Another End-of-Semester Report

I've used blogs again for my three classes—one for a basic composition course, one for my Outdoor Recreation students, and one for my course in freelance article writing. They've been useful administratively: I can post handouts and announcements.

But this amounts to giving myself more work for the convenience of students who didn't manage or bother to show up for class. In the last few weeks I've voted with my fingertips by just not bothering to upload the handouts.

Nevertheless, I've created a new blog for a new course I'll teach next semester, and I plan to clean up and revive the blog I used for my Tourism Degree students last year. One group of Tourism students actually created a good blog as part of their project, and it might happen again.

Meanwhile one of my colleagues got her students to create blogs as part of their coursework. It was an interesting experiment, though the blogs themselves were atrociously written and designed.

I suppose that my course blogs might do better if students were required to post to them, to serve as co-authors, etc. But I'm not interested in yet another medium in which to coerce people. If students don't want to communicate via blogs, that reflects on the blogs—not on them.

Comments

[grlucas]

I, too, have been trying to use a blog in my composition and literature courses, and I have had mixed results. I have used a blog for quite a while to supplement my teaching, but this is the my first real attempt at a course blog, and a wiki, for that matter.

I share your reluctance to enforce blog posts, but let's face it, educators are stuck with a system that Ted Nelson sees as more about social indoctrination than helping to create knowledge. This system frequently makes studentbots that need logical and orderly input: if my typical student is not compelled to do his or her work, nothing would ever get done. Sometimes it doesn't anyway. I have found that if I use technology in my courses, I must be more specific and precise about assignments and expectations if any of the students are to succeed or excel. This is even more paramount in online courses. At least this is my experience in Central Georgia, US.

I had not intention of sounding cynical; I have my good and bad days. I'm looking forward to checking out the rest of your site.

[Su]

I have experience only with teachers-students blogging but I have seen the same difficulties.
They don't post frequently, they don't finish the works, they don't visit colleagues' blogs, they don't share their thoughts.
They only report to teacher's questions and don't go ahead.
I think it is because (one reason) we live in a 'no share' school culture. The students loan their pencils, but don't share their thoughts. Blogging demand to share our thoughts, thus we can see this problems in students or educational blogs. However, I think blog is a tool to solve this. But this also requires the action of the teacher. Here I think something in the line of 'emergence' as Steven Johnson writes.
abraços,
Suzana