FYI
Rick Uttich
http://employees.oneonta.edu/uttichrm/
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/01/2007013001c/careers.html
Tuesday, January 30, 2007 |
Blog Overload First Person Personal experiences
on the job market I have a friend whose personal blog about her plight with
breast cancer as a stay-at-home mother of two led to her job as an official
blogger with the Cancer Blog. She
majored in journalism. I have a colleague whose blog about the potential of
social software in teaching and learning has attracted international
recognition among edu-bloggers. He is a former English teacher. Sure, blogs have changed the face of communication, and
brought new opportunities, new relationships, new forms of recognition, and
even new earning potential to many people. But not to everyone. Certainly not to my two classes of graduate students who
ended the fall semester blogged down and blogged out. In the past, when I had
required students to write blog postings in my courses, the assignment was at
least a novelty. But last semester, it just seemed a snore. In some courses, I use a single blog on which all
students are expected to post comments. In other classes, I require students
to create individual blogs and to visit their fellow students' blogs through
RSS feeds. Typically I expect students to write at least one posting a week and
to comment on several others' blogs. Sometimes I require students to post on
a particular topic, and sometimes I leave it open-ended. Whatever the
approach, I found last semester that many students fell victim to blog
overload. I began to feel overloaded, too. Don't get me wrong. I
love blogs. I have my RSS feeds set to a number of blogs that help me stay
current on personal and professional interests. But the key difference is
that I am not forced to read any of those blogs. None of them were created because
of someone else's course requirement. Frankly, the blog postings I required my students to
write were just not very interesting. Those students are bright, insightful,
frequently opinionated, and, as a whole, a pleasure to be around. Their blogs
were not. With few exceptions, the blogs would sit inactive until
about 24 hours before our face-to-face class meetings (or 24 hours before the
assignments are due in my online class) when a flurry of posts and comments
would erupt. Then, I would spend an excessive amount of time reading and
commenting in the hours before class. Some students did the same while others
didn't bother to comment at all. Effective teaching and learning? I think
not. I have been using blogs for about seven semesters. On
average, out of a class of 25 students, two to three post to their blogs once
the course ends. Most of those who continue post personal vendettas, funny
stories, or links to personally relevant resources. Their blogs have a known
audience, such as family members or a group of interested colleagues. Few
have readership outside the students' face-to-face network. So I admit it. I got caught up in all the hype about
blogs -- about their potential for communication, for creating global
connections, for expressing oneself, for extending face-to-face discussions,
and for building community in online environments. In most cases, my initial
excitement has not borne fruit. I don't fault my students. I am the instructor. And given
my background in pedagogy and education, I should be a good leader. But when
it comes to blogs, I have not been. Still, I am not going to give up on blogs. What I am
going to do is become a much more critical user. And so I offer some thoughts
as I prepare to revamp the integration of blogs in my courses. Keep a Blog Yourself I have a blog. I just don't use it. I am too busy reading
other people's blogs, responding to student postings, and writing for outlets
that may one day secure me a full professorship. How can I expect my students
to devote time to something that I don't find important enough to do myself?
So if you're going to require students to create a blog, you should probably
have an active one, too. Recognize Individual Learning Styles and
Preferences. I find it funny that I would have to remind myself of
that, given that I am expert in pedagogy. Before blogs came along, I offered
my students multiple options for demonstrating their knowledge. Some created
concept maps, others audio-recorded their thoughts (prior to podcasts), many
kept individual journals, and others created movies or presentations. All
students were responsible for demonstrating their interaction with class
content from week to week and sharing the results. In retrospect, that is not
such a bad plan. I can simply offer blogs as another possible option. Encourage Bloggers to Produce More than
Just Text When I included a requirement that all students integrate
at least three forms of multimedia in their blogs by the end of the semester,
I envisioned creations like podcasts and Gliffy concept maps. What I got was
links to YouTube videos and pre-existing podcasts and images. Clearly, the
use of blogs has unintentionally decreased the way my students interact with
course content. I need to recognize that. I need to be more explicit in my
expectations for the use of blogs. Recognize the Nature of the Beast The most effective blogs provide important and
cutting-edge information (e.g., Tech
Crunch), communicate deeply personal experiences through narrative (e.g.,
the Cancer Blog), or write to a specific audience (e.g., chemistry teachers).
Most people with successful blogs are deeply committed to posting, for
personal reasons, such as a passion for their subject, the satisfaction of
reaching a wide audience, or the ego boost associated with having others find
their narratives important enough to read. Many people with successful blogs
also have an innate slant toward the writing profession. I need to recognize all of those facts, and redefine my
expectations and purposes for using blogs in the classroom. Don't Forget "Old"
Technologies Since the advent of blogs, I had moved away from online
discussion forums. I viewed them as clunky, passé even. Now I realize they
still have merit. It is very difficult to have an extended conversation
within blogs. By their very nature, they position one person at the helm of
all activity. The threaded format of discussion forums allow for multiple
interactions among multiple individuals. It also allows subtopics to flow
from a broad topic. Don't Be Afraid to Punt. I should have ceased -- or at least modified -- the way I
used blogs last semester. I asked my students for their opinion on the topic
but few responded. I am very open to student suggestions but know that is not
true of all faculty members. My students may have feared retribution. They
may have just not cared enough to comment. So from now on, blogs will be a
socially negotiated addition to my coursework. While some readers may take my comments as an attack on
the merit of using blogs in teaching and learning, I still believe they have
a definite role to play -- especially given what we know about the importance
of metacognition and social interaction in the learning process. My hope in
sharing these insights is merely to help others consider what that role might
be in their own classrooms. Kara M. Dawson is an associate
professor of educational technology at the |
Copyright © 2007 by The
Chronicle of Higher Education |
|
//