Vignette - Blogs for cogs
Student-centred learning requires the designer/educator to ‘meet the students where they’re at’ and to design learning activities which are relevant to the learner. To be successful, teachers must get to know their students, their interests and pre-existing knowledge to support their construction of new understandings.
One might think that online learning would be an even more challenging environment to create such tailored learning experiences - but my own experience showed me how the careful use of ‘digital learning design’ strategies can actually enhance student-centred learning and foster a Community of Inquiry more effectively than in person.
Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash
I consider myself lucky to have happened upon a social media content creation elective unit at the start of 2020 which used blogging as a tool for engaging cognitive presence.
Until then, nearly all of my masters degree assignments were 2,500 word essays that I wrote according to a detailed rubric, submitted via the LMS to the teacher only, received a grade, applied any useful feedback to the next assessment task, then never looked at it again. If no-one engaged with my learning…did it even happen?
Apart from the few assignments which required peer feedback, I didn’t interact with my peers at all. I didn’t benefit from learning about their struggles and triumphs, nor see if my insights inspired them or could impact my professional community. It was like learning in a vacuum.
Created by Lexi Keeton using Canva
Submitting blogs for assessment on the other hand was like learning into a megaphone! We were required to post our blogs publicly on our own website (which we had to create to be able to submit) and encouraged to read/comment/share our peers work on Twitter. The practice of feedback and reflection was built into every assignment. For the first time in my post-graduate experience, I felt as though I had a learning community. The instant feedback and encouragement I received from peers and the professional community inspired me to dig deeper into my learning and post again.
The social media aspect of blogging has stretched the life of my learning across time and space: one particular blog I posted is still receiving comments and feedback over a year later, which I have engaged with in all kinds of places…sitting at my computer, on public transport, a lazy Sunday on the grass, at a restaurant when a friend popped out to make a phone call.
I continue to construct new knowledges on those blog topics, anywhere and any-when. Even to this day (she says as she writes in her blog).
My first blog…
The first blog assessment threw us in the deep end, but not without a ladder to scaffold our climb to success. Cleverly, our first blog topic was ‘online identity’ which encouraged metacognition of our use of social media and challenged the idea of “authenticity” online. We were given freedom (student agency) to analyse any aspect of online identity, but also provided with prompts (scaffolds) of kinds of topics worthy of deeper exploration. A formula for weaving critical thinking through our blogs was also provided: create a story that moves from the general/academic to the specific/personal (and back again).
In our first Zoom meeting, blogging was introduced to us as a social tool. Now that we’re social media content creators (eep!) we’d need to identify our target audience and how we wanted to be perceived. We may already have an online persona that we have unknowingly been crafting.
To illustrate the point my teacher casually pointed out that my background communicated that I’m organised and into education so I may have something interesting to say to educators, while another student had lots of plants in their background which they may like to blog about to other people who love plants.
Lexi Keeton and her organised, education inspired background.
Motivation to engage
My teacher was right! As a student of learning and teaching, I was right into education. No-one had ever read my essays before…but maybe I do have something of value to offer my professional community…if I say it in a blog?
We were encouraged to #learnbydoing and post blogs right away. Get feedback from our learning community in real time to help build the skills required for assessment - which I did with enthusiasm! I posted a trial blog…and then another…but it didn’t stop there. I had been so hungry for an opportunity to meaningfully explore the education theory and frameworks from Masters program that I wrote unassessed blogs about interesting topics from each of my units all semester long.
Digital pedagogy
While blogging was useful in fostering cognitive presence, it was only one ingredient of my transformative learning experience in the social media content creation unit. A successful Community of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) requires three elements: cognitive presence, social presence and teacher presence. The combination of all three resulted in a unique sense of belonging that made learning enjoyable.
I raved to my teachers in the department of education about my new and inspiring experience of learning with social media. Hoping to engage the education cohort in the same way as my media cohort, I shared blogs relevant to our education units…to no avail. Blogging as a learning strategy didn’t stand alone as digital pedagogy. Online social presence hadn’t been established and teacher presence was minimal.
Blogging did however enhance my essay writing! With each blog I wrote, I more deeply engaged with the learning content which triggered the most profound cognitive presence experience of my post-graduate degree and inspired a new career direction - digital learning design. Now that I have experienced first hand the magic of an online Community of Inquiry - I’ve simply got to help others who are hungry for connection and deeper understanding in their learning through effective learning design.
References
Garrison DR, Anderson T and Archer W (2000) 'Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: computer conferencing in higher education', The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3):87-105, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6