Every student a researcher: supporting the use of blogging as a form of student assessment

Blogs are one of the most important new communication web tools in recent years and academics are increasingly urged to blog as part of their engagement and dissemination activities. With the University’s emphasis on ‘every student a researcher’, and with the desire to develop graduate attributes, it is timely to look at the potential of blogs for developing these skills amongst our undergraduate students. The project has two aims. First, it seeks to understand if and how blogging as a form of assessment can be used to support the development of research skills amongst students. Second, it looks at blogging from an institutional perspective with a view to developing resources that could be used across the University to support the greater use of blogging in the curriculum. The project will employ a multi-layered methodology and will involve an online survey of staff to provide descriptive data about the nature and extent of blogging at the University, interviews with course organisers using blogs, student focus groups, analysis of course evaluations, and interviews with other stakeholders. The project will run for 12 months and will be led by Nina Morris (Geosciences) and Hazel Christie (Institute for Academic Development).