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[polly_mer]

On the proofreading thread,  Changinggears came up with a great suggestion on improving student writing through following professional blogs and then having students write somewhat publicly (i.e., for the class as a whole), but not on a Bb discussion group, gave better results in Changinggears' experience.

But then we get to the nitty gritty details (relevant posts start here).  How does this work in practice?  Does the whole class follow the same blog?  Do the students pick from a small number of approved blogs either as individuals or groups?  Do students as groups find their own blogs (I am not going to follow 48 separate blogs and then read student writing on those blogs)?

Where do the comments and discussion on the blogs go?  Do they go on a Bb blog (strongly discouraged by CG, but what have others experienced)?  Do they go on the blogs themselves and what are the logistics and ethics of doing that?  Does the instructor set up a non-Bb class blog site and require students to use that?

Experienced online instructors, help us out, because I'm sure at least one of you has done such a thing and lived to tell the tale, even if scrolling through recent posts doesn't bring up anything.

[changinggears]

polly--I've been pondering my idea further and have a few ideas (probably hair-brained at this point, but that's how most of my good ideas begin).  I like the idea of making this a semester-long project with perhaps some kind of summative project attached (a paper or presentation).  Perhaps some kind of "current thinking in (fill the blank with your field of study)" project. 

Each student keeps a blog where they keep track of and respond to current trends, theories, debates, etc.  One of the great things about blogs is their versatility.  They don't necessarily have to comment on the blogs they follow; they can use their blog to link to, summarize, and comment on the information they encounter, whatever kind of source it is (blog, website, discussion forum, YouTube video, newspaper/magazine articles, etc.). 

And why limit them to following one blog?  Allow them to locate several to follow or just shop around each week and see what they find that they think is interesting. 

If you want to have them read and comment on each other's blogs, I usually require my students to read and respond to the blog posts of three classmates each week.  They don't have to always read the same three students, just whichever pique their interest in some way.

What they will have at the end of the semester is a collection of information about current trends in their field with links to the original sources and their response to them (and perhaps their peers' responses to their responses) all in one place.

If you don't want the blogs to be public, you can make them private.  And you can track your students' blogs by having a main Wordpress site with all of your students' blogs on the blogroll.  But I do think there's something to be gained by having the students blog in public, especially if others interested in the field find their blog and comment on it or, even better, subscribe to it.

[polly_mer]

If we're not blogging in public and responding to each other's blogs, then there's no point to this assignment.  Students already have to keep a notebook to help themselves learn and learn from their reflections as well as notes.  The students already do a portfolio to show me what they have learned via synthesis over the course of the semester.  The blogs would be replacing current discussion posts on websites that I have chosen and make students visit to do activities, watch movies, and do external readings.

[changinggears]

Yes, my idea wouldn't really fit into the schema you've established.  It might be something someone else could consider adapting and revising if they were building from the ground up or looking to try something different.

Would it be practical or effective (or worth it) to move the information they have to access and respond to in their notebooks to a central blogsite and have them blog about the information either instead of or in addition to keeping a notebook? (I encourage mine to write their initial responses in a private notebook before turning it into a more formal, public response on the blogs).

I'm not sure which camp you side with on the ethical implications of public writing, so if this is your main concern and you absolutely do not want them blogging publicly and, additionally, don't see even a private blog as more beneficial than what they're already doing, then a blog is probably not the best answer to help you build the writing-science connection for them. But maybe you could find some blogs on science to add to the websites they have to visit and build in a discussion on the importance of writing to science that way?  I always require my students to read the comments that readers have posted, so they can see how ideas are exchanged and controversies are debated, all via writing (they get very good at pointing out comments that fail to make a clear argument or fail to effectively support the commentor's argument or are poorly written).

[proftowanda]

As a follower of many blogs, I appreciate the caution to not inflict dozens of students upon us.  Plus, comments to them could be merciless, not always a good learning experience.

So I thought about this as parallel to other class exercises in which students prepare for at least half or most of a semester before taking their work public, such as courses with speeches, project presentations, and the like, or consider freelance writing courses in which students work for weeks on articles that then must be submitted to some venue for publication -- and students are required to present at least one rejection letter to receive the grade!  (A letter of acceptance for publication is, of course, rare but also counts.:-) 

Also, instructors really ought not require students to violate blog culture, the standard advice (as for these fora) to lurk for a while before entering the fray.  So, perhaps students could, for the first part of the semester, print out actual blog posts that they find, and their proposed, "practice" comments, and analyses of the culture of the blogs (are commenters expected to provide evidence for their statements?  is the blog's audience fairly forgiving of writing errors or is it populated by grammar cops? etc.).  Student could posting all of this -- actual blog post, practice comment, analysis -- on a class blog weekly (or turn inall in on paper) for critiquing by the instructor and classmates. 

Then, when students are ready to become welcome commenters on such blogs, they could go forward -- and turn in a final project of results of their forays into the fray, with especial attention to what they learned about standards for writing, references, etc. . . . all in the hope, as I understand the aim of this, that students would find out that their profs are not inflicting useless requirements upon them but really are attempting to prepare them with standards (and with a learning experience in learning standards on their own).

[larryc]

this semester for my Digital History course I had students create blogs and turn in all their written work as blog posts. It worked very well and taught them a lot. Keeping an eye on all the blogs was easy with an RSS feed.

