New.Journalism.Review

Teaching Second Life to journalism students

We're introducing Second Life to L1 journalism students next week. I normally attempt to cultivate a cool, 'technological determinist' image. But in this case, I have had to work extra hard to explain the relevance of SL to our students.

The buzz surrounding SL was pretty high back in May 2008 when I was planning the teaching. Fast forward 10 months, and it seems about as academically sexy as receiving a £70 fine for spending five hours in an Aldi car park (thanks Parking Eye!) 

Statistics - it's Second Life versus Twitter versus Britney - let battle commence!

In terms of blog coverage, SL was once the talk of the town. Now that young upstart Twitter is the belle of the ball. Just to keep it 'scientific', Britney is acting as our 'base' for blog buzz.    

Keyword popularity across the Blogosphere

This chart illustrates how many times blog posts across the Blogosphere contained the following keywords.

"Second Life" vs. Britney vs. Twitter

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UK universities using Second Life

Like many UK universities, the place where I  work has received research funding to create a cool-looking virtual campus and to investigate teaching possibilities (particularly in distance learning).

Eduserv released a detailed report of  Second Life usage in higher education in Autumn 2008 which outlines some great examples of good practise.

As a journalism lecturer, I have to consider SL's relevance to unit outcomes.Fashion and interior design courses at the university are already using SL as a means to preview student projects and obtain tutor feedback.

SL in journalism teaching - any use?

SL offers the possibility to stage 'virtual news events'. We do a number of these mock exercises in "first life" already. But these can be expensive to run, take considerable planning and we would like to do more of them.

Students also study 'virtual communities' from a theoretical perspective. So SL gives students real experience of this, outside the normal Facebook arena which most students seem to use. 

CNN is also still asking its iReporters to submit citizen stories, many of which can be found on the CNN iReporters site here. Although other large media brands seem to be scaling back their efforts and I'm not sure whether the CNN experiment has been particularly successful. 

SL is very bandwidth-intensive and this has presented networking problems. Only a few IT rooms have the software installed (the other university PCs are just not up to the job). So the 'business case' for teaching SL is starting to look shaky already.

SL also needs to be made easier to use. Philip Rosedale said in a .Net Magazine interview (February 2007) said that it took around four hours to learn the basics, which could be described as quite a 'barrier to entry'. This need to change before it gets any sort of mainstream acceptance.

That said, I still think that virtual worlds are a key to the Web 3.0 model. And whilst it may not be SL that wins the race, we are fulfilling our duty in getting students' pointing their heads in the right direction.

Why do lecturers blog? And what do they talk about?

This is old news, but Zoe Corbyn wrote an excellent feature on academics who blog in the Times Higher - By the blog: academics tread carefully (October 2008).

Scroll down the article, stop about halfway and stuck between Zoe Brigley of Northampton University and David Petley of Durham, you can read about this blog!

Zoe's article outlines the key reasons why academics blog, which I have roughly summarised here (based on the main article and comments beneath it):

• Test area - float ideas or reflect when preparing papers and lectures etc.
• Obtain Feedback - from students, colleagues and others.
• Enhance reputation -People use blogs for a bit of personal online marketing, although that can also help their university or college.
• 'A day in the life' / diary - explain what it is like to  work as a scientist in a lab - if that's what you do.
• Accessibility - open up a subject / specialism. Some departments do this in a formal way to engage with A Level students and hopefully recruit.
  
• Personal reminder  - to record key events in the blogger's day or life.
• Feeds directly into teaching - many universities encourage students to blog /reflect online.

This list could  apply to just about anyone who has ever blogged, if you just remove the educational stuff. But there is an interesting debate about how much you reveal in the public space, particularly when it comes to scientific research. Research in the arts tends not to be so lucrative or competitive  - so nobody seems to give a toss if academics in the arts give away all the great 'secrets' for free (not that there are many!).

The article also states that there isn't really a community of 'academic bloggers' , as people seem to stick to their own subject fields. Most academics read blogs written by those in industry, as well as those in their field of education.

My ever-increasingly-long list of articles that I have starred in my Google Reader using my phone reflects this. It tells me I read a wide mix of journalism academics such as Paul Bradshaw and  Andy Dickinson.net in the UK (these have both set the standard in academic blogging and really should have made it into the THE feature), those written by full-time hacks like Martin Stabe, Charles Arthur and Neil McIntosh and those about IT and gadgets in general. These blogs (and, of course, many others) remind me of interesting developments that I really MUST discuss with the students.

Reflective practice for journalists

The idea...a brief summary

I've just completed the PGCLT HE course. It took ages, but I got there in the end. A key part of the course develops skills in 'reflective practice'. A short definition can be found on Wikipedia or a detailed version can be found at infed. The general idea is that reflection on past experience leads to improvements in action and professional development.

Work by Schön has given reflective practice currency. A few professions have adopted it as a way for staff to demonstrate continuing professional development (CPD), particularly in the legal profession and in the health service.

Reflection could be used in the training of journalists

Reflection could be widely used in the training of journalists and other media professionals.

Attempting to get hard-bitten hacks to take time out to reflect may be a futile exercise. It certainly won't be easy. The pressure on deadlines and constraints on budgets often mean that journalists are working flat out.

It would require a massive cultural shift. The world of journalism is very transient. Once a magazine has gone to bed or a newspaper story has been filed you move on to the next deadline. You don't sit around discussing it all day, unless a reader, PR or interviewee makes a complaint.

