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Ashford, C --- "From Baghdad to Sunderland: Weblogs and Reflective Learning, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog" [2008] LegEdDig 25; (2008) 16(2) Legal Education Digest 39


From Baghdad to Sunderland: weblogs and reflective learning, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog

C Ashford

41 Law Teacher 2, 2007, pp 206–219

During the early days and months of the second Gulf War, blogs permeated the international conscience with their ‘real life’ unedited views of events. Often, blogs such as ‘Baghdad Blog’ were able to report more rapidly and in more detail than the western news agencies and as such quickly gained a loyal following as readers sought an insight into other people’s lives.

Relatively recently in education, a number of scholars have created and maintain blogs that record their thoughts, often in relation to their specialism. Perhaps surprisingly however, the use of blogs by students as part of their University study remains relatively absent.

It is becoming increasingly ‘normal’ within higher education for students to be encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning and academics are increasingly encouraged to embrace reflective practice as a means of supporting that process. Nonetheless, it seems from anecdotal evidence that legal academics continue to resist the conscious application of reflection as a pedagogical tool. As with many pedagogical innovations the introduction of reflective practice and reflection as a form of assessment in particular, can be met with scepticism as to its academic merit by students and teaching colleagues alike. For teachers, reflection can sometimes be a challenging concept as it requires a shift of emphasis from ‘teaching’ to becoming facilitators of learning. For students, this is a form of assessment very different to the examinations they have become familiar with at School and in further education.

However, the benefits of utilising reflection are numerous. It is argued that reflection helps to foster a deep learning culture in which students are encouraged to become autonomous independent learners. In the post Dearing epoch we as teachers in higher education are also increasingly aware of an ‘employability agenda’. Though there is perhaps a temptation to see this as being about students getting jobs as a means of improving an institutions league table performance; the employability agenda can and should be seen as being much wider. If we are to define employability as subject understanding, skills and personal qualities, then certain practices can be seen as clearly promoting that goal such as mooting or clinic. However, supporting reflective practice and encouraging students to be critical about their learning is also vital in preparing students for the ‘ethos of continuous professional development’.

Moreover, students who have practised reflection and come to see it as an important skill can utilise and apply it beyond their educational environment; whether it is to reflect upon their job interviews, professional development, personal autobiography or daily working life; and as such utilising reflection in our teaching can in fact be one way of encouraging life long reflective practice amongst our students.

Human Rights and Civil Liberties, one core module on the Sunderland LLB Programme, already had one reflective piece of assessment. The assessment required that students complete an individual written reflection which would be likely to include: (1) An account of their progress in research; (2) An account of how their understanding of rights and responsibilities has developed generally; (3) An account of any other progress which they feel has developed as a result of the group work assignment.

This would take the form of 1,500 words and represented 30 per cent of the first assignment. Though this structure allowed students to reflect upon their learning, it could be completed in a single stage with the student then creating a piece of written work to submit the night before. A blog in contrast would need to be completed on a regular basis rather than as a single submission.

In September 2005 all students on this course were invited to create and maintain such a blog rather than complete the traditional form of diary. This was entirely optional and 17 per cent of students enrolled on the module undertook a blog. The students were invited to a workshop to demonstrate how to create a blog and were invited to then send through their blog link and password to their tutor. A series of links to their blog were then created on the Web-CT pages for the module. All students on the module could then view all the blogs but only knew the blog address and not the identity of the student blogging.

The learning cycle stated by Kolb was a result of finding common ground with the previous work of Lewin, Dewey and Piaget, which set out four stages in the cycle of experiential development of concrete experience, observation and reflection, abstract conceptualisation and testing new experiments, or sometimes referred to as ‘active experiment’. Kolb’s cycle requires the learner to be actively involved in the learning process rather than as a passive learner as most commonly demonstrated in the traditional lecture format whereby students often sit and listen in a non-involved, passive way whilst the lecturer acts as a ‘sage on the stage’.