[changinggears]

this semester for my Digital History course I had students create blogs and turn in all their written work as blog posts. It worked very well and taught them a lot. Keeping an eye on all the blogs was easy with an RSS feed.

This is what I am doing with my comp. students next semester.  The class will have a private Wordpress site that contains course material, favorite websites (I added a delicious widget), a class twitter feed, and a blogroll of all the students' personal blogs.  Since each student will set up their own blog, they will have the option to make it private or public.  One thing I really like about Wordpress is the option to request a peer review/critique of the blog post before they publish it.  I"m requiring that they request feedback from me and maybe a few peers as well.  All writing assignments will be turned into blog posts or videos.

If you don't mind sharing, how do you provide feedback on their writing for the blog posts?  Obviously, I'll be using a writing rubric to provide an overall assessment, but I usually also provide marginal comments as well.  I was thinking of having them submit a copy of the posts to me either via BB or or a box.com account (WP has a box.com widget I could have them add for easy access).  Or is there an easier way that I'm overlooking?

Also, can you share some best practices that you discovered as you were planning, monitoring, and grading their blog posts? 

[wellfleet]

bookmarking

[larryc]

If you don't mind sharing, how do you provide feedback on their writing for the blog posts?   . . . Also, can you share some best practices that you discovered as you were planning, monitoring, and grading their blog posts? 

I never figured out a good way to give feedback on the blogs while maintaining confidentiality of grades, so I printed off their posts (this was a classroom course) and marked them up. In an online class I'd have done this with the tablet mode of my laptop and saved as PDF.

There aren't any best practices in particular that I discovered except to slowly make them explore the Blogger platform. The second week they were required to have photos in their posts, then captions, then to create a Picasa slideshow and embed it, etc. Alsl they were assigned a new professional blog each week to add to their RSS readrs and to review, with notes on the technical and design aspects as well as content.

[proftowanda]

Fyi, a colleague at another campus who teaches digital journalism and seems to be up on all this recommends weebly.com over wordpress these days.

[changinggears]

Fyi, a colleague at another campus who teaches digital journalism and seems to be up on all this recommends weebly.com over wordpress these days.

Weebly has a super-easy interface and is definitely more intuitive and easier to master than wordpress.  However, you can't do as much with it as you can wordpress, at least not what I would like to do, such as a class twitter feed.  Or at least, I could never figure out how to do this and other things I wanted to do with the course's main site.  If I weren't going to use twitter and some other options, I would definitely use weebly instead because of its ease of use.

[changinggears]

If you don't mind sharing, how do you provide feedback on their writing for the blog posts?   . . . Also, can you share some best practices that you discovered as you were planning, monitoring, and grading their blog posts? 

I never figured out a good way to give feedback on the blogs while maintaining confidentiality of grades, so I printed off their posts (this was a classroom course) and marked them up. In an online class I'd have done this with the tablet mode of my laptop and saved as PDF.

There aren't any best practices in particular that I discovered except to slowly make them explore the Blogger platform. The second week they were required to have photos in their posts, then captions, then to create a Picasa slideshow and embed it, etc. Alsl they were assigned a new professional blog each week to add to their RSS readrs and to review, with notes on the technical and design aspects as well as content.

FYI for larry or any other forumites using blogs and wondering how to provide feedback--

In searching around for ideas on assessing blog writing, I discovered the idea of providing feedback via diigo.  You can bookmark the blog post's permalink and highlight sections, attaching a sticky note with feedback.  Then, you can share the bookmark with the student.  You'll have to have your students sign up for diigo, but I already do that anyway.  I like the idea and think I'll try it next semester. 

[niceday]

So, you guys make your students blog pseudonymously?

It seems awfully wrong to force a student to put class work in public domain, forever visible, warts and all. I mean, the whole point of a class is a learning exercise so the material may have flaws or may not best represent the student.

[changinggears]

So, you guys make your students blog pseudonymously?

It seems awfully wrong to force a student to put class work in public domain, forever visible, warts and all. I mean, the whole point of a class is a learning exercise so the material may have flaws or may not best represent the student.

Actually, my past and current students blog in BB, so their posts are only read by fellow classmates.  I am switching to Wordpress next semester, but I have set our blog to private so that the only people who can read it are those who are given the URL.  I plan to have the students discuss/debate whether they want to make the blog public.  But I am going with private at the moment due to ethical concerns not related to their warty writing.
One of my objectives as a writing teacher is to teach students how to give and receive constructive feedback on their writing.  And that ALL writing is a learning experience.  And that sometimes those experiences are failures in the technical sense, but still successful if they learned something from it.  So, my students share their writing with one another and they learn (most of them) to give and receive feedback on that writing.  Just like professional and academic writers do.  If they are embarassed because something they wrote was poorly written, then they'll have to develop a tougher skin if  they want to stay in my class (and complete the writing assignments that my colleagues assign in their upper-level courses).

[proftowanda]

Fyi, a colleague at another campus who teaches digital journalism and seems to be up on all this recommends weebly.com over wordpress these days.

Weebly has a super-easy interface and is definitely more intuitive and easier to master than wordpress.  However, you can't do as much with it as you can wordpress, at least not what I would like to do, such as a class twitter feed.  Or at least, I could never figure out how to do this and other things I wanted to do with the course's main site.  If I weren't going to use twitter and some other options, I would definitely use weebly instead because of its ease of use.

This is helpful; thanks.  I'm shopping around for where to set up a site.