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Music learning in blogosphere
Citation
Paper presented at the 3rd Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference, Singapore, 1 - 3 June 2009
Abstract
Edublogging—the use of blogging as an educational tool and instructional strategy—
has been employed by this presenter in the teaching of music analysis at the undergraduate level for some time now, with encouraging evidence of blogging being effective in fostering reflective thinking, higher-order thinking, peer-learning and collaborative knowledge construction. It is no surprise that blogging in general is fast becoming “a significant learning and social networking tool that can help individuals, groups, and organizations learn in new,
interesting ways” (Karrer, 2007). This paper will focus not only on how blogging offered an alternative (and additional) space for students to learn music analysis, individually and collaboratively, but also on how it actually transformed the way they went about analyzing music and presenting their findings, going beyond what was typically the case with traditional modes of teaching and assessment. It emerges that situating this learning in blogosphere—in addition to the face-to-face class sessions—impacted in beneficial ways the students’ learning experiences. The findings here are based on the instructor’s observations as
the teacher-researcher as well as on the students’ survey feedback, with qualitative analyses of the students’ blog discourses being used for triangulation. The lessons learnt will be relevant to educators who wish to design hybrid learning spaces that take advantage of some of the educational affordances of blogging.
Date Issued
June 2009