Academic Blogs Research Articles

Portfólio digital: o blog no recurso pedagógico no ensino superior

This paper proposes a reflection on the teaching experience with students performed the 1st period in Social Communication at the University of Uberaba (UNIUBE), in Scientific Foundations of Communication discipline. The experiment consisted in implementing a formative assessment strategy inspired by the Portfolio, but with a peculiarity: the record of the learning process should be done in a virtual diary (blog). Students should write their academic experiences, under the guidance of the teacher, observing the rules of the syllabus. The result showed that the systematic use of academic blog helped students become more aware of the development of their knowledge in relation to discussions of discipline.

Views, Comments and Statistics: Gauging and Engaging the Audience of Medievalist Blogging

AbstractA blog without an audience is no more than a constrained word processor; the point of blogging is surely to find an audience. But how can we go about gauging the audience that is attracted? Can it be measured or assessed, can it be courted, can it be deterred? Is the audience a blogger gets the one they want? This article looks, through the lens of the author’s experience with an academic blog on medieval history, at these questions and concludes that although the largest portion of the audience remains invisible, unengaged and perhaps accidental, the members of the audience of a successful blog who do interact and respond are the real necessity for a fruitful collaborative space that benefits readers as well as authors.

Why We Blog: An Essay in Four Movements

AbstractThis essay comprises four parts, each by one of the co‐bloggers at In the Middle (http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com). Karl Steel argues that the benefits of academic blogging outweigh its potential humiliations, and that academic conferences should post their papers publicly and allow for comments so that conferences, in a sense, never end. Graduate students and junior scholars should be encouraged to blog to help build a community and a trade in ideas, and to accustom them to the feelings of exposure and humiliation common to all writing, which will thereby train them to become more confident scholars. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen examines some of the difficulties posed by the age of e‐medieval: an internet culture of negativity. Blogging entails finding strategies for managing harsh or off topic comments, as well as for coping with unwanted attention. Drawing on the pedagogical distinction Nancy Sommers makes between process and product, Mary Kate Hurley examines the role blogs might play in creating a communal space in which to share unfinished ideas. Blogs might be an ideal medium for the process of thinking, rather than the finished work of having had thought. Eileen A. Joy argues there may be more value in thinking and “working through” our scholarship online, in an “open” environment that promotes and invites democratic, catholic, and convivial support, as well as the accidental tourist and silent voyuer, than there is in the traditional “finished product” of a journal article or book. It pleads, further, for a better awareness of the fact that intellectual property is always co‐extensive and communal.

An empirically grounded framework to guide blogging for digital scholarship

This research project investigated how openness and sharing of knowledge are manifested through scholarly blogging. We aimed to identify the academics’ and researchers’ motivations for starting a blog; the contribution of blogging to their personal and professional development; and any challenges. Twenty-six participants were recruited. A pre-interview questionnaire was first emailed to the participants to collect background information. An initial unstructured interview was conducted by email, followed by a synchronous semi-structured interview. Textual and visual extracts of blog content were also collected. The datasets were analysed using different techniques. The findings revealed varied reasons for blogging. Some academics/researchers began a blog for its accessibility to self and others. Blogging aided the academics’ and researchers’ personal and professional development in several ways. Bloggers can quickly reach a wider audience compared to other forms of academic publishing. Among the challenges, there were concerns over validity of online content. Based on previous scholarship models and on our findings, we have derived an empirically grounded framework of blog use in academia and research. The framework describes how characteristics of digital scholarship such as openness and sharing are manifested through blogging. The framework can be used to guide academics and researchers who are interested in taking up blogging as a scholarly practice.Keywords: academic blogging; research blogging; openness; digital scholarship; open scholarship(Published: 30 August 2012)http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0.19195

Hope, But Not for Us: Ecological Science Fiction and the End of the World in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood

It was Fredric Jameson who remarked, in a line from the preface to The Seeds of Time that has since become proverbial (as well as anonymized and widely misattributed 1 ): “It seems to be easier for...