Those working at the coalface don't have time to reflect...

Critics of reflection, of which there are many, see it as just 'navel gazing'. And when reflection is done badly it can certainly be viewed as self-indulgent rubbish. It is also seen by some as being an activity which is best suited for those working in the 'soft' professions - public sector areas like higher education, social work and the health service.

But I believe that all new journalists should blog. This may not sound like a particularly new idea - a lot of publishers force their journalists to write blog content for narrow-minded commercial reasons.

Blogging as a form of reflection

What I advocate is something different. New journalists should have private blogs and use them to record reflective thoughts. It could also be used as a way of proving CPD. OK, so CPD is not a word you tend to hear in newsrooms. Career development? Does it exist in journalism? This is a problem that needs to be addressed as well.

Few journalists take time to consider their roles and the purpose of journalism. When writing news stories journalists should reflect on the research sources they choose to consult and the people they choose to interview (or omit). New journalists often source their stories from a relatively small pool of contacts and are heavily reliant on PR contacts - this needs to be challenged. The traditional 'top down' approach for sourcing stories also needs to be challenged. Some claim to instinctively 'know' what to serve up to the reader. When challenged, you find that this 'logic' is based on out of date information (a 'focus group' carried out 20 years ago) or reader stereotypes.

Paul Bradshaw asks his students to blog at UCE Birmingham. He highlights how they can be used to provide 'journalistic transparency'.

Many of the blogs, such as Muddle Through Together (or how a music journalist gets to grips with writing for the Net), showcase some fantastic reflective writing.

The key question is how much do you reveal online? This is where things get interesting. By its nature, reflective writing is very personal. What do you reveal online? What do you self-censor?  Journalists need to work in an environment where they don't get crucified for making mistakes.

Can it work?

It would take a massive shift in culture. I'm not expecting editors to start asking their staff to reflect anytime soon. Let's face it, there are always far more pressing deadlines.  It's even harder to talk about CPD when journalists are fearing for their jobs.

But hopefully we can move away from the idea that these are just 'trendy teaching methods', advocated by academics with far too much time on their hands.

Moodle usage in the UK

Solent Uni is switching to the Moodle VLE. It's hoped that the system will be ready for the students by September 2007. I'm looking forward to developing some good interactive learning material over the summer. I'm also looking forward to playing around with the blog and wiki stuff.  All journalism students need to blog and should be able to write and edit wiki content. 

Moodle is the brainchild of Martin Dougiamas (Curtin University, Perth, Australia). Apparently, it was born out of frustration with WebCT (a commerical VLE which is still used by City University, London and many others). He was irritated that WebCT didn't allow him to access source code and it was pretty expensive to implement.

Moodle is rapidly growing in popularity. A few articles and data...

• The Open University has decided to adopt Moodle and that has to be a good sign. After all, it knows a thing or two about e-learning. Its set to upload 900 hours of e-learning material for its 180,000 students. As this article on ZDnet mentions (Moodle tackles E-Learning muddle),  the OU selected Moodle based on functionality (not cost). Other unis to adopt Moodle include: Bath Uni, Royal Holloway, Glasgow Uni, UCE Birmingham and UCL.   

• There is no conclusive information about market share. The UK government-funded OSS Watch Survey reported that Moodle was the VLE of choice for 56% of UK FE institutions. But other research suggests that whilst Moodle has more "installations", Blackboard/WebCT (combined) has more "users". See Epic (2006: The Year For Moodle) for more stats.

• According to research into web traffic (compiled December 05 - Jan 06 by Justin Tilton):  Blackboard was leader in terms of website hits. Moodle came in second -  beating VLEs such as WebCT,  Angel, ATutor, Desire2Learn and Sakai.  See bar chart (this is on Moodle: so go in as a guest)

For an interesting comparison of VLE software, see the excellent blog by Emma Duke-Williams (Uni of Portsmouth) -  Blogging IT and Education

Learnwise - RIP VLE!

It seems that Bournemouth Uni is adopting Blackboard as its VLE. It is probably about time that we did the same and ditched the dodo (i.e. Learnwise).

I've not tried Moodle - but it's Open Source and we like the sound of that! Feel free to donate at the site or you can help the cause of open source and buy a Moodle T-Shirt! Moodle aims to embrace pedagogy i.e. the art (or science?) of teaching. A lot of VLE's (and, yes, this particularly applies to Learnwise) were designed by geeks in the labs of computer science departments. Geeks understand the interfaces that they create, the only problem is that nobody else does.

The creator of Moodle, Martin Dougiamus, is a geek as well (he works or worked in IT at Curtin Uni , Western Australia). But unlike the creators of Learnwise he knows quite a lot about designing usable interfaces and 'student-centred learning'.  See an example of Moodle in use at UCE Birmingham.

There are a couple of other open source systems rattling around - most notably Boddington - you have to love the name! (from Leeds University) and Sakai (from somewhere in the US).

Blackboard is commercial, but apparently is quite easy to use and suits those soon-to-become-very important distance learners. But it is not all good news for Blackboard, the shock news is that the OU (Open University) has recently ditched Blackboard for Moodle. Why? It seems that price was a factor.

What we really need is a clear leader. What unis don't want to be doing is training staff up, only for a better system to come along a year later. But nobody is using Learnwise these days. So it should be RIP to this VLE.  I, for one, will dance on its grave.