Blogging Pedagogy - blogs

6 Tips for Making the Most of Your Class Blog

Dustin Hixenbaugh — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 20:23:20 +0000

Author:

Dustin Hixenbaugh

Image Credit:

Taro Yamamoto

For several semesters I have had students engage in digital conversations using discussion boards on class management sites such as Blackboard and Canvas. This semester, wondering if writing for a public audience would increase their investment in participating in these kinds of digital conversations, I decided to set up a class blog. Since I have been pleased with the results, I thought I would share a few recommendations with other teachers who are either interested in starting a class blog or looking for ways to make more of one that’s already in use.

As previous Blogging Pedagogy writers have noted, there are many benefits to having students blog. Regularly posting their thoughts to a public site builds students' confidence in their voices. It gives them practice expressing arguments in reader-friendly language, and the comments they receive help them understand how effectively (or not) they have conveyed their ideas. These are experiences that students are bound to find helpful, whatever their major or career interests.

Blogging can also positively impact classroom culture. For example, Lisa Gulessarian observed that sharing a blog helped her students treat one another with greater empathy. As she reflected after one semester operating the blog, “The camaraderie in my class is one that I would like to recreate in my future classes." Tekla Hawkins learned through her students' posts what they found challenging about her lessons, leading her to make productive changes to her instruction.

Once you commit to having your students blog, you will want to spend a few hours setting it up. Our previous writers have also made recommendations concerning the preliminary decisions you will be making, and I will refer you to them if you want help selecting a platform, discussing the differences between academic and internet writing, or encouraging students to incorporate images in their posts.

My six tips take a longer view on student blogging. Although some of them suggest actions you might take within the first few days of the semester, my hope is that they will ultimately help you maintain--rather than simply begin--your class blog. If I have learned nothing else this semester, it is that blogging is an activity that is only spontanous in appearance. In fact, a successful blog requires thoughtful planning and a fair amount of energy and inspiration that must be sustained throughout the semester.

#1. Start by writing author biographies. This is an excellent ice-breaker. You and your students will learn a lot about each other from the information you share, and if you include pictures, you will also shorten the amount of time it takes for everyone to learn each other's names. Moreover, writing biographies helps students take their role as contributors seriously. From the beginning, they will appreciate that blogging is an exercise in developing an online persona and that they should write posts that make them proud and do not disclose details they are uncomfortable making public. (Note that biographies should never include FERPA-protected information such as students' grades.)

#2. Give students the freedom to select their own topics. Asking students to answer specific questions in their posts can hold them accountable for doing their homework and improve their participation in class. However, blogging can be more fun and even more rigorous when students determine their own topics. This semester, I gave the students in my "Rhetoric of Country Music" class free reign, and I am consistently impressed to see them taking on issues that are more personal and certainly more timely than anything I would have selected for them. My friend Beck Wise, who is teaching an English course on "Feminist Speculative Fictions," strikes what I think is a good balance, giving her students both structured and "free topic" blogging assignments.

#3. Stagger the deadlines. The joy as well as the misery of having students blog is that they can generate a lot of writing. Your students will benefit from writing several blog posts a week, but you will become overwhelmed trying to read--let alone grade--all of them. I decided to have my students write three posts of at least 400 words each. (They may write more, but not for class credit.) When I introduced the assignment, I distributed a sign-up sheet giving students the chance to select their own deadlines. They are happy because they chose deadlines that suit their schedules. I am happy because I have a manageable stream of 6-8 posts per week instead of an overwhelming flood.

#4. Stagger the publication. I allow my students the freedom to choose their topics, but I take control for determining when their posts are published. Usually, I receive 6-8 posts on Tuesday, which I then schedule to appear over the course of the week--ideally one per day. This is important for two reasons: First, releasing posts daily respects the habits of the typical Internet reader, who prefers a steady stream of content over an overwhelming weekly dump. Second, it ensures that none of my students' posts gets buried beneath the others. In effect, each student can count on being the class's featured writer for three days over the course of the semester.

