Honing future teachers’ evaluation skills through blogging

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V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University

Honing future teachers' evaluation skills through blogging

Tatyana Varenko, Associate Professor, PhD in Pedagogy

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Engaging students trained to be teachers in group blogging contributes to developing their evaluation skills as a professional ability to provide assessment and constructive criticism of others ' works with regard to and respect for others' thoughts, values and individual traits. Blogging implementation into the training of teachers-to-be simulates a real-life teacher-student interaction where the students are active participants in the process. As the blogging continues, the students involved also learn self-discipline, self-criticism, responsibility for their words, and prepare themselves for their future life and profession in the Internet-powered world.

Key words: evaluation skills; blogging; teacher-training; assessment

Варенко Т. К. Блогінг у формуванні у майбутніх вчителів навичок оцінювання. Залучення студентів, які вчаться на вчителів, до ведення блогу академічної групи сприяє розвитку в них навичок оцінювання як професійного вміння оцінювати та критикувати роботи інших з урахуванням та повагою до думок, цінностей та індивідуальних особливостей один одного. Інтеграція блогінгу до навчальної підготовки майбутніх вчителів моделює реальну взаємодію вчителя зі студентами за активної участі студентів у цьому процесі. У ході блогінгу студенти також навчаються самодисципліни, самокритики, відповідальності за свої слова та готуються до свого майбутнього життя, у тому числі професійного, у глобальному інформатизованому світі.

Ключові слова: навички оцінювання, блогінг, підготовка майбутніх вчителів, оцінювання.

Варенко Т. К. Блоггинг в формировании у будущих учителей навыков оценивания. Привлечение студентов - будущих учителей к ведению блога академической группы способствует развитию у них навыков оценивания как профессионального умения оценивать и критиковать работы других, учитывая и уважая мнения, ценности и индивидуальные особенности друг друга. Интеграция блоггинга в учебную подготовку будущих учителей моделирует реальное взаимодействие учителя со студентами при активном участии в этом процессе студентов. В ходе блоггинга студенты также учатся самодисциплине, самокритике, ответственности за свои слова и готовятся к своей будущей жизни, в том числе профессиональной, в глобальном информатизированном мире.

Ключевые слова: навыки оценивания, блоггинг, подготовка будущих учителей, оценивание.

Technological advances, computerized technologies and digitalized communication have confidently entered our homes and lives to stay. There is hardly any doubt about that. They are intended to make our lives better in every possible way. Therefore, each activity is trying to adapt to the changes to benefit from them while keeping up with the technological evolution.

Being enlighteners and the intelligentsia by vocation and by calling, educators all over the globe are actively searching for newer and more effective applications of what the information age has to offer. We already owe their efforts the introduction of augmented (also known as blended or hybrid) teaching «based on the assumption that educators can enrich current teaching styles by augmenting classes with aspects of Internet-based learning» [5, pp. 1-2]. Blended learning offers students «a variety of ways to demonstrate their knowledge while appealing to diverse learning styles and foresting independent learning and self-directed learning skills» [12, p. 23]. blogging teacher student

Flexible and easily adaptable to the needs of any field of knowledge, blended learning/teaching models enable teachers to «create instructional activities and assignments that give students the opportunity to work collaboratively, tapping their interest and abilities in social learning» [2, p. 4]. They can also nicely complement project -based and experimental learning «giving students the opportunity to conduct research online, participate in group work, and then develop multimedia projects that showcase their learning processes and outcomes» [ibid].

One of the findings in the meta analysis of online learning practices conducted by the U.S. Department of Education and published in September 2010 was that «the effectiveness of online learning approaches appears quite broad across different content and learner types» [7]. This means blended learning and teaching practices are equally successful and applicable in any field of science regardless of the major.

Blogging in educational practices

It is hard to imagine a modern educational institution without cutting edge technologies invading it to stay. Internet technologies and resources have been extensively expanding its hold on education due to the wide range of educational opportunities they offer to both teachers and learners.

A blog is one of the currently popular Internet tools used in contemporary international teaching practices.

A blog is «a Web site that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer» [8]. In other words it is «a website where a person writes regularly about recent events or topics that interest them, usually with photos and links to other websites that they find interesting» [11].

