If I could build my own app/tool/System...a little late

I apologize to you all, AL 881 folks. I had thought I had uploaded this during our in-residence session after we had presented our app/tool/system ideas that Friday, but turns out I had not. Feel free to actually develop this system for me :)

If I could develop a tool/app/system, I would develop a system for grading online participation, specifically online courses that utilize blogposts for class interaction/ participation.

This system would have an algorithm, incorporated into the blog, that takes into account:


- the number of blogposts that a student makes
- the frequency with which the student makes posts (for example, 20 posts in one day or 20 posts over five weeks)
- (ideally)the quality of the posts- this could be, at a basic level, a letter-repetition checker (that is, is the blog simply jibberish letters put together or real words). The more advanced level of quality would certainly be up to the instructor to decipher.

I would imagine this system being incorporated into an existing blog hosting site, such as blogger.com or as part of a new blog hosting site. It might be possible for this system to exist apart from a blog hosting site, but I have yet to figure out how this would work. Thus I imagine a fully contained site/system with student and instructor access, such as how Eli functions.

Overall, the system would be useful in that the things that aren't as important when compared to the learning that occurs throughout the course but which are still required to measure participation (such as the number of blogposts a student completes) can be moved to electronic media. This would give the instructor more time to focus on the more important aspects of the course such as the quality of student blogposts and additional scaffolding work that students may require.

(Image taken from problogger.net)