My Semester of Blogging: An Introduction
To begin, I was very excited to take this course, blogging or no blogging. As a former social studies teacher at the secondary level, I have always had a vivid interest in current events and issues, regardless of the topic. I think this may have something to do with my peripatetic childhood, during which my family and I moved constantly, and I was perpetually challenged with the tasks of making meaning and friends in novel sociocultural environments.
When I learned that our class would be engaging current issues in higher education and student affairs leadership via a collaborative blogging format, I was doubly excited. Matt both challenged us in his course syllabus to explore the course topic in an individualized manner that required measured amounts of critical thought and cited research, through usage of a multifaceted methodology that encouraged lively interaction both in person and in writing. It seemed to me that the course was structured in a very balanced way that both allowed for substantive individual research on the one hand while providing rather intense but well-spaced class opportunities for discussion.
Prior to this course, I had never actually written or produced an interactive blog. I did have some writing experience, in that I had served as a regional reporter for both USA Track and Field (the official regulatory body of the sport in the U.S.), and as a writer for the Official Olympic Publisher of the Atlanta Olympic Games (Griffin Publishing Co.). My previous writing experience consisted of writing narrative accounts of events, generating biographical sketches, and providing background information relating to topics of sporting interest. While I enjoyed these "old-school" writing experiences for the most part, content was often narrowly focused by the dictated subject at hand, tight editorial guidelines, and pressurized deadlines. I sometimes yearned for writing experiences that were less formulaic and more serendipitous in nature; when I learned just how flexible Matt would be with regards to blog topical selection and writing style, I grinned in anticipation.
In preparing for the act of blogging, I knew that my major challenge would not be the writing itself, but rather the need to adequately self-monitor and curb my natural tendency towards excessive verbosity (good luck, huh?).
My 'Best' Blog Entries
I wasn't sure how to answer the question of what my 'best' blogs entries were, so I went about defining what 'best' means to me in this context. Here I define (for myself only) my 'best' blogs as those that succeeded in accomplishing the following:
A. Challenged me to learn, analyze, and synthesize information to the extent that I looked at topics in new ways; in ways that forced me to re-examine previously held ideas and opinions while encouraging personal growth.
B. Incited a degree of enthusiasm, such that I wanted to continue exploring the given topic beyond the confines of this course.
C. Sufficiently encapsulating, summarizing, and providing cogent insight into a given topic, such that it could be adequately and meaningfully understood by an undergraduate student for use as a discussion starter among peers in class and beyond.
According to these criteria, I choose the following blogs as my 'best':
1. A Better Way to Rank our Colleges/Universities
2. Steve Jobs, Derrick Bell, and Lessons for Student Affairs Practice
3. College Racial Diversity: Going...going...gone?
4. Changes in the College Dating Equation?
5. Tea Party, Occupy, and Molly Katchpole: A Study of Recent Protest Movements
Full disclosure: I could have easily chosen all nine of my blog entries as my favorites, for one reason or another! But these will do for now. Such is life, que sera sera, no?
My Reflection on the Blogging Experience and How it Contributed to our Class
It seems to me that the success of a given instructional approach can correlate with how difficult it becomes to imagine teaching said course any other way. By this measure, I believe that Matt's usage of blogging in promoting the study and discussion of current issues in higher education and student affairs leadership has succeeded magnificently.
I concur with Beau's blog reflection comment, in that the format of this course allowed individuals who normally feel out-of-place and marginalized during animated class discussions to more fully and authentically express themselves via blogging (I think of my wife, who in the past wrote succinct and insightful 300-500 word blog entries on a weekly basis for over five years for a prominent nursing website, and yet has the greatest difficulty in vocally expressing herself during group discussions, due to her introverted and deliberate nature).
Blogging, in my opinion, 'hyper-democratized' our classroom experience. The center of the class shifted from the instructor during the blogging week to individual nodes of consciousness (i.e. exemplified by each of ourselves) that actively interacted within a shared network or web of collective consciousness, where the center was everywhere and everyone's point of view was equally valid (now I'm paraphrasing Native American or Buddhist sages, or quantum physicists, for crying out loud). And when we converged for the marathon Friday plus Saturday discussion sessions, we were able to restore faces to names, topics, writing styles, and points of view.
I believe our class could have been conducted without use of blogging, but the process and outcomes would have been much more prosaic and unengaging. We would have had to resort to traditional methods of current events research via newspaper, journal, and periodical access, resulting in disconnected experience. The blog comments that Matt required of us on a regular basis challenged each of us to behave as peer-reviewing members of an interactive and supportive community of scholars, as opposed to lone wolves who came in from our respective forests to occasionally compare, contrast, and analyze our individual notes, it seems to me.
Indeed, this course has broadened my understanding as to how interactive media usage such as blogging can enhance the learning experience at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, no matter the individual class.
What I Have Learned this Semester
First of all, I must say that I am absolutely amazed at the depth and breadth of creative output our class generated via our collective blogging efforts. The range of topics covered, the diverse insights expressed, and even the wealth of clever titles applied to given topics never ceased to surprise and delight me from week to week. I know I risk coming off as rather melodramatic and maudlin when I say this, but I simply marvel at the amount of human creativity that can be unleased through a simple vehicle as an interactive blog. Our collective output (well over 300 blog postings) was rather prodigious, and I sincerely regret not being able to acknowledge and discuss each and every entry during our class meetings.
As a classmate, I learned that during class discussions, I need to continue to allow others sufficient opportunity to express their own viewpoints, while still contributing in sensitive and constructive ways to the collective conversation. I also learned that I may need to write my blogs in a more engaging style if I am to elicit more comments, for many of my blog entries received little in the way of responses (another possible reason for lack of responses may be related to my often posting entries towards the end of a given week, thus narrowing the window of opportunity for my fellow bloggers to respond).
As a student, I learned a great deal about issues that meaningfully relate to my doctoral education and focus, including areas of inquiry I had little prior awareness of, including international higher education, higher education in Colorado, and higher education as viewed and practiced from certain multicultural and diverse perspectives. I am grateful for the opportunity to meaningfully use class time to peruse such valuable organizational resources as the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education, not to mention a broad array of other news- worthy sources.
As a HESAL colleague, I learned that my masters- and doctoral-level classmates in HESA 695 hail from a very diverse range of backgrounds, and are already experts to some degree in many fields of endeavor. I felt privileged to join our class during each of the weekend meetings, because, when you really think about it, how often does one have the opportunity to passionately and respectively engage a well-informed and sympathetic group of intelligent and driven individuals on topics of mutual interest? Hmm...how about, just about never?
Insofar as that goes, as a student, I applaud Matt's willingness and deft ability to allow our class such free rein to express ourselves with respect to both our class meetings and our individual blogging, while still providing a needed modicum of structure. I generally enjoyed and understood the value of the articles he provided ahead of class meetings, for discussion starter purposes. Assigned articles that addressed such topics as the perception of the contemporary college faculty member by the media, the emergence of a so-called 'neo-liberal' higher educational paradigm, the perpetual trumpeting of 'crisis' in higher education, the consideration of higher education as a 'mature industry', and a brief collective review of the history of higher education itself all served to frame and inform our class meeting discussions and blogging efforts in constructive ways.
If I had a suggestion to add to the class meeting format, it would have been to allow for more discussion involving topics democratically chosen during class, and correspondingly less with regards to the assigned articles.
In any case, I greatly enjoyed this course, and I hereby wish each of my classmates and my instructor a fruitful future in higher education and beyond, while expressing my appreciation to each and all for the experience we shared this semester.
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