With distance, blended, and online education continuing to expand all over the world, more and more educational institutions and individual educators find blogs to be an effective platform for ensuring virtual learning. A number of universities, including the University of Iowa, Rice University, and Harvard University, have been using blogs in their educational practices «to build intellectual bridges that would facilitate the flow of information and ideas» since early 2000s [15, p. 237]. Williams' analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data collected from the BGSB MBA blog showed that the use of blogs was favourably welcomed by students as «an effective aid to teaching and learning» [15, p. 243]. In Oravec's opinion blogs are «catalysts in stimulating critical thinking and inspiring students to be lifelong learners», «facilitating the development of individuals' unique evaluative talents and creative expression» [10, p. 232]. The scholar also finds blogs to be effective in `countering plagiarism» by showing them «the benefits of building strong and trusting knowledge communities» [10, p. 230]. The favourable impact of blogging on cultivation of the sense of ownership and responsibility in students has been asserted by other scholars as well (Davison, Fellner and Apple, Godwin-Jones, Grosseck, Mynard and others).

Blogging can «initiate students into an understanding of learning as an ongoing, dynamic conversation with self and others» [9, p. 17].

The effectiveness of blogging in postsecondary education was proved by Richard S. Baskas [1], who named information exchange, communication, and development of language skills among the main educational benefits of blogging in higher education and adult learning.

Steve Wheeler and Wendy Lambert-Heggs [14] extend this list of blogging benefits by pointing out such blog affordances as reflexivity, immediacy, persistence, provisionality. Thus, using blogs as a teacher-mentored activity, students learn to combine their «knowledge of practice» with the «knowledge in practice», get more personalized, warm and positive responses. At the same time, blogs provide full records of each student's participation that can be used and/or regarded as a performance portfolio of each participant. And lastly, blog provisionality offers students an opportunity to draft and edit the content of their posts before making them public for as many times and to as much extent as they feel required, which is hardly possible in face-to-face communication with the teacher and/or peers in class.

Further review of literature on the benefits of blogging comes up with quite a vast scope of evidence to support them. Thus, the advocates of utilizing blogs as students' portfolios to show their progress over time are, among others, Daniel Alex and Castaneda Vise, Dilani Gedera, Catherine Mcloughlin and Mark Lee, Shiang Kwei Wang and Hui Y. Hsua, Juida Wan and Tan Bee Hoon, Galina Kavaliauskien, Gia Anh and Le Ho. To name a few, the supporters of the beneficial effect of the reflective activities involved in having students create and maintain a blog are H. S. Du and Wagner, Jo Mynard, Dilani Gedera, David Gardner; Tuncer Can; Priya Sharma; Juida Wan and Tan Bee Hoon, Galina Kavaliauskien, Yousef Namwar and Azam Rastgoo; Tom Franklin and Mark van Harmelen; Shih Hsien Yang, and Ru-Chu Shih.

The benefits of blogging as an online collaboration tool in teaching and learning have been in focus of many works and teaching practices, which is reflected in numerous articles and case studies of educators and scholars, particularly N. A. Baker and K. Ismail, K. Burden and S. Atkinson, S. Fiedler and T. Valjataga, R. Godwin-Jones, M. K. S. H. L. Muller, D. Russell-Bowie, J. Wang and Y. Fang, S.Wheeler, H. Wu and others.

In his doctoral thesis Alexandre S. Giacoppo [6], when dwelling on the benefits of blogging, points out that they «include enabling the types of negotiative discourse that is a critical component of knowledge building and developing students' metacognitive skills and awareness through self-reflection and critique, ... help a community of learning develop through discourse and online social interaction» [6, p. 52].

Citing Andrusyszyn and Davie, Ennis and Gambrell observe that utilizing a blog as a team journal contributes «to students' validation of self as well as the world through a cooperative shared venture» and increases their confidence in their writing ability, learning and writing [4, p. 114]. The latter is also confirmed in the findings of such scholars practicing blogging in their teaching as Y. Akbulut and M. Kiyici, T. Bee Hoon, J. Wang and Y. Fang, M. L. Wilbur, J. W. Leloup, B. Nuhfer-halten., K. A. Gordon, S. M. Gardner, L. F. Signori, J. B. Williams and J. Jacobs and others.

