The Straight Skinny

I’ve used blogging and social media in my studio and lecture courses for the last 6 years. I’ve experienced the use of multiple platforms and approached objectives in a wide variety of ways – some successful, some not. The way that I currently utilize blogging in my lecture courses (both online, and face-to-face) has been my most satisfying attempt and so this blog (and corresponding presentation) share a bit about what I’ve learned by trial and error.

Copy of Presentation from Faculty Development Day, October 14, 2016

It’s not just for travel logs and foodies!

Blogging is a platform with a history and association of being independently driven and based on personal opinion. Though the reality of blogging application exceeds this limited stereotype, when you say “blog” to most students their first thoughts are of food porn and travel logs. Blogging is social media, plan and simple. But it also has the capacity to extend a students understanding of social media beyond Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Because of the average students natural inclination toward social media, the blogging platform is very conducive for facilitating more open and introspective personal reflection.  For one, the concept of writing for an audience is never more real for a student then when they have an actual audience.

Knowing that their peers are going to read their submission also helps increase accountability (because everyone knows if they are turning something in late) and in general, it appears that students spend more time on the assignments as a whole. Adding an element of peer review will further amplify this aspect. In fact, it is a great foundation for discussions about online etiquette (or “Netiquette”) as well as avoiding plagiarism and being more accountable and professional in how they present themselves online.

Blogging assignments do come with challenges though – for one, grades cannot be automatically imported into the grade-book and you have to be more proactive about checking for student participation because you can’t “track progress” as in iCollege. Additionally, there is no TurnItIn option. But all of these hurdles are not so high that they can’t be scaled and the rewards of doing so – in my opinion – far outweigh the effort required.

Students will not be as prepared as you might expect.

Assuming that students will know what you mean when you say “set up your blog” will result in disaster. Despite our common perception that today’s student is highly technologically literate – as many teachers soon realize when trying to implement a tech-based project – this simple isn’t true in practical application in a classroom setting.

Due to the diversity of our student population at Perimeter College, it is more effective to assume that students have very little knowledge about what will be required of them when assigning technological objectives like blogging. While this places more burden on faculty to provide adequate and complete instruction the good news is, the WordPress platform supported by GSU is very approachable and easy to learn for both students and faculty.

Setting a stage for success.

Comments such as “you’re all probably better at this than I am” or “I will skip this part because I’m sure you’ll all know what to do” back fire quickly when introducing blogging assignments.

While the system is intuitive, many students will assume that the task is in some way difficult or different than their normal online activity and this negative preconception can ultimately impact the ease with which they achieve early objectives. They frequently start off feeling overwhelmed and instruction which makes an assumption about what they should know seems to compound this attitude.

Supportive and reassuring instruction that recognizes that this task may be completely new for a student can go a long way toward alleviating this anxiety and will keep each person open to the possibilities of the platform.

Combating Plagiarism – Not all assignments are created equal.

Unlike the Dropbox in iCollege, WordPress is not equipped with easy and immediate plagiarism detection. This certainly makes it harder to assess certain assignments, however, the solution is to design assignments that are exceptionally difficult to plagiarize. Of course this – like so much of what we do as educators – is really deceptively simple.

Some assignment are just more appropriate for blogging than others. Consider the students natural bias about blogging and play into it. When they are asked to engage personally they are unable to just go online and copy+paste content. Students are crafty little buggers sometimes – even the best laid plans can be foiled by the sneakiest of sneaks. The reality is, this is true of ALL assignments so using this as a reason to avoid blogs is just silly.

Keeping your first couple of assignments simple and personal will allow you to quickly get a sense of their personal writing style and aptitude. As you begin to assign more complex objectives that involve research you will find it easier to identify when they break from their unique voice. From there, taking a few choice questionable sentences and popping them into a google search will often yield ample evidence of an attempt to deceive you in their attempt… lets face it, they’re typically just not that crafty!