One of the readings for Teaching with Technology is this cautionary tale by Steve Krause called "When Blogging Goes Bad." As the title suggests, it is about a time when his decision to use a blog as a way to facilitate learning in a course didn't go terribly well.
Steve passes along several bits of advice to his colleagues who are considering using a blog, and this piece has proven particularly useful for many people based on how frequently it has been cited and even re"printed" (even though the original version linked above was published in an online journal, it has in fact been printed in one or more edited collections as well). One of the goals I've set for AL 881 is to engage in reflective use of technology, modeling the kind of decision-making that I hope to encourage all members of the course to do as they design their own instructional experiences for students.
In the course syllabus, I've laid out my expectations for posting to the blog. Here, following Krause, it seems like a good idea to lay out an explicit rationale for using this blog as an instructional medium.
First: blog entries persist. The "sprint" format of this course means that we won't have a weekly face-to-face meeting where we can coordinate, reflect, and review material as we might in a traditional graduate seminar. Instead, we will have 2 weeks of online interaction, 1 week of intensive in-residence meetings, 1 month of individual work with peer & instructor reviews and consultations, and a final symposium where members present their projects. This blog is a place, then, where I ask members of the course to contribute their thoughts on the readings, their work in progress, and their own goals for the course. The posts will stay up, so the class members can come back to them as they do their own reading and writing over the summer, coordinating and calibrating their views with those of their peers.
Second: blog entries are just formal enough to foster reflection, and informal enough to permit a mix of personal and professional connections with the class material. Folks can comment on posts to keep discussion going, but even if the comments are few the posts themselves, taken together, can give us all a sense of how others in the group are thinking about the material we are reading and the work we are all doing. Here I am acknowledging Krause's discussion of blogs as a "publishing space" rather than a "discussion space." We'll use e-mail and group chat for discussion, and the blog to encourage folks to take their ideas and views "public" within the space of the course.
Third: blog posts allow me, the instructor, to monitor the level of engagement for each participant. The posts tell me where you are finding things valuable and where things are less valuable for your own interests. This, in turn, lets me know what additional or alternative readings I might suggest to you as you work on your major project, for instance. This is not just a matter of making sure each of you is visible - that is always a challenge for online instruction, but blogs are not the only way to solve that particular problem. Rather, it is a way to for me to get to know who you are as a professional and a scholar just a bit better and perhaps faster than I might otherwise.
Finally, using a blog in this way lets us have a conversation about a particular technology - a particularly common one, in fact - that we can now bring some personal experience to with regard to what it does and does not help instructors and students achieve. We will do that with other technologies in the course as well: Angel, Convore, Twitter, Google Docs, and perhaps others along the way.
That all makes sense to me, Bill. And I have often thought about writing a "follow-up" article on "When Blogging Goes Well," because I think there are ways in which blogging (either as a verb but more readily as a noun, that is, as a publishing platform) can go well indeed.
ReplyDeleteWe'll have to come back to this topic when we finish this course, Steve, to see how well this attempt has gone. If it all works out, perhaps we can offer some data for a "when blogging goes well" piece.
ReplyDeleteNot that I want to tempt fate. :) But I'm optimistic.
I really liked reading this piece, Bill.
ReplyDeleteA few questions have arisen out of reading it:
- Steve writes that, in hindsight, he should have made a specific requirement in terms of the number of posts that his students were to have made. What is your opinion on this? I noticed that we don't have a specific number of blog posts as of now-
- Also, he quotes Ferdig and Trammel, who write that, "Blogging opens up assignments beyond the teacher-student relationship, allowing the world to grade students and provide encouragement or feedback on their writings." This thought concerns me in terms of my main area of research- that is "the world" for the most part is not interested in or even opposes issues of language justice. So what happens when "the world" is in opposition to the purposes of the class? Also, what does this mean for the credentials that instructors have obtained/ the interaction between academics and outsiders?
I'm sure we'll be discussing these ideas throughout the semester- I just thought I'd share my thoughts!
I wanted to respond to your second question, Shari. It is an important one. This blog is a public space. And so others can read what you write here. I've made writing in this space tougher to do - limiting those who can author posts to those enrolled. But if people want to login with a Blogger userID, they can comment on posts.
ReplyDeleteThis is a risky move, to some degree, that I've calculated is worth it for the purposes of a graduate seminar. I might make a different choice if the course is an undergraduate course, or if the course is about something other than teaching with technology. The issue, for me, is safety vs. experimentation. An ideal learning environment provides safety so that the experimentation can occur, but doesn't isolate learners from consequences to the degree that learning does *not* occur!