The literature reviewed on the current practice of students' blogging also proves that it is an excellent tool to promote and develop learners' autonomy The advocates thereof, among others, are T. Can, A. Chan, R. Davison, Gardner, D. Gedera, D. Little, C. Lowe, C. Mcloughlin and M. J. W. Lee, J. Mynard, Y.-C. Sun, J. Wang and Y. Fang, J. B. Williams and J. Jacobs.

Many researchers, such as Chris Wondra, Tom Franklin and Mark van Harmelen, Shih Hsien Yang, Gia Anh and Le Ho, David Betts and Stuart Glogoff, and Dilani Gedera, have claimed that blogging fits in greatly when ensuring the student-centered and individual approach to learning.

Blogging enables students «to delve further into topics discussed», «question and challenge each other's thinking», which results in a «more meaningful interaction» [13, p. 14]. Blogging ensures that their posts, even though within the topics often dictated by the curriculum or the project assigned by the teacher, are rather diverse in form, and subject matter reflecting a wide range of students' interests and fighting monotony and sameness [3, p. 31].

With all the benefits researchers and practicing teachers attribute to blogging used to develop students' various skills, hardly any attention has been devoted to the potential of this tool in honing the future teachers' evaluation skills as a professional quality, which is an important constituent of a teacher's professional competence in today's globalized world. Therefore, this paper will focus primarily on blogging as a means to develop this particular professional quality of a teacher. For these purposes, the evaluation skills are defined as the professional ability to assess the works of others, provide grounded criticism of the blunders and constructive and encouraging feedback on the achievements, grade the works using the pre-determined criteria, and to do all of the above based on respect to others' thoughts, values and individual personality traits.

This in mind, an experiment was held to see if and how blogging benefits the development of professional evaluation skills in undergraduates aspiring to become teachers upon graduation. Below is an overview of the experiment and the results obtained.

Setting and participants

The blogging practice was introduced at the School of Foreign Languages of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (Kharkiv, Ukraine) in four groups studying in BS programs in English Language and Literature to receive the qualification of teachers of English upon graduation. Each group had its own blog where all the students wrote about diverse topics with the ensuing peer review and comments to each other's posts. See the students' blogs at: yaa33isamazing.blogspot.com, yae33.blogspot.com, arakins13.blogspot.com, yaa42.blogspot.com.

Purpose

The blogs served two purposes: to improve students' language fluency, critical thinking and communication skills and, while so doing, to cultivate their skill of evaluation as part of their profession and qualification. The first purpose was achieved through the language choice being strictly limited to English as the language they are going to teach upon graduation. Here the students acted as learners producing texts. The second purpose was accomplished by involving students in providing feedback on each other's posts while seeking out mistakes or other blunders, and advising on how best to improve. This enabled students to perform in the skin of a teacher.

The syllabi, within which the experiment took place, differed slightly for the participating groups (one group was supposed to study certain grammar aspects; three groups were to develop their speaking skills within certain topics). However, the blogging activity employed within the framework of this experiment was similar and implemented with regard to honing the students' evaluation skills while studying different subjects.

Pre-blogging arrangements

At the beginning of the semester the participating groups were offered to engage in blogging as a new type of activity within their training (please note that blogging has never been practiced at the School of Foreign Languages of Karazin University as a learning activity before). Most students welcomed the proposal rather enthusiastically, while there were those who displayed a mixture of reluctance and eagerness, which was conditioned by their fear to fail the task at some point fighting with their desire to try something new. By way of voting, however, all the four groups agreed to participate.

After that the participants were asked either to create their group blog themselves and invite their teacher to join in as a contributing author or to be invited as authors to the blogs created for them by the teacher. Two groups chose the first option, while the other two, who turned out to have no idea of how to do such a thing, opted for option two. The students were free to name and design their blogs collaboratively to meet their tastes and aesthetic preferences, so that it would be pleasant for them to spend time on it afterwards.

The teacher explained to the students of each group that their newly created blog was a platform for them to express their thoughts on anything that mattered to them with the only limitation being to stick within the topic provided for in the syllabus: the students studying or revising grammar were to employ certain grammar aspects in their writing; the ones who were supposed to develop their speaking skills were to address any problems within the topics under discussion.

