General feedback on topic 1

Thanks for all your topic 1 contributions. Your individual feedback is on its way to you via your Gmail but here are a few general comments:

Most of you quite correctly decided that the original “digital native” argument has limited value, but it is interesting that the term has caught on in the popular press and you will still find many uncritical references in the media to young people as “digital natives”. Hopefully you now see the danger of relying on the “truth” of any popular online theme without digging a little deeper.

Including relevant pictures or diagrams in your posts is a good thing, but please make sure you have permission to use them – i.e. that they are ones you have taken yourselves. If not, read the Tips and Hints post about using images for blogging. You should only use the image if the author allows it and always credit them if doing so. We will keep nagging you about this!

Try to keep your work focused and avoid repetition – long posts quickly lose the attention of the reader. There is no need to use large amounts of the word limit simply repeating the arguments provided in the initial notes. The key thing is to quickly demonstrate your understanding with a brief review of the topic, but then take the discussion further by commenting on your own experience as a web user, and further examples from *your own reading* which support the points you make, or demonstrate how the topic is evolving in respect of recent developments. Too many of you at the moment are relying too heavily on (some of) the sugested reading which is supposed to just *get you started* And a few of you clearly *hadn’t read it at all* – you know who you are and I’m sure you will next time!

Keep discussions going! If someone replies to your post, please respond back to them with your thoughts on their comment. Obviously there is a limit to this, most conversations have an end point and there are no prizes for “dragging out” a topic beyond its natural life span…

Don’t forget to reference your posts as necessary, as with any university work.

Please take note of further information shared on the #MANG2049 hashtag on twitter, questions raised and answered, good practice observed in the work of your colleagues or tutors etc.

People posting later can obviously benefit from the content of the posts of others, but if you are using someone else’s ideas from the group you should specifically acknowledge this. Good practice would be to state something like “I really liked X’s post about Y, and that made me think of Z which adds value to the discussion because…” It will be very evident to markers from the time stamp if people are waiting until the last minute in order to rely too heavily on the work of others, without giving anything back in return. Also, late posters are unlikely to attract many helpful comments on their own work as the main momentum of the group will have moved on.

Make sure your reflective summaries don’t just repeat your original answers to the set question, but instead draw in what you have learned subsequently since reading and responding to the work of others – feel free to highlight specific posts/tweets by your colleagues or tutors that you found useful and why. Don’t forget the advice in the Reflective Writing guidelines.

Please make sure that you include links to the comments you’ve made on the work of other students in your summary post so we can read everything in one place. If you have NOT done this, you can add the links into your feedback document as a “COMMENT” – this will notify us that we need to check that document again to complete the feedback.

You will get an individual feedback sheet by email – don’t forget this Topic 1 is not formally graded but please adjust your approach if necessary as suggested in the feedback for your contributions to Topics 2 – 5.