An empirically grounded framework to guide blogging for digital scholarship

Heap, Tania and Minocha, Shailey (2012). An empirically grounded framework to guide blogging for digital scholarship. Research in Learning Technology, 20(Supp.) pp. 176–188.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0.19195

URL: http://www.researchinlearningtechnology.net/index....

Abstract

This research project investigated how openness and sharing of knowledge are manifested through scholarly blogging. We aimed to identify the academics’ and researchers’ motivations for starting a blog; the contribution of blogging to their personal and professional development; and any challenges. Twenty-six participants were recruited. A pre-interview questionnaire was first emailed to the participants to collect background information. An initial unstructured interview was conducted by email, followed by a synchronous semi-structured interview. Textual and visual extracts of blog content were also collected. The datasets were analysed using different techniques. The findings revealed varied reasons for blogging. Some academics/researchers began a blog for its accessibility to self and others. Blogging aided the academics’ and researchers’ personal and professional development in several ways. Bloggers can quickly reach a wider audience compared to other forms of academic publishing. Among the challenges, there were concerns over validity of online content. Based on previous scholarship models and on our findings, we have derived an empirically grounded framework of blog use in academia and research. The framework describes how characteristics of digital scholarship such as openness and sharing are manifested through blogging. The framework can be used to guide academics and researchers who are interested in taking up blogging as a scholarly practice.

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About

• Item ORO ID
• 34241
• Item Type
• Journal Item
• ISSN
• 2156-7077
• Project Funding Details

• Funded Project Name	Project ID	Funding Body
  Not Set	Not Set	Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology (CREET)
  Not Set	Not Set	Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology, The Open University, UK

• Extra Information
• This is an Open Access article distributed 176 under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
  This paper was presented at the ALT-C 2012 Conference in Manchester, September 11-13 (http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2012). The title of the proceedings is "A Confrontation with Reality"
• Keywords
• academic blogging; research blogging; openness; digital scholarship; open scholarship; descriptive phenomenology; phenomenology; phenomenological enquiry; research bloggers; social software; Web 2.0; discourse analysis; thematic analysis; inductive analysis; saliency analysis
• Academic Unit or School
• Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) > Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport
  Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS)
  Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) > Computing and Communications
  Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)
• Research Group
• Centre for Research in Computing (CRC)
• Copyright Holders
• © 2012 The Authors
• Related URLs
• • http://www.researchinlearningtechnology....(Other)
  • http://www.linkedin.com/in/taniaheap(Author Website)
  • http://mcs.open.ac.uk/sm577/(Author Website)
  • http://oro.open.ac.uk/29563/(Publication)
  • http://oro.open.ac.uk/19997/(Publication)
  • http://oro.open.ac.uk/19308/(Publication)
  • http://oro.open.ac.uk/16143/(Publication)
  • http://oro.open.ac.uk/15762/(Publication)
  • http://oro.open.ac.uk/16141/(Publication)
  • http://oro.open.ac.uk/15770/(Publication)
  • http://oro.open.ac.uk/15766/(Publication)
  • http://oro.open.ac.uk/15773/(Publication)
  • http://oro.open.ac.uk/28484/(Publication)
• Depositing User
• Shailey Minocha