Excellence Gateway
This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) West Midlands on behalf of the Excellence Gateway
Sector relevance: Further education and Sixth Form colleges
Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, improving responsiveness to learners, blogging, blogs, curriculum development, 14-19, Health, Public Services and Care, curriculum good practice, planning and resources, assessment, employers
Solihull College introduced blogging for students to record their experiences whilst on overseas study visits. This has proved to be a popular alternative to traditional paper-based reports.
Solihull is a further education college that offers a wide range of academic and vocational qualifications. Based at two campuses, the College also has a Construction Centre with plans in place for a £31 million redevelopment of the Blossomfield Road campus.
The College has won numerous nationally-recognised awards and has Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) status for Retail and Customer Service, as well as Health and Social Care. It also received an ‘Outstanding' grade during the last Ofsted inspection in October 2008.
Blogs were initially introduced on the HND Travel and Tourism Management course in 2005. As part of the programme, students take part in an overseas study visit - during recent years, these have progressed from European destinations to locations further afield such as Cuba.
Prior to the visit, students must record their expectations – what they think will happen and what they hope to experience. This was originally done using a range of methods including notebooks, the creation of a paper-based ‘mood board' featuring images, and an e-news gathering exercise using video cameras. These methods were quite time intensive and the course staff wanted to introduce an up-to date way of capturing and recording information.
During the study visits, students also had to capture evidence for their travel diaries and information on, for example, local visitor attractions in the form of photos and written reports. However, as the students had no means of recording their evidence instantly, they often omitted quality pieces of information. From the tutor's perspective, they wanted the students to experience industry standards – a lot of travel writing is done electronically and websites such as Trip Advisor present unbiased and realistic views of popular tourist destinations, hotels and visitor attractions.
Students were introduced to the idea of using a blog – a web-based diary to reflect and record their experiences. They were referred to Tony Wheler's Lonely Planet website as a relevant example for writing style, tone, and presentation.
Paul Butler, tutor for Travel and Tourism, looked at a number of blogging sites and opted for Blogger – an externally hosted site which was not restricted by the College's network. He was particularly impressed with the site's reliability.
The initial reaction from students was mixed. Some were wary of the new technology and saw it as an additional piece of work. Paul says:
“There is a bit of a misconception that all youngsters love using IT and are confident with it. Fortunately, all tutors involved with this particular course are quite ‘techie' - if the staff are on board and confident with IT and new technology, then it's easier to engage the students.”
Some students were also concerned about privacy issues. As Blogger can be accessed by anyone, they were reluctant to post their thoughts out to the world.
To help the students overcome some of their concerns, Paul put together a set of crib sheets covering how to set up a blog, appropriate use of language, writing style and tone (ie avoiding the use of a ‘dear diary' approach, which helped to alleviate the concerns about expressing personal thoughts and feelings). The crib sheets also included an example of the initial HND blog, which gave students ideas about the visual layout.
Once the students had overcome some of their concerns, they found using the blog to be a positive experience. They are more conscious of getting the end result right - their first submissions on their blogs have been more polished than paper-based documents, often viewing these as more of a draft. The blog has almost removed the ‘safety net' element of a closed paper document as it is open to anyone to read.
The students are also more selective of their content and take longer to choose appropriate images to accompany text. They have also been able to incorporate video footage – something which could not be done previously.
There have been some frustrations regarding timeout issues – Blogger times out after 20 minutes so the students have been encouraged to use a word processing tool to create their text and then pasted the content into their blog. Students have also had to be careful about posting sensitive information. As part of their visit, they reflect on their experiences with the tour operator they travelled with and have to find out financial data (ie how much money is made on all inclusive package holidays).
Since using the blogs in Travel and Tourism, the students' confidence in using this technology has increased. They have seen the introduction of blogs as a positive experience and as a result, this has had a significant impact on their grades. It also means less paperwork and the ability to record their experiences whilst on the study visit instead of having to wait until returning to the UK. For tutors, the blogs have resulted in another available assessment tool, and a means for better detection of plagiarism.
Blogging has also been adopted in other subject areas across the college such as Health and Social Care, although the tutor involved uses the blogging tool in the College's virtual learning environment (VLE). As this is only open to college staff and students, it is used for a more reflective journal approach.
The Travel and Tourism tutors really value the blogs and would like to develop their use further. They want to investigate the possibility of being able to send text messages direct to the blog. This would mean students being able to ‘blog on the move' and avoid having to find an Internet cafe which can be problematic, particularly in less developed countries. Currently, students still have to bring some of their information and evidence back to the UK before recording it on the blog.
Paul Butler, Travel and Tourism tutor, advises other providers who may be considering the use of blogs:
“Go with it, even if you are not confident with IT – it's a good way to develop alongside your learners. The blog is a tool used by the travel and tourism industry to facilitate overseas visits, but only use it if you think it's appropriate and not just for the sake of it. It's important that there's a real place for it.”
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Disclaimer: The Regional Support Centres (RSC) and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) support the development of educational e-learning. We may refer to specific products, processes or services. Such references are examples and are not endorsements or recommendations and should not be used for product endorsement purposes.
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