Understanding student perceptions and motivation towards academic blogs: An exploratory study

<span>The success of academic blogs depends on the participation and engagement of students. Taking an exploratory approach, this study aims to develop a better understanding of the perceptions of student teachers towards academic blogging, and the factors that motivate them to write academic blogs voluntarily. Drawing on data gathered from questionnaires, interviews, and content analysis of blog posts, the study reveals a set of mediating factors in individual, social and academic dimensions, among which students' perceived values of blogs play a critical role. Our findings have methodological and practical implications for researchers and teachers interested in academic blogs, especially for those in the field of teacher education.</span>

“Your argument is wrong”: a contribution to the study of evaluation in academic weblogs

AbstractAcademic weblogs are a new form of scholarly communication which provides both a space for researchers to present their ideas, observations, and reactions to others' work and a discussion forum. Although evaluation has been shown to play a prominent role in academic discourse, the function of this rhetorical device in academic blogs has not yet been studied. As part of an attempt to address this issue, the present study is aimed at identifying the types and frequency of evaluative adjectives in academic blogs and at analyzing their role in this genre. For this purpose, I adopt Thompson and Hunston's (2000: 5) definition of evaluation as “the expression of the speaker or writer's attitude or stance towards, a viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she is talking about.” The study is based on the exploration of a corpus of weblog entries and comments taken from ten different academic blogs. The results show that evaluative adjectives are rhetorically used by participants in these blogs for two purposes: (i) to construct their identity both as knowledgeable researchers and competent academic bloggers; (ii) to build and sustain solidarity relations with other members of the community and signal their allegiances.

Return on Investment: What Literature Exists on the Use of Social Media and ROI?

This paper presents an annotated bibliography of academic journal articles, professional publications, authoritative blogs and other resources that address social media and return on investment (ROI). A literature search for publications that consider whether ROI can be measured and the mechanism by which it can be calculated, was undertaken in 2011 as part of a research project to describe or evaluate the relationship between social media and ROI from a business perspective. Organised under the four headings of academic journals, professional publications, authoritative blogs and others, the bibliography identifies some emerging themes from the literature.

Developing a University-Wide Instructional Design Blog for Information Sharing and Professional Development

As an interactive communications tool, work-related blogs can offer professionals a way to reflect on their practices and connect with other professionals around the world who have similar backgrounds and interests. Reflection helps practitioners make connections between various information streams, their work experiences, and interactions with clients. Reflection can also help connect educational research with applied practices. This essay focuses on the development and evolution of the Instructional Design Open Studio (IDOS) blog, which started in early 2006. The IDOS blog was designed as a professional and academic blog to serve the faculty community as a way to disseminate information about e-learning. The author discusses the steps that went into developing the blog, as well as a range of specific issues, including technological, organizational, policy-based, and design. In conclusion, the author shares insight into the overall experience and provides directions for the future.

Introduction

Introduction Claire B. Potter (bio) It is a great privilege to be present as a historian when technology is shifting the terms of our intellectual practice. Because of my belief that academic blogging is a game-changing moment for scholars and feminists, I was particularly excited when the Journal of Women's History asked me to organize this cluster of articles. Our call asked potential authors to think about "the emergence of blogging as a location for critical thought among women in the historical profession; historians of women, gender and sexuality; and feminist scholars who may, or may not be, historians." Among other things, we asked: "What role does self-publishing on the Internet play in a profession where merit is defined by scholarly review and a rigorous editorial process? Is blogging itself developing rules and practices that will inevitably produce intellectual and scholarly hierarchies similar to those that blogging seeks to dismantle? Does feminist blogging offer particular opportunities for enhanced conversation about race, sexuality, class and national paradigms, or does it tend to reproduce existing scholarly paradigms and silences within feminist scholarship?" The call was properly printed, on actual paper, in the Journal of Women's History itself. It was then distributed in the online venues (list serves, e-newsletters, and wikis) that scholars now take for granted to support the work of conventional publication, conference organizing and the hiring of new faculty. But then it began to wander. Our call went up on Facebook, and a link (supported by Tiny.url) was tweeted on Twitter. Most effectively, perhaps, for several months, it was in view of an average 500 readers per day as a sidebar item on my own blog, Tenured Radical.1 From there it was picked up by RSS feed and delivered to the desktops of Tenured Radical followers; by LiveJournal sites that re-post automatically from my blog; and by scholarly blogs that make it their business to collate academic announcements and history business. Already, perhaps, you are beginning to understand the wild world that feminist bloggers inhabit. Our call drew a lively and inventive set of responses, originating in several disciplinary and interdisciplinary locations, from which the four [End Page 185] articles by Jennifer Ho, May Friedman, Marilee Lindemann, and Ann Little were developed. Rachel Leow, with whom I was e-acquainted through our mutual work on Cliopatria (a History News Network blog) agreed to comment.2 And we were off. The blend of old media, new media, and newest media that supported the production of this roundtable underlines the different forms of scholarly collaboration and exchange that digital communication now facilitates. Just as the circulation of email often replaces face-to-face meetings in the academy, electronic platforms now support traditional connections among scholars even as they facilitate new ones. Prior to assembling the group of bloggers who contributed to this roundtable, I had met only one of the participants (Ann Little) in person, and spoken on the telephone to a second (Jennifer Ho). While Rachel Leow and I were able to meet briefly in Cambridge, England in spring 2010 to discuss the framing of the round table, my relationships with Marilee Lindemann and May Friedman remain electronic for now. As feminist bloggers, this group assembled in this roundtable has many differences but we have at least two things in common. We all view ourselves as intellectuals; and we are all committed to feminist blogging as a literary practice, or tradition, that we are also inventing. This process of invention can be boundary breaking on a number of levels, and therefore, puts us in a position familiar to feminist scholars as we trouble conventional forms of intellectual respectability. "Academic blogging" can appear to be a contradiction for many of our non–blogging colleagues in the material, or what Little calls "the meat world." There is also a significant generational divide about the intellectual value of blogs; too many historians even remain skeptical of electronic scholarship that is refereed and governed by editorial boards. Blogging, in particular, is an activity associated most strongly with the young and the self-absorbed: this can render middle aged scholar-bloggers like Lindemann and myself even more suspect...