A technical note: If you are using Wordpress, you can schedule the date and time a post will appear from either the "edit" or "quick edit" screens. You can also schedule posts to reappear at a later time if your students accidentally publish them themselves.

#5. Walk students through the posting process. This is an obvious step that I forgot to take this semester and that has caused my students more setbacks than anything else. After spending so much time setting up my class blog, the Wordpress platform that I chose began to feel so obvious that I made the assumption that my students would be able to figure it out for themselves. In fact, many of them had to email me for help with such "obvious" tasks as locating the log-in button. Next semester, I plan to resolve this problem by having my students write their first posts as Word documents that will all be due on the same day. As a class, we will go through the process of transferring the documents to posts that includes images, hyperlinks, categories, and tags.

#6. Give students grades for their comments. The single best way to keep students invested in writing engaging, thoughtful blog posts is to ensure that every one initiates a conversation between students. (As a contributor Blogging Pedagogy and other sites where readers hardly ever leave comments, I know well how disappointing it can feel to spend time writing posts that generate no feedback.) This semester, I am requiring that my students write at least ten comments to their classmates' posts. My expectation is that each comment will be at least 100 words in length so that students can compliment each other's work ("I wish I had thought to write this post!") as well as contribute their own insight, story, or question. While I always enjoy the posts that my students write, the truth is that it is the conversations that are carried on the comments that lead to the most class participation and eventual student learning.

Blogging in the Classroom: Not Only Why, But HOW!

Rachel Mazique — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 06:47:07 +0000

Author:

Rachel Mazique

Image Credit:

http://www.pinterest.com/misty_poland/classroom-technology/

If you’re anything like me, you may be hesitant to set up a new platform for teaching and writing in your classroom. Or, even if you’re convinced that blogging in a rhetoric or literature classroom is a great idea, you may avoid doing so because you’ve never run a blog, been a blogger, or fear the possible breakdowns of working online in an unknown digital space and losing student work.

As I prepared for teaching a literature course for the first time this semester, I made up my mind that I wanted to try setting up a new classroom space. In the past, I worked with PBworks, and while that digital space was extremely useful, it is not the most visually appealing space. Since my class is a “Literature, Visual Culture, and Deaf Studies” course, I planned on incorporating several YouTube videos relevant to the course, and I wanted these compiled in a public space—a sort of public classroom portfolio that students could share with friends, family, and also easily enjoy at home.

Since this would be my first time managing a blog, I wanted to work with a user-friendly site. A quick Google search turns up pages like this one, which lists Blogger and WordPress as two of the top blog websites for creating free blogs. I looked at both, and although Blogger requires that you set up/own a Gmail account to get started (since it’s now owned by Google), its home page is incredibly streamlined. Within a few minutes of playing around, I was able to set up a blog spot for my class.

Working with WordPress was not as intuitive, and its dashboard is a bit more intimidating at first. After playing around with both and reading about the pros and cons of each blogging platform , I found that I preferred Blogger. Before running with it though, I needed to see if it was conducive to classroom work. I wanted students to be able to modify their settings in accordance with their preferences re: privacy. I also wanted to retain a modicum of control over this public space.

After much reading of blogs—including those by teachers, with more pros and cons from a pedagogical standpoint—including this one from “Professor Beej,” (B.J. Keeton), a “writer, teacher, and runner,” I started to lean towards WordPress—especially because of it’s comment moderating capability. I eventually discovered that the University of Texas at Austin runs a University Blog Service on the WordPress platform.

Learning that my university’s Information Technology Services ran a WordPress platform for its faculty, staff, and students alleviated my concerns about having a support system in case anything went wrong. Students here at UT can log in to a blog created through our university’s blog service with their UT EID. Instructors can easily set up their new class blogs at home—again, through our UT EID.

In the end, after hours of playing around and teaching myself WordPress’ functions, I decided on WordPress over Blogger. Once the university approves our request for a blog page, we can even personalize our URLs. Here’s mine: http://blogs.utexas.edu/litblogs/

I love our class blog’s functionality, and I haven’t looked back since.

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Disclaimers: I have students customize their usernames and decide whether they want to use their full names, first names, last names, or a pseudonym/nickname.

