I have said here before that I think most of what professors want to accomplish online for their classes is easily done by a blog. That’s it no WebCT or Blackboard needed. A blog can handle making a syllabus accessible, updating assignments, providing links to outside information, and with a little creative effort, a good place to have students write. (More on that in a minute.) I was having a conversation with another grad. student/instructor, who is not particularly familiar with technology. She wanted to be able to do several things for her class online, had used WebCT a bit, didn’t like, and asked what I thought. “Use a blog I responded, easy.” Her reaction was surprise, aren’t blogs just online journals, informal writing, a passing fancy. Maybe in some respects I explained, but for teachers they are a simple, low entry level technology for using the internet.
I am not going to get into all of that here, although I do think that I will do a much longer how-to, meta-explanation variety later. But for now I am going to point out one great use for a blog, and show how it is done.
Using a Blog to Get Student to Generate Paper Topics
One of the things I try to get students to do in their writing over the course of a semester is learn to develop their own writing topics. I find most of them have had a high school experience where they have been told exactly what to write, five paragraph format, plug and play. Few students seem able to develop a good paper topic. What I do in my classes (especially lower level undergrad) is start with very specific topics that model for them what a narrow topic should be, and then proceed to have them develop their own. Necessarily though the developing of ones own topic is a discursive process, with a great deal of back and forth and refinement. Here is where a blog can prove to be really useful. (Note: this can be done with discussion boards, or Blackboard tools, but why bother this one is easier and looks better.)
The Assignment
The idea here is to get students to post their topics online and have other students comment on them. The reason this works is that students then get to see all of the other suggestions, in fact can use them to spur their own ideas. I found that what this can actually do is create both diversity and clusters of papers. Students will often start to see how what they are saying connects to what others are developing, while also not getting 25 students to write the exact same topic. The other trick is to get each student to comment thoughtfully on the others post, so they not only have to think about their topic, but think about what makes others a good topic, or a topic that need focusing or revision. Plus then each has their own thoughts as well as the suggestions of at least two others.
Look at the students post below, where the cursor is pointed is the initial post, and the subsequent one is the students comment.
Notice how the respondent picks up on how the initial topic needs to be narrowed and also possible implications. Now certainly this is not an ideal topic yet, but it is improving, the initial responder and respondent have expanded their thinking, this sans teacher comment. If it were me I might go thru and add to comments, or more likely email them directly so as not to dominate the discursive space. It strikes me that this works for so many reasons.
- Student are more and more used to expressing themselves in this type of Web discursive space, this feels more comfortable then saying them aloud in class and subjecting them to face to face scrutiny.
- Sharing their ideas publicly, I think, gets them to polish them a little more than if they were just handing them in to you as the instructor. They want to measure up in the eyes of the other students.
- This requires a back and forth dialogue, talk-respond, rather than the everyone waiting for their turn to say their topic. Contrary to the classroom space the web actually allows you to slow down the time of discourse, which is a bit counter-intuitive given that one of the features of the web is speed, but . . .
The Technical Stuff
This is actually really easy to do, only need two steps
First, you need to install threaded comments to your blog. This is the “key” technical adaptation as it allows students to comment to others comments. You could let everyone have a separate post with comments, but I think it works better to have all the topics in one place so that students seem them as connected part of a discourse. Second, you want students to be able to comment to a comment. Look at the picture above again. The initial post was written, and then the respondent added their comment four days later, but directly below. Usually comments get added in order which they are posted, but “threaded comments” allows you to comment to a comment, not just comment to a post, effectively adding your comment directly to the place it is relevant. So in this example the students posted their papers on “2-24″ (there are 25 other papers also posted), and then over the next four days others log in and decide who they want to comment to.
To install threaded comments for WordPress go here and downlaod the plugin. Open the file it has instructions on how to install, but basically you need to copy the two files into your WordPress account. If you are hosting your own, you can do this. If however you are using wordpress.com or edublogs, you are not allowed to install your own plugins. But, if you email edublogs I am sure they can install it for you, as this seems like an very useful plugin for academics. Login into wordpress and activate the plugin.