We're all cowgirls now

We're all cowgirls now Ann M. Little (bio) In the winter of 2008, I created an online blog persona called Historiann, a cowgirl who (supposedly) keeps horses and perhaps some ruminants on her ranch on the High Plains Desert. She allegedly looks a lot like the pinup cowgirls drawn by Gil Elvgren. This was mostly unthinking on my part and an artifact of living in Colorado, a place that evokes in people's minds a kind of rustic, Rocky Mountain glamour. I had been a reader of political and academic blogs for several years at that point, and was interested in experimenting with the format for two reasons. I thought it might help to publicize and generate interest in the 2008 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, for which I was the U.S. and Canadian History Program Committee co-chair. In addition, I thought it might be fun to write for a more general audience on topics I don't engage in my own scholarship. I wanted to see if anyone else would be interested in my peculiar constellation of interests, namely early American history, women's history, feminism, and politics. Boy howdy, as we say out here on the Western plains: did I get more than I bargained for! Over the years, I've come to see my cowgirl alter ego as an appropriate companion to assist me in navigating both the wild frontiers of the nonpeer reviewed World Wide Web and my real (or as we say in the blogosphere, "meat") life as a women's historian. The skirts that Elvgren's cowgirls wear are frequently in disarray—caught on a fence splinter, swirled up around their waists after a tumble, or hitched up to accommodate a holster so that the cowgirls' legs are usually very exposed. One of my earliest (and most depressing) realizations in blogging was that, like those cowgirls whose skirts are always tripping them up, women who write in cyberspace are exposed in ways that people who present online as men are not. Whether we write under our own names, whether we are truly anonymous or entirely pseudonymous (like Notorious Ph.D., Girl Scholar; Squadratomagico, or Another Damned Medievalist at Blogenspiel), or whether we're only lightly and playfully pseudonymous (like Tenured Radical, Roxie at Roxie's World, and Historiann)—we still have to play by the same "girl rules" that we're subjected to in the meat world.1 You know the rules I'm talking about: don't take up too much space (physically or rhetorically), don't say anything not-nice, and don't make the mistake of thinking you're an authority on anything. Those of you who have made the mistake of clicking on the comments responding to most articles in newspapers or online magazines will recognize these "rules" immediately [End Page 220] in the misogyny that gets thrown at women writers, especially those who write on feminist, women's or gender issues, by people who present online as women and men alike.2 By choosing a pseudonym but stating clearly on my homepage my real life identity, I thought that my academic credentials and position would at least inoculate me against the last "girl rule," that I should never presume to be an authority on anything.3 Silly cowgirl! Sex, Scolding, and Civility in Cyberspace Historiann is a role I inhabit online, but because I am not truly pseudonymous and my blogging persona is clearly linked to my real life professional identity as a tenured professor, I monitor the comments on my blog closely. My goal in blogging is to provide a space for feminists (scholars and other interested readers) to meet and discuss various issues in our intellectual, professional, and personal lives, as well as in contemporary politics. I see my blog as a virtual living room, where all are welcome so long as they are aware they're in my space and they are willing to engage in serious and respectful conversations. I have an obligation to ensure that debates and disagreements—either with me, or between commenters—remain respectful. The internet unfortunately does not usually foster the best in people. Many blog...

