‘I feel I have found a tribe’: Investigating the Moodle discussion board writing of regional postgraduate creative practitioners

As higher education in Australia becomes increasingly distributed geographically, regional universities play a key role in supporting distance education. With innovative online learning and strong student engagement levels continuing to be a priority, this is perhaps even more pronounced in postgraduate coursework degrees in the creative arts, a field in which postgraduate qualifications are unnecessary to secure employment in the sector. This article presents the results of a case study investigation of a regionally based postgraduate creative arts degree program that utilised blended learning principles, included on-campus and distance students, and framed discussion board usage/writing as a formative requirement across the units in the program. Alongside writing about their creative and professional practices, students produced narratives that could be described as examples of engaged reflective practice which, this analysis revealed, focused on aspects of the educational experience that assisted in developing a sense of belonging for this widely dispersed cohort.