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A couple of key points from our university’s Service Level Agreement:

“The University Blog Service does not meet FERPA requirements for use by faculty within their courses.”

University Blog Service subscribers agree to:

Not post or store any Category-I data in the University Blog Service.
Provide critical information to ITS in a timely manner when requested for purposes of resolving subscriber issues.

The Pedagogy of LOL

Hala Herbly — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 03:00:23 +0000

Author:

Hala Herbly

Image Credit:

Cheezburger

Like most writing teachers, I like incorporating informal writing assignments into my class in order to make my students comfortable with writing casually and in the moment, without the the threat of a bad grade stifling their process. One way I've done this in my Banned Books class this semester is by requiring them to post a blog entry on the day's reading at least once during the semester. (The post is graded pass/fail, which also enables them to stretch the parameters of the assignment in any way they like.) This semester, the blogging assignment has created some interesting, and I think helpful, resonances between our material and popular culture.

I should add here that even though I believe that informal writing assignments are important, I also take care to reiterate to my class that the informality of the blogging assignment doesn't carry over into their midterm, final, and assorted short papers. These I grade pretty strictly. That's why I like the blog so much--it provides what I think is a needed counterpoint to the finality of the writing assignments. Writing doesn't always have to be fraught with anxiety.

That said, the blog posts also allow my students to incorporate other kinds of media into their thoughts on the day's reading. The assignment asks them to write a post before class summarizing the day's reading. In addition I also ask them to incorporate critical observations about the reading, connecting it to themes we've already covered, or even to our other texts. They are also required to post three to five critically substantive discussion questions to guide the day's discussion. These questions can be conceptually or thematically oriented, or they can ask the class to pay special attention to a particular scene or passage in the reading, encouraging the class to perform, together, a close reading of the passage in question. The blog posts are assigned at the beginning of the semester, and it usually works out that there is one scheduled blog post per class day. This way, each student gets to lead discussion for one day during the semester--the day's blogger has to walk us through his or her post, and explain the discussion questions.

Since they are writing in blog format, I expect them to follow "blogging conventions," which for me includes incorporating other forms of media--mostly images--into the posts. It was about halfway through our reading of The Island of Dr. Moreau that I began to notice an interesting confluence between the reading and, in particular, the images that my students chose to use in their posts.

First, some background. As most of you probably know, H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau is an early science fiction novel that dramatizes the horror of the proximity of our cruel animal natures. Dr. Moreau, an island-bound exiled vivisectionist, performs "experiments" on animals, attempting surgically to instill in them human physical and mental characteristics. The result is a grotesque menagerie of half-human, half-animal beings who both manifest the cruelty of their natures and inspire similar cruelty in their holders--Moreau and the two men who are trapped on the island with him. The idea, of course, is that it's unclear whether cruelty is inherently a human or animal instinct, and by the end of the novel we are left questioning the utility of the nominal boundary between "human" and "animal."

Here's where it gets interesting. The students assigned to blog about The Island of Dr. Moreau tended, apparently organically, to incorporate LOLcat images into their posts. Though the gesture is perhaps a bit flippant (an attitude that I don't frown upon in class, if it's in response to the content of a text--I take it as a sign of engagement) to me it suggested some kind of affinity between our cultural obsession with the comically illiterate cats and the horror of the just-barely human animals in the text. Below, a couple of examples of their images.

The first image refers to the twisted biblical allusions that the Beast-men make in their attempts to comprehend morality, and the second, whcih in our blog was captioned "A Drunken Beast," humorously reinterprets Moreau's epithet for his creations. Despite their levity, the lolcat images seemed weirdly appropriate for the text, and to me demonstrates that, even perhaps unconsciously, my students were processing the humanity/animality theme. Seen this way, their use of images suggests to me a sense of creative play with the ideas in the text, resulting in a digital archive of their personal, vernacular responses to the reading. I like to think of these posts as a collage of popular references around the complex themes in the text.

