Educational Blogs Research Articles

Using a Project Blog to Promote Student Learning and Reflection

Research on the use of blogs in higher education suggests that students who blog as part of a course requirement demonstrate increased reflection, heightened feelings of connection, and increased course-related knowledge. Blogging provides a promising medium for students to engage in reflection on their participation in a cooperative education work term. Blogging can help guide a project by providing an encouraging place for team members to communicate clearly, document their work and other resources, and brainstorm ideas. In this paper, we describe a qualitative analysis of blog posts written by three students during a co-op placement. The students used the blog extensively and with multiple purposes: to reflect, to communicate, to brainstorm ideas, to evaluate literature, and to document team creations. We discuss the characteristics of the project and blog that may have contributed to its extensive use and provide recommendations for individuals interested in implementing a blog in similar projects.

Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM) Blog and Podcast Watch: Renal and Genitourinary Emergencies.

The Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM) Approved Instructional Resources (AIR) series and Approved Instruction Resources Professional (AIR-Pro) series were created in 2014 and 2015, respectively, to address the need for the curation of online educational content as well as a nationally available curriculum that meets individualized interactive instruction criteria. These two programs identify high-quality educational blog and podcast content using an expert-based approach.The AIR series is a continuously building curriculum originally based on the Council of Emergency Medicine Directors (CORD) testing schedule. Using the ALiEM AIR scoring instrument, 49 blog posts and podcasts relevant to renal and genitourinary emergencies published within the previous 12 months were evaluated by eight attending physicians.We summarize the 13 posts that met our a priori determined quality criteria per evaluation by the reviewers.The ALiEM Blog and Podcast Watch series identifies high-quality educational blogs and podcasts for emergency medicine clinicians through its expert panel, using a validated scoring instrument. While this article focuses on renal and genitourinary emergencies, additional AIR modules address other topics in emergency medicine. The AIR and AIR-Pro series provide post-publication accreditation and curation of recent online content to identify and recommend high-quality educational social media content for the EM clinician.

Academic Life in Emergency Medicine Blog and Podcast Watch: Toxicologic Emergencies.

The Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM) Approved Instructional Resources (AIR) Series was created in 2014 to address a lack of both curation of online educational content and a nationally available curriculum that meets individualized interactive instruction. Using an expert-based, crowdsourced approach, the AIR series identifies trustworthy, high-quality, educational blog and podcast content.Here, we summarize the content rated as high quality per our a priori criteria as evaluated by eight attending physicians.

Perception of Pedagogy Students About the Usefulness of Blogs in Education

The use of blogs, given their ease of creation and functionality, can be an opportunity for teachers in training to use ICT in education. In this research we ask what perception the teaching staff in training have of the use of blogs in an academic context of higher education and what experience of use and interaction with blogs they had at school level. For this reason, in order to obtain information at university level, we used the scale of assessment of the usefulness of blogs in higher education. A semi-structured interview was applied to learn about the experience of using and interacting with blogs at school level and how it projects the use of blogs as future teachers. The sample was 100 first-year students of pedagogy, enrolled in pedagogy careers of a faculty of education of a university in the south of Chile. The results indicate that, at the school level, most students did not use or interact with blogs, and that, at the higher education level, the least favored dimension is implementing curriculum by using blogs.

Academic Life in Emergency Medicine Blog and Podcast Watch: Respiratory Emergencies.

The Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM) Approved Instructional Resources (AIR) Series and Approved Instruction Resources Professional (AIR-Pro) Series were created in 2014 and 2015, respectively, to address the need for curation of online educational content as well as a nationally available curriculum that meets individualized interactive instruction criteria. These two programs identify high-quality educational blog and podcast content using an expert-based approach.We summarize the accredited posts on respiratory emergencies that met our a priori determined quality criteria per evaluation by eight experienced faculty educators in emergency medicine.

