Academic blogging has long been championed as a way for academics to disseminate new practices, research findings or opinions quickly. Blog posts are characterised by their first-person, jargon-free and informal style, which makes the information more relatable and easier to digest.
In comparison to personal blogs, academic multi-authored blogs have a strong advantage. They are managed by an editorial team which acts as a gatekeeper to the quality of the writing, increasing the blog’s credibility. Furthermore, the range of authors keeps content fresh and vibrant, and a large social media following helps raise the visibility of the content.
As editor of the University of Edinburgh’s Teaching Matters blog, I became interested in the many benefits of this kind of blogging. To investigate, I conducted a survey of 101 contributors and 39 readers, and 21 in-depth interviews, asking about reading habits, barriers and benefits to reading and writing blog posts.
Several benefits were unsurprising. Blogging is a useful writing exercise, one participant noted, as it, “forces you to simplify and tighten up your ideas”. Because of its online nature – especially if it is open access – a blog post can reach a much wider, interdisciplinary audience than an article published in a discipline-specific journal, which are often behind a paywall. And the editorial process is much faster.
But study participants also noted many benefits that they had not anticipated before engaging in the blogging process:
Invitations to collaborate: Many were offered invitations to engage in consultancy work, co-author papers, collaborate on research projects and even to deliver keynote talks.
Personal achievement: Participants noted feelings of enjoyment, catharsis, freedom and a sense of achievement from learning a new digital skill.
Generating connections: Bloggers interacted with colleagues they would never have encountered otherwise as a result of publishing an article.
Creating visibility: Publishing posts can raise academic profiles, both externally and internally. It can increase visibility across the author’s institution.
Professional development: Blog posts can serve as a record of professional development, as well as evidence for promotions, demonstrating engagement in the scholarship of learning and teaching.
Ethical duty: As academics, some feel a duty of care to share practice and support colleagues. Blogging offers them the platform to engage in this community of practice.
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Participants also noted a number of barriers, both physical and sociopsychological, that inhibited them from writing a blog post. The most common reason was, unsurprisingly, time, and lack of protected writing space during work hours. Another barrier related to the fear of putting an opinion “out there”. Blogging can be a scary endeavour for those who are used to the comforting anonymity of writing in the third person, where emotions, opinions and vulnerabilities are left off the page. When writing in the first person and owning a particular viewpoint or making an emotional claim, some may suddenly find themselves in unknown territory. Subsequently, they can become worried about “ruffling feathers”, being held to account, getting involved in internal politics or stepping on a colleague’s academic territory.
Yet for some of my study participants, the (un)expected benefits did seem to truly outweigh these concerns, which calls for more effort to support this practice on an institutional level.
How can institutions promote academic blogging?
Start a multi-authored blog: with an editor as gatekeeper, contributors will benefit from editorial support and help with promotion, while readers are more likely to commit to following a blog that follows a reliable publishing schedule and publishes quality content.
Encourage a writing culture: Champion different ways of writing and disseminating knowledge that move beyond metrics and quantifying engagement measures. Normalise and reward dedicated staff writing time.
If someone reads a blog post and changes their learning and teaching practice because of it, let the author know! We should not underestimate the power that engaging in informal conversations – online and in person – can have over influencing our practice and even institutional culture change around teaching and learning.
What can an author do to raise awareness of their blog post?
Once a post has been published, I promote it on social media (currently we use Instagram and LinkedIn). Beyond the use of social media, I advise authors to promote their post in the following ways:
- Adding it to their email signature
- Sharing it with their school/department communications team, to be added to newsletters or webpages
- Highlighting it to their managers or colleagues when they are looking for examples of good practice
- Sending it to external colleagues if invited to do a talk or presentation as an example of their work
- Adding it to their course reading list or sharing it with their students in a class or tutorial to generate a discussion or debate.
Jenny Scoles is an academic developer (learning and teaching enhancement) at the University of Edinburgh.
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