In seeking to explore the role of reflection within learning Kolb stated that ‘Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience’ which echoed Dewey who had previously defined reflective thought as ‘active, persistent and careful consideration of any earlier belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and further conclusions to which it leads ... it includes a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of evidence and rationality’.

However, despite the usefulness of these definitions and of Kolb’s model, the Kolb learning cycle has been criticised for not fully capturing the complexity of the learning process and for leaving out elements of the experience such as emotions.

Boud et al recognised the risk that reflection could lead to ‘idle meanderings’ or ‘day-dreaming’ and therefore suggested three points that should be kept in mind when developing learning activity. Firstly, that only learners themselves can learn and thus only they have the ability to reflect on their own experiences.

Boud et al also suggested that reflection is purposeful, being directed towards a clear goal.

Finally, Boud et al stated that the reflective process is a complex and emotional one in which negative feelings, particularly about oneself can form a barrier towards learning whilst positive feelings can greatly enhance the learning process.

Nonetheless, reflective learning can sometimes still be viewed by some academics as ‘navel gazing’; though there appears to be greater support for portfolios that utilise reflection at the vocational stage of legal education. Post Training Framework Review (TFR) the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) published two new consultations in February 2007 seeking views on work based learning as part of qualification and the future structure of the Legal Practice Course. Both documents had less to say about portfolios than the original TFR but it is likely portfolios will form some part of the LPC stage and as such experience of undertaking reflection in an academic context will be of clear benefit to those students.

The first decision to be made in introducing blogging was which software to use. A number of blogger providers have emerged including ‘Blogger’, ‘Xanga’, ‘Livejournal’, ‘Typepad’ and ‘20six’, but one of the most known and perhaps the easiest to use, remains ‘Blogger’.

The site has a clear bold structure that walks a user through the stages of setting up a blog in simple straightforward language. It was important that the assessment did not become an additional time burden for both students and staff. Due to the size of the module and the experimental nature of the assessment it was decided that blogging would be an ‘opt in’ practice for the first year with students still being able to alternatively submit a single written reflective account.

As Stone has noted previously, blogging is not something that can be picked up instantly by everyone. Programmes such as ‘Blogger’ have very useful help sections and clear instructions so as to minimise any additional resource implications for staff, though perhaps inevitably staff should be prepared to respond to student queries.

This blogging approach draws upon the tradition of storytelling as a cathartic process and as with storytelling requires tellers and listeners. I was acutely aware that just as a storyteller may shift their focus and include or exclude elements of a story dependent upon their audience, so too may a student when telling their own story to a lecturer rather than to a friend or indeed to themselves.

During the course of the assessments, students expressed in tutorials and conversations their scepticism regarding ‘reflection’ compared with more traditional forms of assessment such as timed examinations or essay based coursework. In a ‘market’ driven higher education sector this creates additional challenges for the lecturer in terms of ‘marketing’ the assessment as equal in value to other forms of assessment.

With the term self-evaluation and the concept of reflection still relatively new to the classroom and with variations in understanding of the terms amongst both staff and students, it was important to be clear about what was being asked of the students. They were given basic guidance on blogs in a lecture and could attend a dedicated workshop on the mechanics of creating and maintaining a blog. The University technicians were also informed about the assessment so that they would be prepared for any queries regarding the assessment. Most students who ultimately created and maintained blogs attended the workshop and those students who did have subsequent questions/problems were students who had not attended.

On returning the submissions to the students, an opportunity arose to clarify what was expected of them and also to talk through how they had found the task of writing a piece of reflective writing. Students had been surprised by this form of assessment and seemed to feel that they had been challenged by it because it was so different from exams or essays where the emphasis is often placed on the practice of memorisation, imitation and the development of rote skills.

