If you are engaged in research or enquiry related to education you might be interested in contributing to the British Educational Research Association multi-authored blog. You can find the link at https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog.
As one of the blog editors I am a strong advocate of this forum as a means of scholarly communication and would be happy to talk to anyone who might be tempted to write for us. If you take a look at a few blog posts you will realise that they are diverse in style, theme and authorship.
At present Newcastle University’s ECLS is one of the best represented academic schools on the BERA blog, with posts from both staff and students. Our presence in this social media has supported our profile, with colleagues being asked to keynote or join research activities as a result. Sometimes our blogs have been summaries of published papers, sometimes they are part of the writing process for new papers, and sometimes they have simply allowed us to ‘get it out there’ – when an idea seems critical and could be shared.
The following examples illustrate some of the types of blog that you might feel able to write:
- discuss research methods and methodology
- disseminate research outcomes of funded and unfunded research
- offer thematic commentaries pulling together expertise from both teaching and research
- distil key research findings from PhDs
- ask the big questions affecting our disciplines
So – what about you?
There are several aspects of work that would be relevant. As indicated above we are interested in posts related to research methods. Could you capture approaches that you have used to research pedagogy, curriculum or student experience? We are interested in issues pertinent to Higher Education, and more discussion around professional education, internationalisation or the impact of policy changes in H.E., for example, would be welcomed. We are interested in research related to innovation as well as the continual knotty issues such as technology enhanced learning, feedback, meeting student expectations.
Each blog post is a maximum of 750 words, they can be single or co-authored and can be re-published on your own blog sites (personal or institutional) under the Creative Commons agreement and I can advise on drafts as well as be your gatekeeper to the editorial review team. Why not give it a go? And if nothing else please remind Steve McHanwell that he keeps promising me a submission!
Dr Rachel Lofthouse, ECLS, Rachel.Lofthouse@ncl.ac.uk