“You can’t write a load of rubbish”: Why blogging works as formative assessment

Prof Tansy Jessop, SLTIPG/Professional Away Day

@tansyjtweets 14 June 2016

Do you blog?Do you read other people’s blogs?Do your students blog?What is a blog??!!

Session Aims

Understand how blogging can be transformational for learning and teaching

Explore an evidence-led approach to group blogging tasks in two scenarios

Find solutions to challenges which influence the pedagogical success of blogging

Love it or hate it

• Groups of three

• Please take a pack of statements and your very own Likert scale.

• You have ten minutes to come to consensus about the statements.

The Assessment Challenge

• Poor take up and /or design of formative tasks• Lack of ‘time-on-task’• Privatisation• Disconnected tasks• Lack of risky, playful assessment

Defining formative

• ‘Definitional fuzziness’ (Yorke, 2003)

• A fine tuning mechanism for how and what we learn (Boud 2000).

• Required, does not count, elicits feedback (TESTA)

“Innovations that include strengthening the practice of formative assessment produce

significant and often substantial learning gains”.

(Black and William, 1998, p.40).

Challenge: The Silent SeminarChallenge: Are they reading?Challenge: Focused on summative

The Cohort : Final year students on an English Module

The task: Formative writing on a shared blog platform: 1. Write one blog post per week, linked to reading, post on Sunday.2. Write 3 comments (on peer blogs) by Wednesday3. Discuss the blog content in weekly seminar groups

Case study One:

BA Primary Education

Think Aloud Data CollectionInterviewed 6 students

Tracked progression at 3 x intervals during the module ( Wk1, wk4, wk10)Camtasia Recording Screencast (audio and screen capture)

Transcription and Coding

Advantages of Think Aloud:

• Powerful way to capture engagement with a digital artefact• Quick, easy recording method• The visual element prompted a richer discussion and gave

depth to student responses

Headline Findings

Increased Confidence in Academic Writing

• Blogging gave students a voice – literally.• They transitioned from being uncomfortable and

private about their writing to confident and proud about their blog posts.

I know how to write now…

I’ve seen how other people write compared to mine and actually mine isn’t as bad as I thought, (…) I always had a lot of difficulty with my sentence lengths and looking through other people’s I thought ‘Actually, I know how to do it now’.

Headline Findings Deeper engagement

• Students spent more time-on-task

• Production of writing deepened understanding

• Discussion cemented it

Out of the silent seminar…

You have to evidence that you have read it compared to a seminar reading. You are reading a lot more as well as the set ones.

I go more in depth with the reading than with the reading pack when I’d just highlight. It helps.

We sit in blog groups, all talk about it. Discuss the readings. I think the discussion is more focused.

Into engagement…

Over the whole three years this is the most engaged I’ve been in my readings. I really liked doing this. I wish we had done it more. Maybe start it in the first year.

.

…it is also a bit chatty and informal. Even though I’m putting

in readings, it’s different. It’s a nicer relaxed way of talking

about literature

Headline Findings

Into liberal learning

Students wrestled with and revised their thinking in the light of new knowledge

This is liberal learning!

Into liberal learning…

You change your ideas, and maybe something will influence your next post. It opens your mind up to new ideas. It gets you thinking.

If someone else reads it you’re going to be giving a different view to theirs and developing their understanding – also when you read theirs they develop your understanding.

But it wasn’t perfect…..

But it wasn’t perfect…

• Too much work for one module• Lack of confidence commenting on posts• Lack of personalising blogs• Synthesis with summative?

MA L&T Curriculum Design in HE

• In-class writing activity• One hour per week of three hour session• Community of writers• Individual blogs• Fortnightly blog post• Alternate week comment on three• Formative, required x 4 posts

Module Evaluation 2014-15

It grew on me Brill – confidence building. I have a voice and through the blogging

it was a voice that had to be heard.

I appreciated the dialogical aspect, and found some people’s blogs as informative as they were entertaining

Loved it, felt comfortable blogging worked well for sharing ideas/thoughts.

Not mad about the mix of off-the-cuff thoughts

and them being public….

2015-16 Informal Module Feedback

Four challenges: choose one

1. Getting students to value work that doesn’t count

2. Managing tutor and student workload.

3. Building a community of writers.

4. Linking formative to summative assessment.

References

Farmer, B., Yue, A. & Brooks, C. (2008). Using blogging for higher order learning in large cohort university teaching: A case study. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 24(2), 123-136. Available at: http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet24/farmer.html

Williams, J.B. & Jacobs, J. (2004). Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 20(2), 232-247. Available at:http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet20/williams.html