At a time when assessment features ever more heavily on the higher education agenda students appear to become increasingly concerned with assessment rather than the content of the modules. As such, it sometimes appears that students are solely concerned with ‘passing’ rather than with their personal educational journey. For ‘strategic learners’ it seemed that this was the first time they had been forced to sit and think about their own learning and what it was they were studying rather than attempting to ‘jump through assessment hoops’.

Of course, as reflection permeates assessment within Higher Education further, it is likely that the strategic learner will develop strategies for passing reflective pieces just as they do with any other assignments but the blog, unlike a reflective diary forces a student to regularly detail events that ultimately allow a student to look back and reflect. In contrast to a traditional written diary, the blog as operated in this experiment cannot be produced over the course of a weekend with the appearance of considering a term or year of events. Whilst it might be technically possible the collegiate environment and regular tutor monitoring prevents the production of a diary written over the weekend or the night before submission.

Most students seemed to have found the task much harder than writing their more traditional essay based assignments as they were not experienced in this writing style. Indeed, for the vast majority of students this had been their first experience of using reflective writing, but many seemed to feel it had been a worthwhile activity as it encouraged them for the first time to think about what they had been doing on the module so far and as we saw in the earlier examples, how their own learning was progressing.

It is hoped that the use of blogs can be further built upon with the use of reflective assessments throughout the law programme at Sunderland. This would enable future students not only to look at their own current experiences but those of students who undertook a module before them.

The bloggers at Sunderland did not operate in isolation. As Stone has noted, students need not only to be bloggers but also blog readers and to interact with other blogs. Blogs allow bloggers to interact with one another through posting ‘comments’ on other peoples’ blogs. However, it was also important in creating a more open atmosphere that the students’ blogs should remain anonymous to their peers.

This blogging ‘community’ was effectively a smaller blogging community within the wider blogosphere. As was mentioned earlier, this was accomplished by creating a page within Web-CT, our Virtual Learning Environment programme. This page linked to all the blogs of students studying the module, and this allowed students to become silent observers of their peers challenges alongside their own. As first years, they would quickly realise that they were not alone in the challenges they face whether it be the work/study balance or the challenges of group work.

Students who might not feel comfortable discussing the problems they face with tutors or their peers are able through blogs to both share and read other people’s challenges, realising they are not isolated and not alone. As such the blog ceases to be purely an assessment tool but potentially a tool integral to the programme structure, for example with personal development planning.

Though this feature was available students did not choose to make full use of it. Informal discussions with students suggested they were looking at their peers blogs, but they were not using the comments section. Student feedback suggested this was for varying reasons, from technical uncertainty, uncertainty about whether they ‘should’ use the feature and in many cases a simple lack of awareness of the existence of this function. In future years the feature will be drawn to the attention of students so as to further the creation of an online community. The potential for a wider blogging community incorporating law students at other national institutions and beyond is potentially the next stage in developing a blogging community. This would allow students to compare and contrast their own experiences and overcome potential difficulties and fears that some students might face upon entering university, particularly in their initial first few months.

Some have cautioned that reflection is a means to an end, principally to support metacognitive, or higher level thought and Knight cautions against putting ‘overmuch faith’ in reflection as a means of improving teaching and with it learning.

However, despite the scepticism of Knight, like other legal academics I have found reflective learning aids in reviewing my own teaching through reading the reflective blogs and essays of students. It offers the rare and exciting opportunity to review one’s own teaching through the eyes of students.

In addition, blogs overcome some of the obstacles traditionally associated with reflective writing, most notably the challenge of the strategic learner. They also take reflection beyond an activity to be conducted in isolation, becoming an activity to be undertaken within a wider network of peers.

Reflection is also an important pedagogical tool for achieving metacognitive thought amongst students by encouraging autonomous independent learning and equipping students with a lifelong transferable skill. As such reflection will continue to feature as a central element in my own teaching and as Cowan suggests other staff should take the risk and be innovative. Blogging has the potential to become a crucial element in supporting reflective practice. From Baghdad to Sunderland, the blogs are coming.


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