Their images were not always lolcat related. They also referenced other pop-culture phenomena, including body modification, plastic surgery, and cosplay. These images, some of which are rather shocking, emphasize the tenuousness of the human/animal divide. All depict people who, in some way, want to appear as animalistic or not human. Which led us to the question: what is the attraction of animality? In what ways can it be attractive, and in what ways can it be distasteful or even repellent?

The blog also allows them to insinuate their own political views into the post (though I don't generally tell them to do this). Below, an image in a post about The Handmaid's Tale. Needless to say these kinds of images tend to inspire interesting discussion.

At the very least, these images have led my class to make strong and unexpected connections to the popular culture they are immersed in, and allows them to make these connections in internet vernacular, in which they are very well versed. Indeed, this is a form of engagment that we teachers and writers often exhibit ourselves.

Bringing the Blog to the Classroom: Special-Topics Blogging and Presentations

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:58:16 +0000

Author:

Ty Alyea

Image Credit:

Matt Hurst

Since the beginning of my time instructing students in rhetoric and English courses, I have found that students are much more successful at communicating and developing their ideas when they become more aware that their writing is geared toward a concrete audience. I have also found that writing skills improve significantly when students learn to articulate their ideas in a variety of situations and formats. Finally, in talking with countless graduate students and professors about their own intellectual development, I have noticed a common refrain: teaching a topic is a crucial motivator and test for the mastery of a topic. In my "Special Topics Presentation and Blog Post"assignments, I have attempted to combine several of these values at once by requiring students to prepare the class for an upcoming discussion and take the reins for the first ten minutes of class. In doing so, the students write a blog post that provides an angle of entry into the day's reading and then make a presentation. In doing so, the students present an argument about the reading and follow up on their approach by asking questions which encourage the class to respond to their analysis, exploring how it relates to other parts of the reading selection.

In the first half of the semester, I emphasize the fact that texts can be read through a variety of critical lenses; for example, in light of its historical background, the text's formal qualities, or the text's mediation of cultural conflict. After walking them through some examples of these kinds of approaches, I encourage them to hone their own critical tendencies with an initial round of papers. Once these skills have been established, they refine their skills by preparing their peers for a segment of the assigned reading. In the week before the class presentations, I discuss the next week's reading with students who are preparing presentations. Over that week, we discuss the aspects of the reading that interest them most and I point out some resources that can help them pursue that approach further.

Two days before the class, they write a blog post which advances their main claims and sets the stage for the presentation that they will give on the material. The other students in the class are then notified of this and encouraged to take a look at the presentation topic. The setup for this presentation encourages students to make sure that they are, in fact, making an argument about the text that can be responded to. During the class period, they share their "way in" to the selected reading and explain its relevance to a passage or two from the reading. In doing so, presenters reframe their arguments to allow for more active discussion and conversation. Whereas a blog post invites students to respond to the substance of the analysis, many of the most successful presentations have been punctuated by moments where the discussion leader encouraged their peers to do short close reading exercises that are set up by the presentation.

So far, I have found that this assignment has produced some of the best discussion sections I have ever seen in action. I have also found that students who learn to respond to one another in this way become more effective at finding their own personal stakes in finding . Finally, no matter what profession they ultimately choose, I hope that assignment will help the students get ready to think of themselves as "teachers"--as masters of a skill, art, or craft that they can pass on to their friends and coworkers.

For more details about this assignment, please visit my detailed lesson plan here.

Technology and Pedagogy: The Forum and Form of Blog Posting

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:47:19 +0000

Author:

Matt Reilly

Image Credit:

via msagostino

According to legend, the Athenian orator, Demosthenes, overcome a speech impediment and a weak delivery through a practice of filling his mouth with stones and speaking through them. One might argue that Demosthenes was ahead of the curve in his use of technology. Others might suggest that my example is perverse, since 1.) the stones impede his natural ability to speak, and 2.) they were removed when he spoke in public. But what if we compare Demosthenes’ stones to our current use of loudspeakers, microphones, and PA systems, which achieve a similar end as long as the electricity is running. The individual speaker, however, experiences no benefit from these technologies once they no longer have access to them. To put it another way: instead of thinking about how technology expands our capacity to perform specific tasks, I’m trying to think about technology as an interface that actually develops a proficiency to do something we could not do before (amplifying the voice, in Demosthenes’ case). Blogs, for instance, might be thought of (on one hand) as a forum for advertising our day-to-day thoughts and activities to an audience that isn't immediately present. Blogs might also be thought of, however, as a means of improving our formal academic writing. I argue that the "form" of blogs might benefit writers at every level if we think of their formal demands. While a majority of the population treats blogs as a more “natural” form than the critical essays, many English teachers have a unique perspective into the blog's technical and stylistic demands.