Second, set up your topic and post it. Here is the language from the above mentioned post, use as a guideline if you so desire.
To post your paper topic, click on “Comments” below. Then paste or write your paper topic proposal into the form at the bottom of the page. You’ll have to enter your name and an email address to do so. Use your real name so that I can keep track of the assignment, please!
To comment on another student’s proposal (due Wednesday 2/28 before class), click “Comments” below. Then choose the proposal about which you have the most interesting and productive things to say (questions, suggestions, counter-theses are all welcome) and click “Reply to this comment.” Enter your comment. You may enter more than one comment, but please be sure that you respond to an uncommented proposal before responding to a commented one, so that everyone receives feedback.An example containing both parts of the assignment has been provided. Hard copies of revised paper topic proposals are due in class on Friday, 3/2.
Questions? Leave in the comment section, and I’ll try to help out.
[...] AcademHack has written an eloquent posting on how and why he uses blogs to help students choose their paper topics. [...]
[...] Monday, March 19th, 2007 in General interest, digital media Hmmm, seems I’m not the only one to think it could be useful. Check this out. [...]
Hi there,
I’ve recently wondered about that in my blog (http://peregrina.wordpress.com/2007/02/17/using-a-blog-as-a-course-website/) and the consensus among my more experienced friends was that it would be time-consuming (I don’t think so) and more confusing to students, who would be more familiar with the templates (blackboard or webct) provided by the university. They prefer the administrative side of those platforms since it allows for emailing the whole class, having lists of students automatically in, etc…
But I think a blog would be a better interface. For one thing, it would allow tagging and better searching of topics previously discussed. I’m not sure I’m idealizing students thinking they might find these features useful…
I would say that students are more used to blogs then they are to WebCT or Blackboard. Blogs they use far before they get to college, WebCT/Blackboard is only useful when they are in school. And as far as time consuming goes, I guarantee I can update information faster to a blog then one can via Blackboard. It is a learning curve for faculty, although a really short one. And the key here is you are then independent from a course management system. You can take the content with you, and you can operate at an institution without Blackboard or WebCT. Finally, students are far more involved in my experience when you use a blog, then when you use WebCT. Why? Lots of reasons which I can’t develop here, but mainly that a blog is more familiar and easier.
As far as the email issue goes, two things: 1. Why email students when you can update the blog? want to cancel class for snow, update the blog. Want to change an assignment, update the blog. 2. WebCT runs by loading in the campus email addresses from the system, so if they don’t check that email you loose that functionality. And you have to rely on WebCT to email the students. If you really want email lists there are better ways to accomplish this. Check the email tag on this blog for that.
I would say that any professor who is using basic WebCT functions, email, discussion, calendar, syllabus, if better served by open source public Web 2.0 software. Have them try blogs for one semester, I doubt they will switch back.
I will do a series this summer though for those contemplating the switch.
[...] Developing Paper Topics by Using a Blog Published March 20th, 2007 Education and Technology I was reading a blog that I subscribe to and I thought the following entry was extremely relevant.  It discusses the use of blogs in assisting students in creating paper topics. Through peer review on blogs students have the potential to assist each other in defining a well crafted topic. This is a simple way to introduce technology into the classroom as well as create a dialog between the students. This method can produce better topics as well as a better understanding of how to formulate a stronger topic.  Hope everyone is enjoying their break. [...]
[...] I think this is a great idea. Dave at academhack lays out the way he’s using a blog to help students refine their paper topics through peer discussion. That’s only one of the applications blogs could have for a classroom, though. He briefly mentions posting syllabi, assignments, updates, links, etc. True, there is software in schools that do some of this stuff–we use Blackboard, and he also mentions one called WebCT, which I don’t know about, but let me tell you something. Blackboard is crap, man. I hate it. It’s not intuitive (is the syllabus under “assignments” or “class documents”? What about assigned readings?), only the teacher can update it (with things like the link I e-mailed my teacher upon her request a month ago and still isn’t up), it’s fugly, and it’s just…very institutional. I know, I know, part of my resistance to Blackboard is my innate rebellion against whatever the school (or business, or whatever) provides, but part of it is also that it’s crap. [...]