Read, Write, Blog, Reflect (Case Study)
Read, Write, Blog, Reflect
3-minute read
By Professor Liz Clever & Dr Roy Hanney
Key contact
Roy Hanney is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Business, Law and Digital Technology and is Course Leader for BA (Hons) Media Production. Roy has extensive experience of leading academic teams and has published on the use of live projects to bridge the divide between higher education and the world of work. More recently, Roy has turned towards creative talent development and community engagement as an important strand of his work. Alongside this, he continues to grow as a creative practice researcher, focusing on the development of community driven, participatory, immersive, audio-visual arts projects.
Overview
In this case study, Roy Hanney outlines an approach developed and implemented in the Media Production degree, designed to improve students’ academic reading and writing skills. The approach resulted from challenges which will resonate with a number of colleagues across Solent: that students were not reading during their modules, they would leave it to the last minute, so their critical reflections would be peppered with poor quality sources drawn from a quick google search the night before assessments were due. This meant that not only was their academic writing lacking in critical depth, their reading wasn’t informing their practice, and there was no opportunity to provide formative feedback in advance of submission. To address this the Read, Write, Blog, Reflect approach was born. Following an Action Research methodology, the approach was developed over an extended time period in response to a series of emergent questions; first through the introduction of critical reflection, later with the addition of course blogs, subsequently adding active reading followed by the inclusion of free writing strategies. The aim of the model is to encourage early engagement with high quality academic sources that would inform practice and offer opportunities for formative feedback on academic writing for assessment.
Understanding students in context
Our students tell us they choose to study Media Production due to its practical industry focus and hands-on learning environment. However, for some this can be combined with a perception that the course will be less theoretical or text-based than other less practical subjects. But as with any higher education course, we necessarily combine these more practical elements of study with academic knowledge and evidence-based insight. To do this, students are required to build and use the skills of reading, academic writing, critical analysis and thinking, reflective practice and research as they journey through the course, to develop the range of skills that employers expect from a Media Production graduate.
However, learning and practising these skills is not always an easy transition for students. Supporting them to take their first steps into what, for many, is a new and even alien genre of communication can take time and careful planning. Earlier course experiences have shown that following conventional practices of providing a reading list and saying ‘off you go’, can leave students unsure of what to do, unmotivated to read, and unprepared for the evidence-based conversations around which critical reflection on practice as a mode of assessment is designed and planned.
Read, Write, Blog, Reflect
Following feedback from our course external examiner, the Media Production team have developed a Read, Write, Blog, Reflect approach to encourage and support students to build these important academic skills. The model structures student engagement with critical texts, through an iterative series of activities that get them reading, writing, blogging and finally reflecting.
Read – Our approach, using a platform called Talis Elevate, supports students to develop their skills in academic reading and writing that evidence deeper critical thinking and engagement with contextual enquiry and to integrate theory with the more practical aspects of the course. Talis Elevate offers opportunities for students to collaborate when reading text or watching video and helps students to learn together and from one another as they begin to engage with academic literature. Reading becomes more visible and as tutors, we were able to see how their reading and research informed their practice and engage with them as they prepared for practical and written assessment.
Write – For anyone who has experience of writing as an academic or creative practitioner there will be a familiarity with the notion of writing as a process. The movement from reading to rough annotations or notes, to drafts and subsequent rewriting, is a process of shaping and editing that mirrors the development of critical thinking skills. This process starts with messy writing which not only refocuses attention on reading it is in itself a form of ‘thinking through’. It encourages writing without judgement, active engagement with the material, gives opportunity for students to find their voice and promotes inner dialogue. Importantly it promotes the habit of writing as a means of questioning and ‘thinking through’.
Blog – Whereas messy writing is by its nature private writing, blogging is public, it is facing out into the world. For the students their course blogs are an opportunity to rehearse their critical reflection, draft ideas, get feedback, a more developed form of note taking akin to a more developed annotated bibliography. Importantly this is undertaken with an audience in mind and as such it also serves to develop valuable professional media writing skills. It also serves as an introduction to content management systems, another key employability skill. It is though, the public facing, dialogic nature of blogging which has the most potential benefit since it signals the students taking a step into the public sphere. It is a kind of ‘purposeful action’ (cf Arendt 1998) that offers the potential for a transformative pedagogy.
Reflect – The value of critical reflection as a form of assessment is well established in the literature especially in relation to reflection on practice. It is an extremely common tool for assessment of practice-based education and was the starting point for the development of the model which proceeded iteratively from problem to solution through a number of Action Research cycles. The model values blog writing as a stage in a writing process that eventually leads to the completion of a final critical reflection, ready for submission and assessment. Though critical reflection is embedded within each element of the read/write/blog cycle, it is the final critical reflection where meta cognition occurs and there is a deeper form of synthesis evidenced.
Summary – Through a series of iterative read/write/blog activities the model leads through all the different elements of critical thinking; evaluation, analysis, and synthesis to arrive at a final destination. Students are encouraged to literally cut and paste their blogs posts into a new document. Following a MUST/SHOULD/COULD model (itself derived from data collected from students participating in a focus group evaluating our use of assessment briefs) they can then add an introduction and conclusion and submit this for assessment (MUST). Or they can edit the document and provide a narrative thread (SHOULD) using headings to shape the writing and present a cogent argument. Or they can include additional material drawn from their own reading, research and reflection that updates their original blog posts, to enhance and elaborate on the narrative (COULD). This values the contribution of the blog writing to the final assessment, since even though their blog posts are formative tasks, they are an integral component of the final critical reflection and impact directly upon summative assessment. It signposts to students what they need to do in order to get high grades but gives them the choice to do what they must do, should do, or could do. The model celebrates reading and writing in an academic context while offering an opportunity for deeper integration of theory into practice. It models writing as a process for students and scaffolds each stage of that process while enhancing the development of employability skills.
Results and next steps
Where students have engaged with this four-stage process we have been able to track improvements in grades. However, it is also clear to us that those who do not engage in the process are not showing equivalent improvements. Typically, around a third of a level cohort will fully engage with the model throughout a semester. While many will start out with good intentions but will falter after the first iteration of the read/write/blog cycle. High performing students who engage with the model are the students who benefit the most and there is unmistakable evidence of a deepening critical depth in their practical and written work. However, it is arguably those students who seem ‘stuck’. Who seem, despite their clear capability, unable to improve and progress over time, who would most benefit from following the model. Indeed, it was these very students who motivated the need for the development of the model in the first place.
Our next challenge is to engage a wider group of students in developing and using our evolving process. We hope to do this by entering a second action research cycle – refining the model, gathering further evidence and making further changes as necessary. Ideally, we hope to involve our students in this next step to get their feedback and input as we enhance and develop our approach.
Importantly, to take this to the next level we will also require full course team awareness and use of the model. To make this happen raising team awareness of the functionality and affordances of the tools and approaches we use is an important next step. We plan to run staff-development sessions and would welcome anyone who is interested in finding more out about our approach to come along.
#Teaching Practice
For an edited blog post version of this article on the Solent University Learning and teaching website go HERE