I’ve been using blogs in teaching since, I think, 2002. Since 2004 every student in the Media program has a blog which is used in a whole of program approach. I will be extending this to LABsome in 2006. So, I’ve collected quite a few things the last couple of years that outline blog assessments and use, so I thought it would be a good idea just to collect them all into one post rather than leaving them scattered to the four winds. And it is a response to an email request from Trebor Scholz for curricula, so here goes.
It is important to keep in mind with what follows that our use of blogs is graduated over a three year structure. The entire course places a great deal of emphasis on process based learning, which the blogs are strongly aligned with, and so the first introduction of blogs (semester two, year one) emphasises online journal writing rather than blogging per se. To contextualise this it is worthwhile reading the curriculum outline I wrote for myself for Networked Media, the course where blogs (and plain vanilla html) were introduced. Then you should check out the blog assessment protocol, keeping in mind that there is no real expectation that blogs at this point will be particularly bloggy (though most were).
From here we move to Integrated Media, in their second year. First semester their blogs were expected to become very bloggy (and we had conversations about just what that is). There are two main files, the first outlines how students were to present their blogs as a research instrument, and the second is the assessment matrix I used, which also included specific (simple) elements blogs were to include. Next we have second semester, Integrated Media Two, where I wrote the usual documents only to completely ignore them. The first outlines what was going to be done, and the second is the one that was actually used. What should have been done for this subject I’ve already commented on – essentially let students write what they think they have to do in their blogs for them to be successful (this would be done in the first week) and then to assess against this once the semester was completed.
And those who know me know I have strong views about using blogs in teaching. If you have a subject about blogs, that is the content of the subject is blogs, then its no big deal. However, if you are simply including blogs as an adjunct, for whatever reason, then it is imperative that they are adequately recognised in the assessment weight they carry, otherwise they just won’t ‘take’. If students haven’t been there before (and if they work why would you use one for a few weeks, take it off them, and do it all again?) then you have to work hard to find that phase transition for each of them where their blogs shift from being a duty, or another essay by other means, into something else. For this transition to happen (and it is a qualitative change in state and not a product of mere quantity – such as number of posts) their use needs to be scaffolded, nurtured, fostered, and generally one of the best ways to achieve this is to make it worth your students’ while. After all, they’re smart, if you want them to use something new, and it is worth 10% of their final result, then it isn’t rocket science to work out how much it really counts for (let alone what you’re telling them).
Tags: hypertext, Network Literacy, teaching
