Academic blogging as a vehicle for professional development Peps Mccrea University of Brighton, UK p.j.mccrea@brighton.ac.

uk Abstract This paper is a work-in-progress: it outlines the early stages of a larger inquiry into the affordances of academic blogging as a vehicle for professional development. In these early stages I have been grappling to find out what 'academic blogging means for me'. For this reason it is composed of a reflective account plus an analytic interrogation of my formative experiences of social media. Higher Education (HE) in the Western world is currently grappling to position itself in a shifting landscape of economic rationalisation, too-fast-to-keep-up technological innovation, and escalating marketisation (OLTF 2011). Blended learning and social media are being explored as potential solutions to these pressures. In this paper I explore the potential opp ortunities and challenges afforded by academic blogging for professional development. The main themes discussed are: exposure, engagement and networking. It is argued that these features combined with its non-hierarchical configuration (Siemens and Weller 2011), mean that academic blogging has the potential to create a self organising, highly responsive and digitally reflexive staff, for a very low cost. However, not all academics or institutions will be comfortable with the time investment or risk associated with operating in the public domain. However, unless institutions refuse to accept blogging as a form of scholarly activity then academics will struggle to position themselves as public intellectuals in the digital age (Kirkup 2010). Keywords Academic scholarship, Professional development, Online identity, Social media, Blogging Introduction This paper aims to capture the emerging essence of an inquiry into the affordances of acade mic blogging as a vehicle for professional development. It is composed of a reflective account plus analytic interrogation of my formative experiences of social media. I hope that this autoethnographicesque approach will offer the reader a powerfully authentic, rich and meaningful insight into this emotive and exotic area (Hayler 2010). Comments on the narrative in Mccrea (2011) such as 'wondering if you somehow read my mind about tweeting, blogging etc.' and 'best insight into power of blogging, Twitter and network I have ever read' serve to add credibility to the experiences described. This paper comes at a time when Higher Education (HE) in the West is grappling to position itself in a shifting landscape of economic rationalisation, too-fast-to-keep-up technological innovation, and escalating marketisation (OLTF 2011). As blended learning becomes increasingly attended to as a panacea response to these pressures, the demand for digitally literate academic capacity grows. I argue that blogging challenges existing rubrics for professional development in H and offers a E, simultaneously exposed, engaged and networked experience that has the potential to foster robust levels of digital literacy over time. One day someone convinces you to try Twitter. You dont like it. But you persist. You respect your friend and they say it is not like Facebook. You upload your best profile pic and fill in your Bio. You only have 160 characters. Who are you? Your professional self, your personal self, a mixture, or the whole bag? You have your first online identity crisis. A couple of weeks of frustration go by and you start to follow people who are of interest to you. They are tweeting some interesting stuff and even seem to be having conversations. How do they find the time? Do they not have jobs? You are becoming increasingly aware that you are watching but not contributing. You are lurking. Most of the people you follow blog when they want to say something substantial. And then tweet about it. And then other people you follow comment. And then tweet about it. You consider your first tweet. The big one. Oh how they will judge you. You type it, delete, retype, and then leave it for another day.

Your first few tweets come and go. Not much happens. Your friends congratulate you. You are a bit disappointed. You comment on a few blogs. They reply! You feel a little excited. You look around, but no-ones watching. By now you have a good handle on Twitter, and you use it as a kind of personalised newsfeed. You are up to the minute in your area of interest and feel a greater sense of professional engagement. You start to share some things you have come across, even have a few conversations with the people you follow. You want more. Engaged My first argument is that when participating in social media, a unique combination of operational preferences can lead to a heighten sense of academic engagement, including: y y y Asynchronous communication enabling both a high degree of time-to-reflect flexibility and potentially permanently open conversations Blogging as a creative endeavour offering an active, satisfying and sustainable form of professional development (Mackey and Evans 2011) Ideas-oriented conversation providing an intellectually fertile environment in contrast to predominantly outcomes-oriented organisational set-ups where dialogue can often be tempered by managerial and political interference