I should make two points about what I’m not interested in here. First, I am not trying to pose questions about whether we should expect students to devote their limited time to one task or another (as in, should they express their ideas in twitter posts versus five-paragraph essays). Instead, I’d like to ask how a semi-trained academic writer might improve his or her craft by means of a blog. I’m less concerned here with the concept of feedback and sharing ideas than I am invested in questions of individual writing style. Second, I am not questioning whether new technology makes specific tasks easier (it obviously does in so many cases). It is more than likely that new waves of technology will continue to be promoted and implemented as long as we continue to teach. What I’ve been thinking about is the potential for a new technology to help us re-think (and not replace) old ones. I’m also addressing a subsection of literature teachers who may be ambivalent about this constant stream of technology (and what it does to the future of their book-based pedagogy). Below, I’ve posted a video that demonstrates one gross abuse of technology as a replacement for “old” models of instruction. Watch from 4.30–6.00 min., and scoff at Tim Pawlenty’s proposal for “i-College” (a downloadable app.): “[TP:] Do you really think in twenty years, somebody is going to put on their backpack, drive a half-hour to the University of Minnesota from the suburbs, haul their keester across campus and listen to some boring person drone on about Spanish or Econ 101? [JS:] “Isn’t that what college is supposed to be, sir?” When Pawlenty talks about how “technology can help a lot,” we can seriously question his priorities and motives. I raise this example not to stoke quasi-Luddite/real economic anxiety, but to point out a pitfall in thinking about technology. Although I would have classed myself as a sort of Luddite in the past (and somewhat still in the present), I can attest to having had a positive experience when in my recent use of the new forum and form of “blog” writing.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Tim Pawlenty

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

When I first encountered blogs as a contributor to the DWRL's viz., I did not feel liberated by the interface or form of online writing. Many people think this is an “easier” form than that of academic essays, but I did not. I contacted my sister, Meghan (who had already worked as a blogger for ONEin3 Boston), and asked her for advice. She taught me the basics of the blog “form,” and urged me to think about how I might develop a rapport with a hypothetical audience of readers. This is Rhetorical Appeals 101, but in an unknown world without clear boundaries or editorial policies. How to enjoy (and respect) my own blog posts and still appeal to some normative impartial spectator? My sister had expressed that it is important to come across as a “natural” writer and likeable person, who could be trusted for regular/readable updates. The idea is that, in blog posts, one really has to aim for clarity (somewhat more faithfully than in “academic” writing). Many blogs also seem to shift the emphasis from specialist expertise to a criteria based on approachability. I interpreted the undertaking as one in which I might experiment with different combinations of style. As it turns out, I have come to the decision that “academic” and online writing share about as much DNA as a great ape and a human do. Depending on how one looks at it, they share almost everything and nothing in common. The crossover between the two, however, produces interesting hybrid effects. For example, I decided that any research I introduced into my blog would need some veneer of storytelling, mystique, or performance. At the same time, I would need to write direct and honest statements, which might be read by someone with no idea about my topic or interest. The practice of shifting between registers of storytelling and personal clarity has benefitted my “academic” writing, and I have a will continue to have a good impression of blog-form even if the forum were to disappear tomorrow. I hope it doesn't, because blogging has become an exercise that I very much enjoy. Thanks for the helpful advice, Meghan. Check out her posts at ONEin3 Boston!

Blogging in the Classroom: Peer Review Plus Camaraderie!