‘Yay! Not another academic essay!’ Blogging as an alternative academic genre

Abstract Academic writing is a staple university practice required across disciplines to determine student success. Despite its ubiquity, however, literacy scholars have long argued that academic writing is both exclusionary and prohibitive. Drawing on the work of literacy scholars we make the case for the use of blogs in higher education as a way of providing a type of inclusive writing or ‘regenring’ that such scholars advocate. To achieve this, we trial the use of a blog in a final-year undergraduate module, employing a mixed-methods approach to explore student perceptions on whether blogging affords them a means to engage with and take ownership of their writing and learning. In keeping with the task we have set our students, we have presented this article using blog-like features.

P022: The revised METRIQ Score: an international, social-media based usability analysis of a quality evaluation instrument for medical education blogs

Introduction: Online medical education resources are widely used in emergency medicine (EM), but strategies to assess quality remain elusive. We previously derived the Medical Education Translational Resources: Impact and Quality (METRIQ) 8 instrument to evaluate quality in medical education blog posts. Methods: As part of a subsequent validation study (The METRIQ Blog Study), a mixed-methods usability analysis was performed to obtain user feedback on the quality assessment instrument in order to improve its clarity and reliability. Participants in the METRIQ Study were first asked to rate five blog posts using the METRIQ-8 Score. They then evaluated the METRIQ-8 instruments ease of use and likelihood of being recommended to others using a 7-point Likert scale and free text comments. Participants were also asked to flag and comment on items within the score that they felt were unclear. Global usability ratings were summarized using median scores or percent rated unclear. We used ANOVA to test associations between ease of use and demographic factors. A thematic analysis was performed on the comments. Results: 309 EM medical students, residents, and attendings completed the survey. Global ratings were generally very favorable (median 2 [IQR 2-3], with 7 being the lowest score) for ease of use and likelihood of recommendation, and did not vary by participants country of origin, frequency of blog use, or learner level. Participants stated that the score was structured, systematic, and straightforward. They found it useful for junior learners and for guiding blog creation. Four questions in the score (questions 2, 4, 5, and 7) were identified by 10% of subjects to be unclear. Thematic analysis of comments identified suggested four main themes for improving the score: adding clearer definitions with marking rubrics; shortening the 7-point scale; adding items evaluating blog post presentation and utility; and, rephrasing the wording of certain questions for clarity. Conclusion: A mixed methods usability analysis of the METRIQ-8 instrument for assessing blog quality was globally well received by EM medical students, residents, and attendings. Qualitative analyses revealed multiple areas to improve the instruments clarity and usability. The METRIQ score is a promising instrument for evaluating the quality of blogs; further development and testing is needed to improve its utility.

P167: The spot the diagnosis! series: using fine art to teach observation skills and medical concepts on a medical education website

Introduction: Fine art education increases the quality and quantity of observations that medical students make in both art and clinical reports. However, there are few free and accessible resources that teach art and observational skills to healthcare learners and providers. CanadiEM.org, a medical education blog, developed a new series called Spot the Diagnosis! to address this gap. The goals of the Spot the Diagnosis! series are to: 1) use art to explain medical concepts, 2) tie medical concepts to visual art, 3) hone observational skills, and 4) expose healthcare providers to art. Methods: Each piece of art for the Spot the Diagnosis! Series is selected based upon the author’s art history knowledge, resources found using an online search, and/or suggestions made by other healthcare professionals. The accompanying blog post is researched and written by a medical student in a question-and-answer style and peer-reviewed by another medical student and physician. Posts are uploaded monthly to CanadiEM.org and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Promotion occurs on site, via email, word-of-mouth, and social media. Viewership is tracked using Google Analytics (GA). A survey for readers is planned to assess who, how, and why readers use the series, but results were not available prior to abstract submission. Results: Six Spot the Diagnosis! posts have been published, each of which begins with the selection of a piece of fine arts that showcases a potential medical diagnosis and a blog post outlining an interpretation of the work informed by observations, historical reports, and medical evidence. Each was published as a blog post on a Saturday and added to a page containing a list of all posts in the broader Arts PRN section on CanadiEM. All contained a single piece of art as the focus, 6 ± 2 (median ± IQR) questions, 638 ± 250 words, and 6 ± 3 references. The answers to questions are hidden under drop-down formatting to allow viewers to arrive at their own answers first. In the first 30 days of publication, each post in the series was viewed 1582 ± 401 times. Conclusion: The Spot the Diagnosis! series is an online educational resource published on CanadiEM.org that aims to improve learners medical knowledge and observational skills by featuring fine arts pieces with relevant question-and-answer style posts. This series fills the gap between art and medicine and has been well received by CanadiEM viewers. We look forward to analyzing responses in our survey to further understand how, why, and who uses this new and innovative resource.

