Reflexive Summary: MAUD Blog- A Collective knowledge hub

Chapter 1: Adapting

It was a rainy Thursday afternoon. After the introduction class by Tim we were rushing to find the classroom for blog tutorial. Many of us were still strangers to each other at that time. Meanwhile, the class had already begun as I reached. However, quickly secured a spot where I could see the presentation boards with the anticipation of what is waiting for us.

As soon as the presentation started the excitement turned into fear and it got even worse, realizing that from scratch it’s our responsibility to create a whole webpage and layout for this year’s MAUD blog. Th last year’s works were amazing and I could see to the initial moment of panic around everyone. We slowly started interacting and started to get adapted with the preliminary process. To ease the situation we were divided into sub-groups. Thereupon, proceeded with further development of webpage creation and scheduling of blogs. This was certainly one of the sessions which helped to ease the unfamiliarity among us. It was equally exciting to know that the designer for the last year’s banner was our tutor himself. What else is required for the inspiration? These are some of the try outs by our group for the banner design-

Fig 1: Blog banner try outs by our group

Chapter 2: Involving

Moving on, I was still confused and worried about where to start and each session opened the door for new possibilities of understanding more about writing processes. The tutor was specific about achieving readability and simplicity in blogs unlike academic writings with complex structure and information. Soon after started research I realized that the most difficult thing in writing the blog is to establish simplicity it demands to cater the wider audience circle. To attain this ability, reading on different topics and referring other blogs were a prerequisite. As it was the first ever experience in my life to write a blog, so was the first time for me to get involved in reading as well.

Chapter 3: Understanding

It’s been 3 months since the course has started. In brief, it felt like a rollercoaster ride with continuous lectures, discussions and submissions. I can’t even remember a day which passed without thinking of development in design process. In fact, reading posted blogs and further research on topics widened the perspective. Also, helped in many aspects to deepen the thought process for developing new ideas in design studio. Every blog had a story to tell and even the same topics had different perspective and different themes to share with. A handful of knowledge through the collective contribution of each blogger not only catered the interest towards reading, but also initiated a commitment to share my knowledge to this writing community.

 Chapter 4: Expanding

As a budding blogger, apart from sheer interest generated to write a blog, I found it hard to organize the plenty of information gathered from different sources in simple legible format. Besides, it was difficult at times to bring an identity to the blogs. Because, many of the gathered information were already present in different web sources.

Furthermore, unlike summarizing the understanding from essays, constructing blogs required a specific format. For example, a simpler structure, strict word limits and clarity in words used. It was rigorous at the beginning to meet the criteria. However continuous efforts through re visiting the write ups helped me to compose collected information into simpler readable format. Nevertheless, every time when I go through my blog, I always find room for improvement and kept on correcting them for better understanding for its readers. Thank you everyone for all those insightful posts and hoping to continue blogging in a much better way towards the next semester as well as try to expand myself to engage in different blog portals by contributing what we have learned here to a larger readers circle.