The next step was collaborating with the students to establish certain rules of conduct on the blog, and outlining the criteria and guidelines for the activity, which resulted in separate pages for assignments (where all the assignments, tasks, important dates, and deadlines will be posted), guidelines (for general requirements, guidelines, rubrics, procedures for successfully accomplishing assignments), feedback (a page where students can share their impressions from a particular task or activity, suggest improvements to the existing activities and/or come up with new ideas and/or activities to implement).

Blogging per se

Actual blogging activity consisted of several phases: students creating posts expressing their views on and understanding of certain problems they found important, and peer-to-peer reviewing, which was the underlying grounds for developing the students' evaluation skills. Both phases were intended to teach the students tolerant attitude to the opinions of others while presenting their personal thoughts and commenting and/or criticizing those of others.

The phase of creating posts taught the students to convey the message bearing in mind possible divergences of opinions of the readers so that the idea expressed would not insult or disrespect those having opposite or varying views on the matter in question.

The phase of peer-reviewing contributed to the development of their evaluation skills through assessment of other students' works, feedback on the mistakes and response to the ideas voiced.

To facilitate the peer-reviewing, at least at the initial stage, to help the students who do not know what to include in their reviews, and to steer them in the direction of positive and tolerant attitude, they were provided with a list of the guiding questions, answering which enabled them to compose a coherent full-blooded review. Below is the list of such questions used for the purposes of this experiment:

• Summarize the main idea of the post in a sentence or two. If you cannot do that, say what could have been done to clarify the argument.

• Would you call the introduction effective? If so, please say what in your opinion makes it effective. If not, suggest how it could be improved.

• What evidence is provided to illustrate, support, and develop the key arguments/claims? Is it effectively integrated, analysed, and cited, if applicable? If not, say what could have been done to improve this.

• Would you call the conclusion effective? If so, please say what in your opinion makes it effective. If not, suggest how it could be improved.

• Are there any faults in terms of spelling, grammar, sentence structure, word choice, etc. that hamper your understanding of the author's message? Have the active vocabulary and grammar been used appropriately? Give examples and explain what the author should focus on to improve his or her writing.

• What is it that you liked best about this post?

• What questions has this post brought up for you? What questions would you like the author to answer?

• What have you learned about your own writing from reviewing this post?

• What is your overall impression from this post? How would you evaluate it?

The students were encouraged to address any other aspects beyond this list in their reviews, engage in discussions with each other, come up with solutions to the problems tackled in the posts, etc.

Thus, this phase of peer-to-peer reviewing taught the students to agree and disagree with others politely, constructively, and in a non-offensive unbiased way, in other words, to establish dialogical relations with each other as participants of the educational process based on respect to each other's thoughts, values and other personality traits.

As the experiment progressed, the students learnt to be constructive and well-meaning in their criticism, and more emphatic in their praise. Expressions of encouragements such as I'd like to thank N. for an interesting topic, Well done, N.! Great/good/excellent job! and the like soon became a good practice in almost all reviews. The students quickly acquired the habit of discovering and pointing out the strong sides of every post they read and commented on. The mistakes and blunders were addressed towards the end of the review in a delicate manner, often sounding as recommendations: it would simplify understanding, I think here it would sound better, I think N. should, etc.

Special mention should be made of the range of problems the students raised in their posts, particularly when addressing the topic of education. They dwelled on the teacher's skills, competences, qualification, autonomy; the importance of establishing a favourable atmosphere in class and teacher-student relations; ways to increase students' motivation; the role and place of distance education and life-long learning, school uniform and meals. They elaborated on behavioural patterns of a «perfect» vs. «bad» teacher; looked into the necessity to nurture children's imagination and creativity, to develop and respect their personality. Many agreed that one of the important qualities of a teacher that has to come along with his or her professional competence was the ability to inspire students to learn and to fulfil their potential, to foster universal values such as kindness, sincerity, morality, etc. Another important problem discussed was that of being bullied by peers and teachers at school and the dangerous consequences thereof. They also touched upon the need to teach students the skills that are of value in real life rather than merely impart the theoretical knowledge on the subject. Some posts raised the issue of plagiarism in studies contemplating on the harmful effect it has on the students' thinking ability.

As you can see, the range of problems tackled is rather multifaceted and wide. It also means that the students already begin to picture themselves as teachers and try on various models of conduct through the ideas expressed in their posts in an attempt to see how their peers would respond to them. When they found support and encouragements in reviews and comments they became more reassured that their understanding was right. Moreover, since the problems for discussion were raised by the students themselves rather than imposed on them by the teacher, they got more confident in the truth behind their solutions and course chosen for future professional paths.