ORGANIZATION OF INDEPENDENT STUDENT WORK BASED ON STUDENT BLOGGING ACTIVITY

Introduction. Today, the students’ personality traits and increasing their motivation to self-development are the most complex and urgent problems in foreign language training at higher technical university and in the system of higher education in general. According to the authors, the technology of student blogging is a means for addressing these issues, despite the lack of research on its methodology. In that regard, there is a need for further studies on information and communication technologies (ICT) application by promoting independent student work. The aim of this paper is to present the developed model of organization of bachelors’ independent work through educational blogging; to fulfill educational potential and to prove the efficiency of ICTs application in education taking into consideration professional foreign language competence development of future specialists in tool making. Methodology and research methods. When designing the model, the basic considerations of the following methodological approaches were considered: competency-based, personal-oriented, activity-based, thesaurus, and qualimetric; the listed above approaches enable to realize the principles of individualization, professional orientation, integrity, self-organization and interactivity in the performed work. The method of group expert assessment, as the leading one in pedagogical qualimetry, was chosen as the main method in the research undertaken. The methods of modeling and pedagogical experiment were involved. Results and scientific novelty. The structure of professional foreign language competence (including communicative, cognitive and subject components) of future toolmaking bachelors is identified. The development of the competence formation model among students is described in detail: having studied independently the subject topic, the students post the material. Pedagogical conditions and didactic guidelines for the model realization are formulated. The developed model, unlike many other models based on using ICT in foreign language teaching, takes into account the necessity of professional orientation of students’ foreign language self-learning. The model involves the use of thesaurus approach to enrich the learner’s vocabulary; and qualimetric approach to identify the level of their professional foreign language competence development. The developed model and the technology of student blogging were successfully tested as a part of pedagogical experiment at M. T. Kalashnikov Izhevsk State Technical University in the 2016−2017 academic year. Practical significance. The materials of the present investigation can be useful for teachers to organize independent student work. The technology of student blogging can be generalized and adapted to a wider range of higher education training programs.

An Exploratory Study of Incorporating Blogfolios Into a College Writing Course

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of the customized blog and eportfolio (“blogfolio”) platform, a hybrid tool for teaching advanced undergraduate writing courses at a large research universities in the southwestern U.S. By combining a blogfolio platform and academic writing, this article promotes the development of students' academic community identity and generates a better sense of identity and commitment among them towards their future career in their professional disciplines. The authors reviewed and synthesized articles and theories relevant to educational blogging and digital portfolios. In addition, the authors examined the impacts of the blogfolio on student learning and professional development based on data collected from surveys, blog entries, and server activity logs.

Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM) Blog and Podcast Watch: Infectious Disease Emergencies.

To address the needs for curation of online educational content as well as the development of a nationally available curriculum that meets individualized interactive instruction, the Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM) Approved Instructional Resources (AIR) Series and AIR-Pro Series were created in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Using an expert-based, crowd-sourced approach, these two programs identify trustworthy, high-quality, educational blog, and podcast content.Here, we summarize the accredited posts that met our a priori determined quality criteria and evaluated by eight attending physicians.

The Massive Online Needs Assessment (MONA) to inform the development of an emergency haematology educational blog series.

