It seems quite fitting to write this inaugural ETC blog post about blogs, doesn’t it? Read on to learn about blogs and some ideas for including them in your courses to increase interactivity, options for assignment review and completion, and they ways CAS faculty currently use them in their courses.
Blog Defined
According to Dictionary.com, the term ‘blog’ is both a verb and a noun…so you can say “I am going to blog in my blog” and be grammatically correct.
When used as a noun, blog refers to “A Web site containing the writer’s or group of writers’ own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other Web sites.” When used as a verb, blog means “to maintain or add new entries to a blog.”
The goal of the ETC blog is to provide CAS faculty at Suffolk University with ideas for making full use of the many technology-oriented resources we have available.
General features of Blogs
A blog is really a specific type of ‘content management system’ (CMS) that can be used in a variety of ways. There are some features of blogs that set them apart from other kinds of CMS’s – the ability for readers to provide comments on entries, and the ordering of entries by date (with the newest on top) on the main page are key. While you can turn off or restrict the ability of readers to comment on entries in a blog, doing so limits the interactivity available to readers.
Another important feature of the WordPress blog system (which we use here at Suffolk) is the availability of themes, plugins, and widgets. Themes allow you to customize the look of your blog to suit the type of information you are presenting. The ETC blog is a ‘two column’ layout with a custom header and muted colors, but there are over 100 themes to choose from. Plugins and Widgets are add-in tools that enhance the blog in some way – like adding events from a Google Calendar, listing all of the writers who have contributed to the blog, or filtering spam comments.
How do CAS faculty use blogs?
We have several faculty using blogs in CAS in interesting ways – below are descriptions of how some are using blogs.
Rachael Cobb uses a blog for each course she teaches, and provides via the blog much of the information most of us use BlackBoard for links to information – links to websites and other information, posting the syllabus and assignments, and a mechanism for uploading papers (through Dropbox, which we hope to discuss in another post). She likes the blog because of the ease of formatting and use for her and her students – particularly less clicking to get things done.
If you like, you can see her blogs for Research Methods and Introduction to American Government. Rachael also uses Google Docs for grading – another topic for a future blog post here.
Brian Conley also uses blogs in his courses, such as Power, Politics, and the Media, Research Methods, and Legislation and Lobbying. While he still uses BlackBoard’s SafeAssign to have students submit assignments, he prefers blogs because the openness and ease of access will facilitate its use – and because the students are likely to be more familiar and comfortable with getting information from a blog than BlackBoard – particularly Freshmen.
Mark Rotondo has also used blogs for several classes for specific assignments, such as weekly journals, commenting on a video documentary, and as a vehicle for students to write about current events in the business world. For this latter assignment, Mark gave students free reign to control the blog – not only did they develop the content, but they also chose the design, layout, and name. Students then wrote about things we can all likely remember hearing about on the news, such as the security of LNG tankers in Boston harbor and food borne illnesses at Taco Bell. Mark is going to try something different this year using Tumblr – but this is beyond the scope of the current blog post.
Lisa Shatz has each student in her class create their own blog in her Contemporary Science and Innovation blog. Students learn from each others’ work, but are also to be creative in how they complete the assignments through the inclusion of video, sound and pictures in their blog posts. Another neat thing Lisa has done to facilitate grading is that each student’s post on their own blog shows up on the blog for the course (on the HW page). This means that, while each student has their own blog and does assignments on their own, Lisa does not need to traverse each student’s individual blog to get grading done. Michelle Bolser (see end of post for contact info) helped Lisa set up the blog to have this functionality.
I have used blogs in a few ways, but a theme in my use of them revolves around using a blog as a document management system of sorts for the class. I have always created ‘private blogs’ – unreachable by anyone not explicitly authorized to access it – to create a space for submitting class assignments. While this helps ease some of the students’ anxiety about the process, it means I can not provide a link to show you – so I’ll do my best to describe things.
In my Counseling Skills class, I have students write a review on a peer-reviewed article, and assign students to groups to ensure that the topics are diverse. When students submit their article reviews as blog posts, they choose a category with their group name (using the Categories widget), which then allows readers to easily find the posts for each group. Using a blog in this manner allows all students in the class to benefit from the article reviews, as they can all see what their classmates have written.
I also used a blog in my online class this year to manage nearly all assignments for my College Visits class. The class had 13 students, and each had to complete 20 written assignments. Previously, I had students submit all assignments via email, which I personally found easier than using BlackBoard – but it was still quite unwieldy. While using the blog did not cut down on the time it takes to read and provide feedback on 260 papers, it was fantastic for managing the documents – and it created a library of college visits the students can use as they participate in their internships this coming year. From an instructor’s standpoint, here’s what the blog provided in terms of document management:
A list of the number of assignments submitted by each student, using the Author List widget
This allowed me to easily see who was making adequate progress, and who I needed to follow up with. Some names are blurred here as they are listed by the student’s MySuffolk login. The students can ‘customize’ their name, as Johanna did.
The ability to sort posts author as well as date (click image to see larger version)
This facilitated reviewing the student work to see more of what has already been submitted. When combined with the categories for each assignment type and a ‘tag’ describing the college they visited, I had easy access to the information I needed to monitor student progress. The picture above is of the ‘Dashboard’, which provides a very different view of the blog’s content – a behind the scenes look.
Using Pages to provide examples of high quality work (click image to see larger version)
A problem with using blogs for graded assignments is that the first few posts ‘set the tone’ for quality. To set clear standards, I created Pages on the blog to provide easy access to sample blog posts (e.g., Sample Post Visit) that illustrate high quality work. Pages are basically blog posts on a page by themselves, with navigation to them prominently displayed. In the picture above, you can see the sample assignments are easily found in the navigation structure of the blog.
These are just a snapshot of how CAS faculty are using the blog; if you have a blog for your course and would like to share, please provide a link in your comment below and add to the discussion!
You might need a blog if…
- You have students submit assignments via email
- It would be beneficial for students to see each others work
- You are looking for out-of-class interaction and Discussion Boards (e.g., BlackBoard) do not work well
- Students are looking to create an online presence (e.g., web-based resume)
- Your index finger is getting tired of all the clicking required to get things done in BlackBoard
- You want to create a more palatable class website
- You want to learn something new!
Getting a cas.suffolk.edu blog
Getting a blog at Suffolk is easy – visit http://blogs.cas.suffolk.edu/wp-signup.php, and provide a username. While you are there, you might also check out the Getting Started page to get some more ideas (including links to course blogs outside of Suffolk) and learn the basics of writing in a blog, and maybe even check out the How To’s and Tutorials to understand a little more about creating and managing content on your own blog.
Questions?
I am going to pass the buck on this one…the person to contact is our very own CAS Educational Technologist Michelle Bolser. Not only is she the person who manages all of the blogs at blogs.cas.suffolk.edu, but she can easily help you see if blogs can help you accomplish what you are trying to do…and if blogs are not the best answer, she’ll work with you to find the right technology tool for the job.
