My Blogging Experience

In the pursuit of clarity I have structured this reflection into the following areas. First is my roles and contributions to the module and process was a whole. This is followed by my experience writing the blogs and comments. Then, I reflect on how this experience has been advantageous to other modules and even further to other areas of my life. 

Participating in the blog introduction lecture clarified any questions that I had regarding the blog process. This resulted in me volunteering to chair the first blog meeting that was to follow. When leading this discussion I was conscious of our objectives which were to make decisions on website design, photos, bios and the posting schedule – with the latter proving to be much more of an iterative process for Graeme and I than we had anticipated. Therefore, I tried to engage effective communication throughout the group so that the outcomes were valuable for everyone and what we produced was representative of all members of the cohort. My attempt to be concise yet approachable seemed to work as peers often approached me throughout the remainder of the process with any queries they had. After this meeting, I helped to organise the log in credentials to social media and the blog site itself and frequently sent out reminders via our WhatsApp group and e-mail for tasks such as bios, photographs and more. In the rest of the meetings, I took minutes and ensured I was a pro-active contributor to discussion. This was done with the intention of helping not only the team progress through the module, but remain organised and on top of things myself. 

As a keen and somewhat opinionated writer, I was eager to get started on the blogs themselves. Having eventually overcome what I can only describe as an acclimatisation phase with WordPress, I began with the ice breaker. This was a useful tool for getting myself into the headspace of writing and it reminded me of the profound impact that composing an informal, intellectual and relevant article can have; an impact of motivation and provocation. Regarding the reflexive comments, I made a deliberate attempt to wait until most of the blogs had been posted so that I was able to elaborate on the ones that inspired or resonated with me most. This aspect enabled me to engage with different topics and identify the symmetries and connections between the many facets of Urban Design. Despite posting each blog onto the Urban Design Instagram page, I would like to expand my skillset with respect to the social media/tagging procedure. This is definitely an important addition to blogging as it can largely improve a blogs reach, scale, accessibility and more. 

Much of the lectures and topics covered in this module coincided with the Urban Design seminar readings from TCP8052. Through researching for blogs and reading texts for the seminars, I was able to develop critical opinions on certain topics that I then expressed and refined through the mediums of writing in blog form and weekly discussion in the seminars. Concerning the design project, a large part of my groups scheme was pedestrianising Fish Quay to create a more pandemic resilient place. This specifically linked to my blog titled, ‘A Nation of Luddites…’, where I learned about the UK governments pedestrianisation strategies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, I then shared this with my design peers and we integrated much of the learnings into our final scheme. In addition to the course related advantages, my blog became part of the conversation in a graduate scheme interview that I had towards the end of 2021.

Overall, I have overcome challenges throughout the process and experienced many benefits. I believe blogging is a great method of learning about current topics, developing writing skills and critical opinions, and a strong medium of academic expression. I will continue to develop as a blogger, embracing the process and taking advantage of its widespread application.