BackgroundOnline educational resources are criticized as being teacher-centred, failing to address learner’s needs. Needs assessments are an important precursor to inform curriculum development, but these are often overlooked or skipped by developers of online educational resources due to cumbersome measurement tools. Novel methods are required to identify perceived and unperceived learning needs to allow targeted development of learner-centred curricula.ObjectivesTo evaluate the feasibility of performing a novel technique dubbed the Massive Online Needs Assessment (MONA) for the purpose of emergency haematology online educational curricular planning, within an online learning community (affiliated with the Free Open Access Medical education movement).MethodsAn online survey was launched on CanadiEM.org using an embedded Google Forms survey. Participants were recruited using the study website and a social media campaign (utilizing Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, and a poster) targeting a specific online community. Web analytics were used to monitor participation rates in addition to survey responses.ResultsThe survey was open from 20 September to 10 December 2016 and received 198 complete responses representing 6 medical specialties from 21 countries. Most survey respondents identified themselves as staff physicians (n = 109) and medical trainees (n = 75). We identified 17 high-priority perceived needs, 17 prompted needs, and 10 topics with unperceived needs through our MONA process.ConclusionsA MONA is a feasible, novel method for collecting data on perceived, prompted, and unperceived learning needs to inform an online emergency haematology educational blog. This methodology could be useful to the developers of other online education resources.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s40037-018-0406-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Інтернет-ресурс навчального закладу як освітнє медіакомунікаційне середовище

This article actualizes the issues of using the internet resource of an educational institution as one of the basic elements for creating an effective educational media communication environment. It is emphasized that currently the attention of the scientists to this problem is mainly focused on factors influencing on its success. At the same time, it is necessary to develop the idea of instrumental support of the processes of formation and use of the corporate internet resource in the activity of a modern educational institution, which allows to make these processes be more productive. For this purpose, in the article preconditions are considered and ways of solving the problem of using the internet resource of a modern educational institution as an educational media communication environment are formulated. The expedient for activating direction of development of the internet resource of an educational institution as a complex (multimedia) didactic resource and educational media environment is underlined: placement of didactic, reference materials and open access to them; creation of an electronic library; distance learning using all the possibilities of the resource (both full-time and in support of basic, offline learning); educational blogs; web quests; implementation of a differentiated approach to the teaching of the special needs students with physical disabilities and specific opportunities for material learning and communication. It is also determined that the internet resource of an educational institution can be an effective tool for solving communication problems between students, teachers and administration of educational institutions as well as for providing information needs of these groups. The ways of using the internet resource of a modern educational institution as an educational media communication environment are considered and outlined.

Student Evaluations, Neoliberal Managerialism, and Networks of Mistrust

Though student evaluations and their flaws have been much commented on lately—in addition to recent coverage in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, and NPR’s education blog, major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post have also devoted coverage to this issue—there has been little attention paid to student evaluations’ place and function in the larger ideological framework of contemporary higher education. That is, the flaws of student evaluations are not isolated from the larger issues threatening higher education today, but rather are symptoms of the way neoliberal policies have reshaped the university and the roles of teachers and students within it over the past three decades.

The effects of group blogging on the attitude towards virtual education in nursing students.

Background: Virtual education refers to a variety of teaching-learning methods that are implemented and supported electronically. The present study was conducted to determine the effects of group blogging on the attitude of nursing students towards virtual education. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest study in which all fifth-semester nursing students (n=25) were selected and asked to design educational blogs on nursing of respiratory diseases. Attitudes of the participants towards virtual education were measured before and after the intervention. Results: Pretest and posttest mean±SD were 2.98±1.03 and 3.46±0.68, respectively, showing a significant difference (p<0.05). There were significant differences before and after the intervention in the 2 subscales of importance of virtual education and interest in using virtual environment (p<0.05). On the other hand, there was no significant difference in the anxiety of using virtual environment before and after the intervention. Conclusion: In general, the results revealed that blogging by nursing students could improve students’ attitudes towards virtual education.

