New digital era demands new
approaches in sharing and expanding information. Mentioned claim is also
widespread used in the academic spheres to increase readers and improve
networking. Likewise, academic writing became decisive skill in mastering your
knowledge and valuable instrument in academic and professional success (Warschauer, 2010, p. 3) . Academic blog
writing, which is one of the new tools of academic writing, can build community
that is more egalitarian (Bouwma-Gearhart, 2012, p. 258) . In a way, blog
writing can be defined as a simple and effective way to “expand and disseminate
knowledge, make contact with potential collaborators and have scholarly
discussion on a global scale” (Mewburn, 2013, p. 1106) .
Nowadays, every day over 120 000 blogs
and 1.4 million posts are created (Sifry’s
Alerts, 2007 as cited in Ducate, 2008, p. 10). Naturally, this trend
affected to the education sphere as well, where academic blog writing is used
for collaborative learning, sharing information, exchanging knowledge,
receiving constructive feedback (Ducate, 2008, p. 10) and it creates more
authors than any other means in the history of mankind (Warschauer, 2010, p. 4) .
Using academic blog writing in
the higher education has its benefits and obstacles. Personal experience in
this area shows that blog writing is invaluable in expressing your own visions,
sharing experiences, stating global and local problems and discussing them with
peers. Given tool was less stressful and less time consuming; namely, 300 words
in minimum, availability to choose topic and style of writing (formal or
informal), opportunity to ask question from the audience and receive their
views and comments on it. While the academic writing, in turn, had more
mandatory requirements that demand extra efforts and time to design text and
can limit ideas to include.
However, several academic matters,
apart from technical, need further developments. Firstly, availability to discuss topics not only with students,
but also with professors would be more productive and interest-driven. Secondly,
from the personally viewpoint, writing blogs with comments on subject matter,
but not on academic writing skill immobilize its further development. Also, obligatory
critical peer review of several blogs, rather that fixed number of comments, will
be helpful in receiving more constructive feedback from readers. Moreover, Bouwma-Gearhart
(2012) states that confined number of members can limit the quality of brain
storming (p. 258). Creating cooperative learning community to all graduate
students of University would be fascinating experiment in sharing knowledge
among humanities; topics can be divided by areas of study, such as “Political
Science”, “Sociology”, “Psychology”, “Education” or by specific topics, like
“East Asian countries’ economy”, “Human development in Central Asia”,
“Education in rural and remote areas” and so on. Mentioned trial blogging can
create new collaborative learning culture at University.
Generally to say, designing
Blog writing in today’s informational century opens new avenues in shared
academic learning. It assists students to become miscellaneous and broadminded.
As informational technologies became an integral part of academic sphere, this
mean should continue to practice with future master students by avoiding stated
challenges.
References:
Bouwma-Gearhart, J. L. (2012). The
transformative Potential of Blogs for Research in Higher Education. The
Journal of Higher Education, 83(2), 249-275. doi:10.1353/jhe.2012.0008
Ducate,
L. C. (2008). Adventures in the blogosphere: from blog readers to blog writers.
21(1), 9-28.
Mewburn,
I. &. (2013). Why do academic blog? An analysis of audiences, purposes and
challenges. Studies in Higher Education, 38(8), 1105-1119.
doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2013.835624
Warschauer,
M. (2010, February). Invited commentary: New tools for teaching writing. Language
learning and Technology, 14(1), 3-8. Retrieved from
http://llt.msu.edu/vol14num1/commentary.pdf
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