Reflection on my Chosen Method of Assessment

(Tony Vincent, 2013)

With free reign over my chosen method of assessment, I decided upon a blog.

Blogs can be and have been used for different purposes; to aid communication, share ideas and also as a form of assessment. It has been suggested that the use of blogs in assessment increases understanding of content (Li, Bado, Smith, & Moore, 2013).

 Although using computers and various other forms of technology is essential to my every day work, I haven’t used this medium as a form of assessment so far in my education.

As technology has developed, the blog has become a popular tool, with more than 112 million people choosing to blog about a variety of subjects (Martos-Garcia et al., 2017). I have read blogs in my personal time about fashion and travel, but never used blogs as an educational tool or assessment.

Composition instructor Joel Bloch (cited in Harlan- Haughey, Cunnighman, Lees & Estrup, 2016) said “Blogs can be set up either by a teacher or a student, often at no cost, on a blogging service. Blogs can be set up for individual students, for a group of students, or for an entire class.... [It is] a simple and low cost way of giving students access to publishing and distributing their writing on the Internet”. 

There are a number of blogging platforms available on the internet. Two of the most popular are Blogger and WordPress, and both provide a balance between simplicity, style control, and aesthetic freedom for student bloggers (Harlan- Haughey et al., 2016). With this in mind I settled on Blogger as my platform. It was easy to set up and navigate following the online instructions provided and I did not have to pay to use it.

One of the things I have found challenging about my first venture into the world of blogging is in finding an appropriate level of formality of my blog. Cunningham et al., (2016) said the less official a blog feels, the better the posts and that possibly the blog is of another style completely; not as formal as an article or a research paper but also not as informal as texting or Twitter. However summative assessment is not something I would ordinarily describe as informal and finding a balance between formality and informality has not been easy.

 As well as this, it would seem perhaps blogging is generally better used for group assignments.  A benefit of blogging seems to be how it can be used for students to work together, even when not physically together, and provides a tool for communication (Martos-Garcia et al., 2017). Using a blog as an individual assessment I feel perhaps I have missed out on some of the benefits in terms of communication. However, I do think that blogging offers more opportunity for self-reflection than maybe an essay would.

Finally, on reflection, it has been somewhat difficult to know at what point to publish this blog online. A large part of the concept of blogging is to allow interaction and communication with others so it would seem appropriate to blog in small sections and upload these as they are written. On the other hand, sharing your summative work on the internet in any form, prior to its deadline doesn’t seem to be quite the right thing to do and this could open up opportunities for plagiarism. If work with the same title is available online as yet to be marked or enter through Turitin, difficulties could arise knowing from whom the work first appeared.

As technology and blogging becomes more common in education and assessment, I am sure it will find its place as a tool within these, possibly more as a formative tool, especially useful in group assessments?  However at this moment in time it seems a little difficult to know exactly where it fits.