Breakout Session 5: Science blogs and online forums as teaching tools
Martin Fenner
Thursday, 24 July 2008 21:27 UTC
Martin Fenner, Oliver Obst and Jeff Marlow
We will discuss the role that science blogs and online forums are having in teaching science today. In a panel discussion we will look at practical examples and examine their potential as well as their shortcomings. To foster the use of these online tools in teaching, we hope to come up with a list of suggestions for both educators and software developers at the end of the session.
I would like to use this forum topic to prepare for the session at the conference. We will have only 45 minutes, so it would be great if we could get an interesting discussion going before the meeting.
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I found another good reason for (U.S.) students to write a blog. College Scholarships.org is awarding a scholarship of $10.000 for the best student blog each year.
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Hi all,
I can offer a case study in using a blog as an educational tool for science. We’ve just started Programming for Scientists
As the name suggests, this is a blog about programming for the particular case of people who are programming in order to do science.
It arose from a workshop I’ve been teaching for a few years, aimed at giving students (both grad and undergrad) a firm grounding in programming beyond just writing lines of code (think of the difference between knowing how to nail pieces of wood together and knowing how to build a house).
It’s early days yet, but we’re already getting some good feedback and I’m pretty hopeful that this is a goodway to get this knowledge into the brains of lots of people.
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Rich, how do you use the blog for teaching? Does the blog contain additional material not covered in the class? And what made you choose the blog format and not a wiki?
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> Rich, how do you use the blog for teaching?
It’s primarily a way of getting the knowledge to a wider audience. However, it also makes a great expanded resource for the workshop. I can cover the basics in one two-hour session, then point the students to the blog, which will ultimately have a lot more information, that they can browse as they see fit.
> Does the blog contain additional material not
> covered in the class?Yes, very much so!
The initial aim has been to give greater depth/detail on the workshop subjects (essentially, a walk-through of the different elements of a software project). We can also be responsive to readers’ comments (ie. request posts), as well as adding new articles that we think people will find useful.
> And what made you choose the blog format and not > a wiki?
We’re keen to have a sense of progression and to build up a readership (we’ll be posting two articles a week as a standard) and a blog felt like a more natural medium to achieve this.
I think a wiki would also be a viable option, though.
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Rich,
I love the blog format because it has a chronological order, just light regular teaching. But at some point you will have so much material that a wiki might be a good alternative to find something. Wikis also work better if you have many revisions of your text.
There are only three more days to the conference. I’ve updated my Slideshare presentation for the breakout session on online teaching tools. I tried to focus more on what is the main issue for me: Just do it. And do it as official part of your regular class.
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Martin,
I like your hints for librarian teaching blogs and will try to incorporate them into my presentation (and still stick to 5 minutes…).
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As a librarian, I’m very much interested in spreading the news, getting the word out on all these wonderful resources we’re buying but nobody knows of. It has always something to do with information literacy. How to get the news out, how to teach our clients, how to convince the researchers to listen. Maybe the six-million-dollar-question is how to deliver information/knowledge in time, when it is needed, where it is needed.
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At last, I’ve posted my slides here
I tried to offer a few thoughts of how and why students should be encouraged to participate in science blogs and look at some of the challenges. Feel free to pass along some thoughts!
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I like the example of expedition blogs. In some areas of research it makes particular sense to blog about the work in progress. This would for example be research what requires so many resources that it is the collaborative effort by many groups and no longer competitive. That the same time the public wants to know what happens with all that public money put into these projects. Aside from your examples, high-energy physics and some of the larger genome projects come to mind.
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It might be good to brainstorm a bit – think of some really wacky ways that blogs might be useful for students. Possibly, just possibly, 1 or 2 of them might actually be sensible.
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