Is this bad news for intra-institutional talk? Davies and Merchant (2007) argue that social media actually enriches offline relationships: that in addition to fundamentally changing how we write and communicate, it also changes how and with who we interact, including those with which we share our working days. In an unexpected twist, could this change in local practice be the most significant impact of academic blogging? You find Wordpress and spend days choosing a title. You consider your first post. What story do you have the authority to tell? There are so many people blogging. How can you contribute to the conversation? Its a bit daunting. But then, so was Twitter initially. You come across one blog post that really gets you going. You comment but there is more you want to say. You realise that this is your first blog post. You want to be a bigger part of this conversation. It takes ages. Your best writing. You click publish. Not much happens. You exposed your thinking to the world and nothing happened! You find yourself seeing things in terms of your next blog post. Someone says something interesting at lunch and you make a note in your iPhone. You write a few more posts. One is actually quite interesting. This time when you tweet about it, @timbuckteeth picks it up and tweets about it. Suddenly you are exposed to 10 000 people! Two of them comment on your post. A bunch of people follow you. And then a couple more next day. Cool. Exposed My second argument is that academics who contribute via social media encounter a form of heightened conceptual exposure that is not normally afforded by contemporary professional development. Combining norms of periodic self-disclosure and risk-taking with limited audience control (Davies and Merchant 2007), blogging has compelled me to regularly and publically explicate my self, my thinking and my position on live as well as lingering issues. The resulting legacy is one of a sharpened sense of self, combined with a greater confidence in my capacity to respond rapidly and articulately to new ideas. However, with exposure comes vulnerability. Recent Twitter flurries have highlighted how social media can destroy professional reputations within hours. Krikup (2010) suggests that it may be safer to practice a genre of writing that is less likely to bring you into potential conflict with your employer. Public exposure is not something all academics or institutions will be comfortable with.

You begin to rethink how you blog. The academic style of writing. You think about your use of social media. Is it okay to check Twitter at work? You begin to think about how much you are learning. You wonder why more people arent doing this. You write a blog post about a paper you have read. The author comments on your blog post. You reply. You are having a conversation with someone you read! Wow. Why arent you having more of these conversations at work? You feel engaged in academic thinking. All the time. You wonder about blogging as a form of scholarly activity. You begin to see commenting as a kind of peer review and blogging as a kind of open access reporting. You think about how blogging has changed how and who you read. You wonder if this is what they mean by an online community. You find yourself not only questioning academic reporting, but learning in the digital age. You find yourself equipped with a new vocabulary. You use #hashtags with fluency. You feel an affinity with Connectivism. You think about the idea of learning existing within technology. You think about how much you think. You think about increasing economic pressures and the marketisation of Higher Education. You think about digital literacy and digital collaboration. You think about your colleagues who are still living in the unblended world. You begin to see yourself differently. You wonder about the future. You wonder about how you can contribute more. You find yourself wondering about institutional practices. About informal learning. And about education. Again, and again and again. You are engaged. You are exposed. You are networked. You are learning. Networked My third argument is that due to its lack of geographical and chronological limitations, open access to people with similar passions, and ease of making and breaking ties, academic blogging allows you to become part of a rich, responsive and highly personisable network. There are advantages to this, including rapid access to a vast range of resources and expertise - I had over 10 responses from Professors and Technologist in the hours after posting this narrative on my blog (Mccrea 2011). It is also possible to shift your focus on demand. Mackey and Evans (2011) suggest that even fleeting ties can play an important role in prompting innovative practice. Kjellberg (2010) asks whether the most significant benefit is the feeling of being part of something bigger: the opportunity to connect to a specific context. However, I suggest that this could also be social media's greatest weakness, as like-minded people gravitate social diversity diminishes. Conclusion In conclusion, I suggest that the combination of these affordances offers a potentially rich and transformative vehicle for academic professional development. It allows individuals to make sense of the increasingly blurred boundaries between online and offline, between formal and informal, between traditional and open scholarship (Pachler and Daly 2009). However, comes with a rich and investment in time that not all will be comfortable with. At an institutional level social media deserves serious consideration - due to its non-hierarchical configuration (Siemens and Weller 2011) it has the potential to create a self-organising, highly responsive and digitally reflexive staff, for a very low cost. Albeit with a new set of complications, as academic thinking and practice stray further into public transparency. Nevertheless, as Kirkup (2010) argues: if institutions refuse to accept blogging as a form of scholarly activity then academics will struggle to position themselves as public intellectuals in the digital age. References Davies, J and Merchant, G (2007). Looking from the inside out: academic blogging as new literacy. Lankshear, C and Knobel, M (eds.) A new literacies sampler. New York, Peter Lang, 167-19

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