EXPLORING THE ROLE OF ACADEMIC BLOGS IN A BLENDED COMMUNITY: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH

This study explores the role of academic blogs in supporting a group of preservice teachers while they became physically separated during the teaching practice. Underlying our study is an integrative approach that puts academic blogs alongside with other media in an attempt to discern their comparative strengths and limitations. In particular, academic blogs are compared with personal blogs in terms of individual expressions and reflection; and with discussion forums in terms of social interaction and reflective dialogue. The study took a qualitative case study approach and focused on a group of preservice teachers during their teaching practice. Academic blogging has been found to foster individual expressions, reflection, social networking, and peer support. It affords a more flexible and expressive way of individual-centered expressions. However, it is not very good at supporting dynamic and interactive online discussions. Our study helps deepen the insights into the educational affordances of blogs and marks an initial step towards discerning the niche of blogs as an educational media.

Academic blogging: academic practice and academic identity

This paper describes a small-scale study which investigates the role of blogging in professional academic practice in higher education. It draws on interviews with a sample of academics (scholars, researchers and teachers) who have blogs and on the author's own reflections on blogging to investigate the function of blogging in academic practice and its contribution to academic identity. It argues that blogging offers the potential of a new genre of accessible academic production which could contribute to the creation of a new twenty-first century academic identity with more involvement as a public intellectual.

Banal Bohemia

While academic blogging has emerged as a distinct genre in the past few years (Walker, 2006), a notable gap exists between those who blog from secure positions within the profession and PhD and junior faculty bloggers whose employment status is more marginal. This article draws on subcultural theory to discuss the unique features of these two latter types and the functions they serve for their authors. The analysis demonstrates that blogs are important sites of support for those who aspire to and currently work in academia at the same time as they are a powerful indictment of the job conditions experienced therein. The article therefore concludes by suggesting that the positive aspects of collegiality and solace taking place online for a new generation of scholars risk remaining disconnected from an effective labour politics — one that could change the very nature of the grievances blogs appear so well designed to express.

Scholarly hyperwriting: The function of links in academic weblogs

AbstractWeblogs are gaining momentum as one of most versatile tools for online scholarly communication. Since academic weblogs tend to be used by scholars to position themselves in a disciplinary blogging community, links are essential to their construction. The aim of this article is to analyze the reasons for linking in academic weblogs and to determine how links are used for distribution of information, collaborative construction of knowledge, and construction of the blog's and the blogger's identity. For this purpose I analyzed types of links in 15 academic blogs, considering both sidebar links and in‐post links. The results show that links are strategically used by academic bloggers for several purposes, among others to seek their place in a disciplinary community, to engage in hypertext conversations for collaborative construction of knowledge, to organize information in the blog, to publicize their research, to enhance the blog's visibility, and to optimize blog entries and the blog itself.

An exploratory study on substantive co-link analysis: A modification to total co-link analysis

Since the term “co-link” was put forward, many scholars have done exploratory investigations to prove the applicability and validity of co-link analysis used in mapping internet structure and mining relationships among internet colonies. All of these studies are based on the whole links in the web called “total co-link analysis”. However, there are both substantive and non-substantive links in the web, and the number of the latter outweights that of the former, which makes the preconditions of total co-link analysis untenable. In this paper, we present “substantive co-link analysis”, and believe it is more sound and valid than “total co-link analysis”. Then exploratory investigations on both total and substantive co-link analysis are carried out with the sample of 20 academic blogs on Library and Information Science, the results of which testify our assumption that “substantive co-link analysis” is more efficient and reasonable than “total co-link analysis”.

High tech's double edge: creating organizationally appropriate responses to emerging technologies

PurposeThe recent literature advising higher education leaders is deficient in its discussion of the challenges and opportunities presented by new technologies. This article seek to describe one such technology, the blog, and suggest ways for approaching its use.Design/methodology/approachA case at Alfred State College is outlined, in which an employee started an anonymous blog as a vehicle for criticism of the administration. This incident is then used as a device for examining issues of communication and trust‐building in electronic venues.FindingsThe challenges and opportunities presented by openly critical academic blogs are in many cases unique to academia. The mistakes an administration may make include conceptual mistakes that academic leaders can make about the academic environment, technical mistakes that amateurs can make when attempting to manipulate a technical medium and, most importantly, process mistakes that leaders can make which deeply affect the trust levels in an organization. Although the blog medium is often portrayed as a “problem” for administrators, it is the philosophical orientation and communication principles of leaders that determine whether blogs truly present a problem for an administration.Originality/valueThere are a number of new technologies appearing in higher education and, although a great deal of attention is paid to how these new technologies are used to educate, little attention is paid to the leadership opportunities these technologies create. In contrast to the way they are presented in the educational media, blogs are an enabling technology that actually serve as magnifiers of communication, increasing the speed, distance, and intensity of the information transmitted.