1. Research Course 4, Session 2, Day One
aura
Engaged Excellence in Research & Teaching Practices
What is a blog?
1 min
Research Course 4, Session 2, Day One

2. Session Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, you will:
Define a blog, blog post and blogger
Recognise the benefits of blogging for articulating learning arising from research
Describe typical characteristics and approaches of different blogs in an academic context
2 mins

3. What is a blog?
5 mins

4. Blog Definition/Characteristics
“A blog (short for weblog) is a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption.
Blogs are defined by their format: a series of entries [blog posts] posted to a single page in reverse-chronological order.
Blogs generally represent the personality of the author [or blogger] or reflect the purpose of the Web site that hosts the blog.
Topics sometimes include brief philosophical musings, commentary on Internet and other social issues, and links to other sites the author favors, especially those that support a point being made on a post.”
Definition: SearchWinDevelopment
5 mins

5. Why blog in an academic context?
5 mins
Why blog in an academic context?
Image: Pixaby, CCO Public Domain

6. Case Study #1: Why blog in an academic context?
“…[blogging] gives me a space to do experimentation, to think things through that later on I might work up into an article or a book, and also, it’s a way I can have a completely global network of peers that would have been really difficult to realise previously...”
Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University, UK
discusses digital scholarship an openness in Higher Education (2016).
Watch the video on The AURA Programme Channel on YouTube:
2 mins

7. “…I realised I have been writing this book for the past four years, mainly through my blog, which I have been using to explore what the advent of technologies, which offer new ways of communicating, collaborating and creating knowledge, mean for higher education.”
Martin Weller
Weller, M. (2011)
The Digital Scholar: How technology is transforming scholarly practice. (p.1)
Bloomsbury Academic
2 mins

8. Group Work: 35 minutes
Photo credit: Siobhan Duvigneau, IDS

9. Activity #1: Looking at different blog posts
In 4 groups (based on the number of participants):
Each group will discuss a different blog post (there are four blog posts in total) and spend 15 minutes discussing the blog post they have been assigned. The group will need to establish the following:
What are the characteristics of this blog post? (3 points per group)
What approach to blogging has been taken? (2 points per group)

10. Group feedback: 5 mins
“Blogs are generally more personal, social content. People are sticky – we like reading certain people’s take on a subject precisely because it is human. I don’t want the BBC interpretation of a new technology, I want to know what Audrey Watters thinks about it.”
Martin Weller “People are sticky” post on
The Ed Techie, August 15th, 2016

11. Group feedback: 5 mins

12. Group feedback: 5 mins

13. Group feedback: 5 mins

14. Different approaches - Research Comms
We could consider the following as two different approaches to research communications:
Personalized approach – reflective practices (reflective thinking, learning and writing), articulates the emergence and evolution of research ideas/thoughts/processes/approaches
Dissemination of research approaches, impact and learning – research uptake, knowledge sharing
5 mins

15. Informal in tone
Whatever approach you take, writing for blogs is informal in tone and often takes the first person.
Informal still means professional.
Informal, professional writing.
3 mins

16. Session Learning Outcomes
You should now be able to:
Define a blog, blog post and blogger
Recognise the benefits of blogging for articulating learning arising from research
Describe typical characteristics and approaches of different blogs in an academic context

17. The content is authored by:
Emma Greengrass
Learning Coordinator
Institute of Development Studies
Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.