Making of ACAS 5: The FaBlo!

What features next here is an apparently pedestrian entry called Blog. Blogs have been around for long and in a sense their heyday is done with. But the part it can play in promoting skills and feeding growth among the faculty members and learners is still big. Like many of the technological gadgets, the blog too has a very productive part to play if used wisely. Both student and teacher blogs were part of my scheme of things to inculcate and improve reading and writing skills among them. Interestingly, when I look back, I realise that the teacher blog has worked better than the students blogs! 

The Plan 

The plan was ambitious. Many of my plans were like that. You invest energy in an idea and push it forward. Then there is a stage when you breath so much passion into it that the idea begins to take ownership over you and guide you as it kind of trusts it's master. Make the faculty contribute regularly to a blog: that was the simple, original plan. Most of us who are into leading HEIs are aware how 'easy' that is, for a number of reasons. 

The Rationale

The justification for introducing a blog exclusively for teachers was to make the faculty members take to writing and by extension take to reading. It is very common for the leadership in HEIs to ask the faculty members to publish though his happens often without assessing the competence of the faculty members to write. Many of the faculty members in an Arts and Science College like mine may not possess the required skills and competence to write a research paper and to have it published. What is required is providing them the training called for and then to provide them opportunities to try out what they think they have learnt. The blog was meant to be the playfield where they can have fun with ideas, explore, connect new thoughts, review movies, try their hand at creative writing, attempt travelogues, comment on contemporary affairs, fantasise, and do prefatory writing for the more serious writing they will move to. Writing is not an easy skill to master and we need to lay a road to upskilling which invites the young to attempt it. 

The Implementation 

A name for the blog was needed and we coined one combining the words 'faculty' and 'blog': FaBlo. Since 15 December 2021 FaBlo! was active under the coordinatorship of Saritha.K, Head of English. Acasians wanted to make the excitement more evident and suffixed an exclamation mark too. That was it for the name. Now we needed contributions to the blog. The faculty member in charge of FaBlo! had the job of bringing in entries. It was the early stage and and contributions were voluntary. Posts trickled in and we had a quiet, slow start. At once stage it was realised that the FaBlo! doesn't carry as many posts as it should. The faculty members were capable of contributing more, but this was not happening the way we expected. The matter was taken up in the meeting of the Dept Heads and the faculty members were encouraged consistently to contribute. 

We switched gears in  June 2022 and decided that each one of us can contribute something each month to the blog. 'What you write about doesn't matter, but you got to write!, this was the message, loud and clear. Following which the coordinator began to prepare a schedule and as per that on each day a new post would appear on FaBlo! This made it mandatory for all to contribute something onceva month, and many who were capable but not voluntary contributors too began to join the show. There are those among the faculty members who would deliver if someone follows up with a reason and this is what the schedule made possible. Monthly analysis too were available listing the missing names and that too helped! I wouldn't claim that the system worked perfectly with all members of the faculty contributing steadily and promptly during all months. During certain months it was close to perfection but at times we did have some of us who couldn't make it and we took it in our stride, as long as it wasn't the same person who featured in the missing blogpost list time and again! In July 2022 an award for the best blogger of the month was introduced based on the blogs posted during that month. 

The Challenges 

Early on, a couple of faculty members met me in person to inform me of the difficulty involved. A couple of them told me that they are not 'writers' and it is not fair to turn them into one now. I did understand their problem but was, I hope so, capable of convincing them, to a good extent, why they needed writing skills. It is not expected of all faculty members that they can write well on all topics or always. They all are not expected to be creative writers. But what was expected of them all is decent academic and research writing skills and this could slowly be acquired. I always advised them to focus on the subjects they teach, the areas they specialise in, the topics on which their wards were doing projects or something allied to their research areas, their passions like football, dreaming, cooking or movies, if they found it hard to write on general topics. The fundamental challenge, thus, was to make them write. Yet another concern was the occasional use of ChatGPT by a couple of them who, once in a blue moon seek the easy way out. This is not because, as it often happens in the case of students also, there is a real inability to write but unwillingness to set apart quality time and effort. Even now, there sure is a segment among the faculty who, perhaps in spite of their/our efforts, is still not very comfortable with it. But the lions share of them are in. Blog was meant to be a training ground for the faculty to improve writing skills. It is a matter hapiness that it has yielded appreciable results, in spite of the challenges. 

The Takeaways 

It is not always possible to put your finger specifically somewhere and pinpoint the virtues gained through the process. There has been considerable improvement of the writing skills of all those who took it seriously and this is reflected in the quality of their writings. A general faculty-wise comparison will reveal this. The academic profits for many very young faculty members is that they took to writing rather early and this is going to impact them in the long run. The best faculty blog awards introduced in July 2022 has helped improve confidence of many and has boosted their productivity. The crowning glory was when the Publication Wing joined hands with the Faculty Development Cell to bring out an anthology of selective blog posts by our faculty members over the period of two years. The book with ISBN was released by Mr. V. R. Vinod IAS, District Collector, Malappuram, on 21 December 2023 at the college. To be honest, this was not part of the plan when we started off. The idea sprang up when we started getting serious enough entries and we thought such a book be the reward for their efforts and that it would help inspire better writings in the future. 

The Way Forward 

The big question is, will the habit of writing, reflecting on oneself and what one does, reflecting on their teaching, be sustained when the follow-up is taken off? Has it helped establish a true culture of writing? Will it be permanent fixture of the faculty members self-designed scheme of things in the years to come? This is the direction in which the college will have to strive in the years to come. The 440 blog entries so far can be one reason to take pride in, ACAS will have to find more reasons in terms of improving the quality of the posts. I am sure this can be achieved with gradual raising of the bar. 

Babu. P. K., Ph D.