Gulessarian — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:45:41 +0000

Author:

Lisa Gulessarian

Image Credit:

Lisa Gulessarian

As a student myself in Dr. Lester Faigley’s Visual Rhetoric class four years ago, we used Blackboard’s “Forum” feature to initiate online discussions about our readings while sitting in front of computers in the same classroom. I remember how invigorating it was to respond to my classmates’ posts as they wrote them. I also found that having a written record of my thoughts on the readings served as great review for when I wanted to refer to theories from these readings later in the course. In Dr. Faigley’s course, our class forum was a way for a shy, novice graduate student (i.e. ME!) to contribute to the discussion without feeling overwhelmed.

Now, years later, I’m experimenting with a course blog in my Rhetoric of Suburbs & Slums class. I’m already quite happy with the results.

At first, I envisioned the blog as a place for students to share their research with other students, but after a few days of mulling over using a new pedagogical tool in my class, I quickly realized that the blog could do much more than function as a mini-version of Facebook’s “Share a link” feature. Not only could I get students to share their research with their peers—with a blog, I could get them to work on their writing!

After their initial blog post where they introduced themselves (and became familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Wordpress), I’ve had students write two longer blog posts. The first was a rhetorical analysis paragraph (on one appeal from the source that they’d be analyzing in their first paper). The second was a criteria list based on a category of evaluation of their own choosing (related to the source that they’d be evaluating in their second paper). For both blog posts, I’m impressed at the level of engagement and effort that students put into writing and conceptualizing their posts.

I’m equally impressed by the careful and astute comments their peers left them. After each post was due, I asked students to post comments on the posts above and below their own. They wrote these comments in class as I walked around the room listening to their keys clicking and their videos playing (in their posts, many students included the videos or the images that they were going to analyze/evaluate). For each blog post, I asked students to watch for common setbacks, such as not tying audience to the appeal (for the rhetorical analysis post) or coming up with too-broad criteria (for the criteria list post). In both cases, students were able to alert their peers of potential problems with short comments (I asked for 6 sentences). After reading her peer’s criteria post on a music video, one student wrote “You could make [your criteria] clearer by mentioning which of these criteria are specific to which aspect of the video (images, music, lyrics, etc.) since it is a little confusing if you are evaluating a video or a song or the text of the lyrics.” Another student saw a problem in his peer’s too-general criteria and let his peer know that “The criteria of visual elements is also a little vague. Visual elements can range from camera angles to color use to computer generated elements like change is saturation and use of negative, so being specific on exactly what kind of visual elements you are referring to would be helpful.” And another student brought in prior knowledge to help her peer enlarge the scope of his criteria: “Also another thing you could talk about for visual style of a drama is lighting. In a film class I recently took my professor discussed some of the differences between sitcoms and dramas. He felt that sitcoms consist of generally bright lighting. Is this the same for dramas? Or do you think there is contrast with varied lighting techniques? Just something to possibly think about if you feel that you could add more to the explanation of that criterion.”

Of course, with this blog posts, as with any peer review, my students also gained a deeper knowledge of how they should proceed in their own writing. One student, after reading her peer’s criteria list, wrote: “I also like the way you pull direct examples from the show for your blog post (I probably should have done that for mine….oops!).” Another student told her peer that she used his post as a guide in writing her own criteria list post by writing “I actually used yours to write mine! THANKS!” Because I’m using the Learning Record, my students can document the moments that they gained confidence through the comments they both received and left for others.

An added benefit to all this blogging is that my students end up learning about each other. The camaraderie in my class is one that I would like to recreate in my future classes. Now students know about each other’s interests outside of class. After reading a blog post on a specific category of movies, one student exclaimed: “You seem to be very excited about this particular category and I feel like the information you have written just flowed out of you while blogging!” Another student, who especially appreciated her peer’s detailed justifications of her chosen criteria, happily admitted that “The way you wrote about the criteria that you’ll use to evaluate this source is really interesting. Your detailed writing makes me want to see the video now!”

In general, I’ve loved using blogging in my course. I will continue to ask students to compose mini-writing assignments for the blog. But most importantly, I will definitely make sure that they comment on their peers’ posts.