Social-media-enabled learning in emergency medicine: a case study of the growth, engagement and impact of a free open access medical education blog

BackgroundClinicians are increasingly using social media for professional development and education. In 2012, we developed the St.Emlyn’s blog, an open access resource dedicated to providing free education in the field...

ALiEM Blog and Podcast Watch: Toxicology.

IntroductionThe WestJEM Blog and Podcast Watch presents high-quality open-access educational blogs and podcasts in emergency medicine based on the ongoing Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM) Approved Instructional Resources (AIR) and AIR-Professional (Pro) series. Both series critically appraise open-access educational blogs and podcasts in EM using an objective scoring instrument. This installment of the blog and podcast watch series curated and scored relevant posts in the specific topic of toxicology emergencies from the AIR-Pro Series.MethodsThe AIR-Pro Series is a continuously building curriculum covering a new subject area every two months. For each area, eight EM chief residents identify 3–5 advanced clinical questions. Using FOAMsearch.net and FOAMSearcher to search blogs and podcasts, relevant posts are scored by eight reviewers from the AIR-Pro editorial board, which is comprised of EM faculty and chief residents at various institutions across North America. The scoring instrument contains five measurement outcomes based on seven-point Likert scales: recency, accuracy, educational utility, evidence based, and references. The AIR-Pro label is awarded to posts with a score of ≥28 (out of 35) points. An “honorable mention” label is awarded if board members collectively felt that the blogs were valuable and the scores were > 25.ResultsA total of 31 blog posts and podcasts were included. Key educational pearls from the six high-quality AIR-Pro posts and four honorable mentions are summarized.ConclusionThe WestJEM ALiEM Blog and Podcast Watch series is based on the AIR and AIR-Pro Series, which attempts to identify high-quality educational content on open-access blogs and podcasts. This series provides an expert-based, crowdsourced approach towards critically appraising educational social media content for EM clinicians. This installment focuses on toxicology emergencies.

ALiEM Blog and Podcast Watch: Procedures in Emergency Medicine.

IntroductionThe WestJEM Blog and Podcast Watch presents high-quality, open-access educational blogs and podcasts in emergency medicine (EM) based on the ongoing Academic Life in EM (ALiEM) Approved Instructional Resources (AIR) and AIR-Professional series. Both series critically appraise resources using an objective scoring rubric. This installment of the Blog and Podcast Watch highlights the topic of procedure emergencies from the AIR Series.MethodsThe AIR Series is a continuously building curriculum that follows the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors’ (CORD) annual testing schedule. For each module, relevant content is collected from the top 50 Social Media Index sites published within the previous 12 months, and scored by eight AIR board members using five equally weighted measurement outcomes: Best Evidence in Emergency Medicine (BEEM) score, accuracy, educational utility, evidence based, and references. Resources scoring ≥30 out of 35 available points receive an AIR label. Resources scoring 27–29 receive an “honorable mention” label if the executive board agrees that the post is accurate and educationally valuable.ResultsA total of 85 blog posts and podcasts were evaluated in June 2016. This report summarizes key educational pearls from the three AIR posts and the 10 Honorable Mentions.ConclusionThe WestJEM Blog and Podcast Watch series is based on the AIR and AIR-Pro series, which attempts to identify high-quality educational content on open-access blogs and podcasts. This series provides an expert-based, post-publication curation of educational social media content for EM clinicians, with this installment focusing on procedure emergencies within the AIR series.

The Double Life of Law Schools

The Double Life of Law Schools

Open Access Research Via Collaborative Educational Blogging: A Case Study from Library &amp; Information Science

This article charts the development of activities for online graduate students in library and information science. Project goals include helping students develop competencies in understanding open access publishing, synthesizing research in the field, and engaging in scholarly communication via collaborative educational blogging. Using a design experiment approach as a research strategy, focus is placed on the design of the collaborative blogging activity, open access research as a knowledge domain, and analyses of four iterations of the project. Findings from this iterative learning design suggest several benefits of implementing collaborative educational blogging activities in distance contexts.