Over the course of the experiment their writing manner changed from probing and hesitant to confident and grounded. They learnt not to fear expressing their thoughts openly and discussing what they thought was important. They also began to adhere less and less to the suggested questions-guidelines in their reviews and comments in favour of rather casual and friendly communication with each other. At the same time they always managed to point out the mistakes, provide meaningful feedback and evaluation.

Students' impressions

At some point of the experiment, about half a year into it, the students were asked to write what they thought about blogging as a learning/teaching tool and share their impressions from the experience. Most found the new activity useful and interesting pointing out a number of advantages and disadvantages.

The main advantages the students singled out were most fully summarized in Yuliia N.'s post (http://yae33.blogspot.com/2015/02/semiannual-blogging-report.html) that combines the opinions of many other students on the matter:

«Using a blog makes learning independent of time and place. DON'T EVEN ARGUE WITH ME. IT DOES. 100%. And this is the main benefit for me personally.

It gives us a genuine (optional - worldwide) audience for the blog. Finally we're writing for REAL readers (not just for the teacher). As a result, we focus on lucid communication.

DOG BLOGGING. We get immediate feedback.

It fosters the development of writing and research skills as well as DIGITAL skills. It means we get basic facility that we need to be literate citizens in our high tech century.

Blogging gives me ownership over my own learning. While creating a post, I google dozens of pages searching for data or looking for an ideal word combination in order to express my mind. Therefore, I learn new vocabulary and get new information.

Blogging endorses creativity, inventiveness, artistry and all the other words somehow connected to inner talent. Have you ever attached a video clip (pictures, bolded\coloured font) to your paper sheet in class?.

No more lies: `I forgot my bag/copybook/head/whatever at home. May I bring it tomorrow/next week/next century? `If you have done your homework - the teacher would have it online. The only answer which still works: `electricity blackouts '. It makes us more responsible and less forged.

I've already boasted about our blogging experience. Tell me, why my friends are so envious?»

Several students also mentioned the usefulness of blog in developing teacher's qualities: «Here you can be like a teacher evaluating others,» said Olya B. «We learn to express our thoughts, to find the right words, to be critical to ourselves and others,» pointed out Maria Sh. «It was interesting to comment other works and to have the possibility to read comments on my work. Criticism neither was of small importance in the blogging because own creation for each of us was the best and we were so keen on own work that couldn't notice own mistakes. In particular, to have a blog is very useful for those people, who like to write verses, because then people can make a comment and the author can make some conclusions as for his/her creative work,» elaborated Dasha V. on the benefits of peer-reviewing. Svetlana Sh. Found «learning by evaluating the groupmates' works» to be an advantage too. For Kristina L. «it's very important to be criticized by my group mates, because it's only a way to develop ourselves». Iryna B. admitted, «I improved my skills in assessment.» Anna G. liked the idea with peer-reviewing, «I'm always interested in opinion of my friends and I want to know what they think about my posts. And of course I want to see their marks too.»

As for disadvantages, there were only three mentioned. The most frequently named were dependence on Internet connection and the time-consuming nature of the activity. And it was a challenge for several students to evaluate others objectively. This indicates that before blogging was introduced into their training the students had not been taught one of the essential constituents of their future profession - the ability to assess the students' performance in an unbiased way.

Conclusion

The experiment described above vividly illustrates the multifaceted advantages of blogging in developing linguistic, cognitive and professional competence of future teachers.

Despite some difficulties (dependence on access to Internet, time-consuming character of the activity), blogging proved an effective tool in developing students' evaluation and self-evaluation skills through peer-reviewing that enables them to become more confident in assessing the works of others, to learn to be objective and constructive in giving feedback, to hone the ability to discover the potential and find good sides in each work, to boost their own pedagogical competence and creativity, to establish dialogical relations with all the participants of the pedagogical process based on respect to their thoughts, values and other personality traits.

Blogging indeed has the potential for teacher-supervised simulation of a real-life teacher-student interaction that enables future teachers to immerse themselves into an environment where they can take on the teacher's role, practice being teachers themselves, and in so doing master the profession from within.

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