementing the teaching, training, and educational endeavors in which they are engaged?   A few do this now …. how might we support them to do more with this medium?

2.  Blogs, said Lowe, map the learning journey, are a means of personal expression, and give us a whole person view … a sense of what is going on in our learners’ lives.

Are we, I wondered, configuring our learner’s blogs too narrowly? Do they feel free to bring the whole of their personalities into their writing? I will ask!  Certainly, I can see their unique forms of expression coming through their writing.  I agree with Lowe that blogs are an INCREDIBLE source of insight for the professor! I can literally SEE the meaning-making going on.  Sometimes I see erroneous assumptions, and this lets me know that I haven’t been clear (or clear-enough!); sometimes I see that what they “got” from the class was different from what I intended, and their views have me thinking about things that I hadn’t considered before.

3. Blogs are for the learners to dialogue with each other, to support each other, and to share with each other.

Lowe and his fellow tutors do not comment on student blogs.  I have been sharing reactions and comments on the blogs of learners in our classes, and I am now wondering how this has been received … an intrusion? Helpful clarification?  An expectation? Something that says I am out there reading and keeping up with them?

We do encourage peer reading and commenting among learners on their blogs and have done so formally in the Organizational Learning class with our reflector-mirror exercise. This, I agree, helps create and support a community of learners, which we strive to do in our program. Should we be doing more of this? Lowe’s students work in peer groups of four, in which the group commits, at the beginning of the semester, to read and comment on each others’ blogs each week. I can see how this would support strong community and a sense of shared experience.

I’m hoping  our learners will let me know what’s working and what’s not for them with the blogs. I’ve developed a quick little anonymous survey to get their ideas on how we might improve the blogging experience in our classes. 

Thanks for the great ideas, Paul Lowe.  Experiential e-learning (e-e learning) in action.