Using Blogs for peer feedback and discussion - Case study Video Lecture | Teach Online: A Comprehensive Approach for Teaching Online - Professional Skills

blog is a short term that means web log
blog authors all bloggers can use a blog
like a personal diary a reflective
portfolio or even a process journal in
this case study we talked to Tom nuyen
from the University of New South Wales
tam uses blogs alongside her traditional
for our face-to-face studio class for
first-year architectural students this
case study highlights benefits but also
outlines key considerations you need to
be mindful of when you're teaching using
blocks we spend so much time presenting
and looking at process work that we had
no time to actually look at concepts and
students will be going home sitting in
front of a computer or textbook and
still not understanding what they had to
do and so I change my strategy and chose
to use up all the studio time to help
them understand that and knowing that
once I understand it they can go away
and produce what I wanted them to
produce so I decided to use blogs as the
driving tool within my cause I had
different sections for the course this
section that they did go to the most was
the blog section and every student has a
personal blog their name appears on the
top and they can see all their other
classmates as well and they can click
into each other others classmates and
actually see the work I think that's
important that everything's on show it's
a little bit facebook like and I think
that's what involves them so much it's
good to be able to reflect on the whole
process at the end and the advantage of
the blog is also that you can you can
look back and see you where you've come
from and you can see the process that
you've gone through and you can you can
look at other people's blogs and see the
processor they've gone through
so you can see all these posts they have
been placed up throughout the session
and as you can see they range from
images texts discussions they use it to
all sorts of reasons to present final
work to post process work to put up some
thoughts as long as we might report lots
of posts up about their thoughts here is
a description of who they are this one
described his weaknesses and strengths
and how they learn best and what they
are looking for or what they are looking
to learn by the end of the course so the
blocks pretty much is a repository for
work I ask them to create accounts
through flickr and youtube to store
their videos and images the videos house
on YouTube are fed into it the images
house on flickr are also fed into their
blog and as you can see the sheer amount
of posts throughout this session
actually demonstrates how much work they
were generating inside this blog now
within the first couple of weeks I've
noticed that the students were stunned
to comment on each other's work it
really lifted their spirits and I found
that they were posting more and more and
more just to get peer review and we've
had even teachers and students actually
commenting on our work and that gives us
that criticism actually helps us through
all that criticism we can improve our
like when I first created the blogs I
did not think about commenting at all I
thought I just create the blog and allow
the students to post work which I can
see and give them feedback in my own
usual way by the time the session ended
I think in the last month we're getting
masses of comments in certain posts this
is a post with a lot of comments and 19
comments all up some of them really nice
very
nice video you know encouraging others a
suggestive of other techniques that the
student could use a pattern the back
goes a long way and they need that they
need that positive reinforcement and
they did post critiques and the students
do take it on board and either defend
their decisions or take it on board and
actually change it and feed off it
it's been very helpful for not just
nothing for lost the way we can present
our work and it's a way where we can
show how we've developed our ideas my
processes we've gone through to actually
finish our work and it's been really
beneficial I think and from a student's
perspective it's it's a good easy-to-use
platform to communicate ideas outside of
the classroom they'll say things online
language they would never say in class I
know they wouldn't they might if no one
was there and it was just two or three
students but within a whole class I
don't see them expressed that at all but
they're happy to do that online
it's important that the material is
there and the basic course design is
there the objectives the outcomes
they're all important things that need
to be there way before the technology
gets used do I want them to post-process
work don't want this blog to be
reflective don't want this blog to be a
presentation of their work a portfolio
of their work in what context don't want
this blog to be would it be a weekly
thing a monthly thing that needs to be
regular and consistent so that needs to
be on the table where before the blog's
get created it helps to go and see blogs
and I didn't realize I was actually
seeing blogs all the time I just seen
when I realized sell blogs that helps to
actually go and see it as many blogs as
possible just to understand what
blogging can do
I've had to change my teaching
strategies quite a lot to accommodate
the online environment other to actually
justify in a lot of situations and
explain why I'm using it all where they
can actually benefit from and it's
difficult for students to see those
benefits without actually using it yet
now think it's a balance so for those
who actually really do need to voice
their their work or need to present
their work face-to-face it's there but
for those who find it a challenge then
they turn to the online environment
for some situations you take new blogs
and father situations would be the
perfect tool to use it's not something
you can do to all thousands of students
it's a near impossible to monitor
thousands of blogs but for small course
it has a lot of benefits
you