More views on Blogs - Academic Moderators

Based on our pilot project and feedback from 8 Academic Moderators.....the following results emerged from our blogging project.

The academic moderators felt that the blog was an improvement over the final clinical written examination held at the end of the academic year. Students were more engaged in discussions about their clinical practice and provided insights into some of the challenges students face during fieldwork. They felt however, that blogging should be introduced earlier into the curriculum. This would enable students to develop their reflective writing and practice skills so that when they entered fourth year they were well prepared as it was clear some students were more competent at reflection than others.

Moderators also found they had to refrain from taking too ‘active’ a role as this would have shifted dependence on to the moderator and reduced the benefits of co-constructive knowledge development amongst peers. This observation was also made by students who felt that moderators sometimes came in too early with their concluding comments which stifled dialogue amongst the peers. In light of this, moderators felt that guidelines would have been useful to help them understand their role more deeply. For example guidelines encouraging learners to frame their discussions using experiential learning frameworks (eg describe experience, discuss reflections, summarise conclusions and then consider re-application); and encouraging students to self-disclose, be vulnerable, and share issues. Moderators also found that they had to challenge some bloggers to make contributions and to get them to think more laterally. Hence, the moderator took on a ‘coaching’ or ‘facilitator’ role versus that of expert, and needed to provide positive reinforcement for high quality entries.