Reflections on Blogging

Tekla Hawkins — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:15:01 +0000

Author:

Tekla Hawkins

Image Credit:

Andrew

Like many of the instructors here in the DWRL, I ask my students to write blog posts throughout the semester, which means in the last year and a half, I’ve read about 180 thoughtful, carefully constructed responses to my own work. Although I added blogging to my rhetoric courses to benefit the students (after all, they meet so many rhetorical and composition questions: public & private writing, community building, visual rhetoric, low-stakes writing environments, etc.), I’ve decided this term that they might be more beneficial for me than for them.

In part, this idea is prompted by the wide divergence of the types of responses I received in my two classes.

For my RHE 306 courses last year, I asked the students to write about their research and/or their own research processes. Graded only on completion, the students had to include a minimum number of words, an image or video, and a title. More importantly, they had to comment in a substantive manner on the other blogs that were posted that day. Some students invested a lot into their blog in obvious ways, spending a lot of time finding just the right image, creating perfect transition sentences and so on.

Almost all of the students, though, found it a good outlet to talk about their worries and concerns about the course generally, and to think about some of the issues they were struggling with in class – how to do better research, how to re-organize their papers, and how to deal with issues like procrastination and anxiety. As the instructor, I rarely commented on these blogs online, but I talked about them frequently in class, and at least twice I scrapped our original plan for the day and we worked through some of the issues that were literally writ large on the screen, because I brought them up on the projector. As a group, the students for that course said they found the blogs valuable, and an important part of their development as writers.

In my RHE 309K class this term, the blog prompt was very slightly different, but the posts were dramatically different, and I’m still thinking through why this might be the case. The prompt for this course was to write six blog posts throughout the semester, which had to include a title, image, and a minimum word count, as well as responding to a certain number of other posts in a substantive way throughout the semester. The posts were to address either the readings for the week, or their own research (note: not the research process, but simply “research”). Like the 306 course, they were graded only on completion.

While some of the posts have been about the reading, most of the posts were a kind of preview or rough draft piece of something they planned on incorporating into one of their larger papers. A very few posts were about writing generally, or a kind of written response to a meeting with me about their work.

In the posts that are a re-hash of the meetings with me, or about writing, the responses tend to offer both sympathy and very concrete advice on how to address the issue. In these responses, I have the opportunity to see some of my own teaching techniques and even exact phrases echoed directly back at me. Sometimes this comes through in, “Well, Tekla said in class the other day…,” but sometimes the citation (iteration?) seems to be completely unintentional.

For the “preview” posts, however, although the students frequently asked directly for feedback, the responding students tended not to give the kind of feedback the original poster asked for, going off on questions of their own inspired by the question the OP worked from, or simply saying “good job,” even though this kind of response being explicitly forbidden in the prompt, and I know that they are very good peer reviewers.

Why is this? Since the students mimicked my own work in the process-based posts, why didn’t they in the “preview” posts? Why were they so reluctant to give the kind of feedback that would be invaluable to the other student?

Is it something about my teaching or the way I give comments on papers? Is it simply the fear of being critical in public? Is it because of the class dynamic? My 306 students were freshman, and had more obvious anxiety in general than my 309 group, who were sophomores and juniors. Was it something about the way I handled the course? The 309 group was less cohesive, a bit less friendly with each other than the 306 classes. Or was it simply, and perhaps most obviously, the prompt? Did the phrase “post about your own research,” indicate that the student’s own work was to be on display, a mini-performance? If my peer were “performing,” I would be reluctant to offer public, critical feedback, even if they asked me to.

In retrospect, I think it was probably a combination of all of these, and as I put together my syllabus for next semester, I’m thinking hard about how I can adjust the parameters of the prompt, and therefore the parameters of how my students think about the course, their classmates, and writing.

I love my student’s blog posts not only because they are smart, and funny, and show me things I would’ve never found otherwise, but because they show me my own teaching, and give me a chance to think critically about how and why I say/write/show/perform/demonstrate every action that has to do with them. They’re the best kind of mirror I could ask for.