Welcome to episode 5 of the Teaching Matters podcast: Blogging to enhance professional practice.
The Teaching Matters podcast accompanies and complements the Teaching Matters blog, adding another space for students and staff to have conversations and debates around learning and teaching at the University of Edinburgh. Students and staff are invited to engage in topical conversations, which are recorded and edited as podcast episodes. In general, the podcast topics align with the Teaching Matters’ mini-series, but will also aim to capture other important discussions across the University around learning and teaching.
Episode 4 and 5 accompany the Academic Blogging mini-series. In episode 4, student guest host, Lila Pitcher, led a discussion with Dr Nina Morris and Dr Hazel Christie about the benefits, and challenges, of using blogging as an innovative form of assessment.
In episode 5, Karen Howie (Technology Enhanced Learning Team Manager in Learning, Teaching and Web, Information Services) hosts a conversation about blogging to enhance your professional practice. She talks with University of Edinburgh staff members, Eli Appleby-Donald (Learning Technologist at Edinburgh College of Art) and Lorna M. Campbell (Senior Service Manager for Learning Technology in Learning, Teaching and Web, Information Services), along with PhD student, James Lamb (a Doctoral Student within the Centre for Research in Digital Education, in the Moray House School of Education and Sport), about the art of blogging, the difference between various types of blogs, frequency of posts, maintaining and promoting a blog, how to deal with ‘blogger’s block’, and engaging with your audience.
If you would like to learn more about CMALT (Certified Membership for the Association for Learning Technology) scheme, mentioned by Lorna, please read the recent post by Lorna, Susan Greig and Daphne Loads.
Teaching Matters podcast credits:
Guest host: Karen Howie (Learning, Teaching and Web, IS)
Director and Editor: Jenny Scoles and Sarah Thomas (Institute for Academic Development)
Advisor: Karen Howie and Lorna M. Campbell (Learning, Teaching and Web, IS)
Karen Howie is the Technology Enhanced Learning Team Manager in the Learning, Teaching & Web (LTW) Directorate in Information Services (IS). She joined IS last August, coming from the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, where she was an IT Manager with a particular interest in learning using technology.
Eli is part of the learning technology team at ECA, supporting professional and teaching staff in the classroom and online. In this role, no two days are the same, and Eli can be found assisting online teaching teams before elevenses, helping to design courses after lunch, and appearing as guest tutor late in the afternoon. Eli is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a masters student with Moray House, and is embarking on her first research project looking into studio teaching online.
Read her learning technology blog or, if you are bored of learning tech, Eli is also an avid blogger on gardening, growing veggies, and cooking. You can also follow Eli on Twitter: @LearningTechEli.
Lorna M. Campbell is a Learning Technology Team Manager leading the University’s OER Service based in Information Services Group, where she provides strategic support on open knowledge, OER, open licensing and academic blogging. Lorna has almost twenty years experience working in education technology and has a long standing commitment to supporting open education technology, policy and practice. She is a Trustee of Wikimedia UK, and the Association for Learning Technology. Lorna blogs at Open World, tweets regularly at @lornamcampbell, and is a member of the #femedtech network.
James Lamb is an ESRC-funded PhD student within the Centre for Research in Digital, where he also teaches on the MSc in Digital Education. His doctoral research is investigating the relationship between digital technologies and the negotiation of learning spaces across and beyond campus. His blog can be read at www.james858499.net, and you can follow him on Twitter: @james858499.
