broken-link-checker domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/drcprod/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114bunyad domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/drcprod/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114What is it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Blogs are a collection of posts, often multimodal, published collectively online. A blog can have a single author, or many, and can be narrow or broad in the topics it covers, but nearly all blogs allow – and indeed, encourage – readers to contribute comments on the materials they contain.<\/p>\n What have people said about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Writing scholars often point to blogs as an excellent way to push students towards conscious reflection about rhetorical decisions and the writing process. In her article \u201cMetaspace: Meatspace and Blogging Intersect,\u201d rhetoric and composition scholar Elizabeth Kleinfeld shares that \u201ca majority of my students admit that they\u2019ve glossed over thinking and writing processes to spend more time on writing products to ensure good grades. Blogging helps to counteract the tendency to gloss over the thinking and writing processes by putting those processes on display\u201d (Writing and the Digital Generation 230<\/a>). Charles Tryon<\/a> agrees, saying in Pedagogy that blogging provides a way “for students to take charge of their writing, to provide them with a sense that writing matters” (128).<\/p>\n Additionally, scholarly conversation locates blogging as an excellent tool to bring distance or online learners closer both to each other and to the act of learning (Glogoff<\/a>, Clark and Mayer<\/a>). By providing a tool to nurture personal and academic bonds that falls outside the direct purvey of the academic – since most blogs are hosted by platforms not directly affiliated with the institution – blogs can lessen the gap between students and the distance environment in which they’re learning.<\/p>\n What kinds of things can I do with it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Blogging is a highly versatile tool, and can be used in a wide range of different ways. Students can be asked to keep individual blogs, where each student has their own blog that they curate and update individually. Individual blogs can lead students to a stronger sense of ownership for their writing, since they themselves are the only people with control over the space. Individual blogs also offer opportunities beyond simply the content of each post. Depending on the way the assignment is framed, individual blogs can ask students to consider purpose, visual design and other aspects of composing. For example, students could be required to choose a theme or topic around which to base their blog entries for the semester, and to design a visual layout that effectively complements their topic and personal style. Because each student has control of their own blogging space, they can experiment within their own blog while still interacting with their classmates through the comment function provided by virtually all blogging platforms.<\/p>\n Blogging can also be used as a curated collection of relevant material students find outside of class. \u00a0Platforms like WordPress and Tumblr make it easy for students to repost links to articles and other artifacts they find online; collecting such material in a class blog (with or without additional written commentary) offers a way to keep students thinking about class ideas outside the classroom, and to connect other ideas or events back to the course. For example, in a writing course with a space and place theme, students might be assigned to post several relevant links each week, with brief commentary on how they found them and how they see them connecting. In this way, the class can trace the spread of the ideas from class across outside boundaries. Encouraging students to post outside material can also help prevent them from relying solely on text-based composing in their blogs, and instead incorporating other media into their writing.<\/p>\n And though blogs can allow for a lot of freedom, instructors can also (either on occasion or for all entries) provide specific tasks to students that push them to capitalize on the affordances of the form. Rather than writing a review of a campus event, for example, students could be asked to pos a series of short videos taken at the event to give their overall impressions. Students can also be encouraged to play to their strengths – by allowing a more open set of guidelines for posts, those with artistic skills can create images, while those more comfortable or capable with words can post verbally.<\/p>\n Why might I want to use it in my class?<\/strong><\/p>\n Blogging is a great way to give students the opportunity to write for real audiences. Whether or not they end up with an audience outside of their instructor and classmates, the presence of the writing online provides a real sense of stakes for the audience, making it a good way to teach awareness of audience and to work on making appropriate rhetorical choices. And because the blog form is so loose – blog entries come in all lengths, modes, forms and subjects – it’s possible to extend a great deal of choice to students while still providing specific guidelines for assessment. For example, students might be assigned to write one post and two comments a week related in some way to the course topic – but within those guidelines, students may choose to post in whatever form or style they imagine, giving them a chance to identify and engage more deeply with the assignment.<\/p>\n Having students contribute to blogs – whether it’s a single class blog or individually curated ones – is also a great way to facilitate conversation through writing. While many schools offer institutional spaces for online discussion, such as Blackboard, using outside blogging sites can create a more familiar and comfortable, less institutional feel to the activity that leads to greater engagement. Adding a discussion component through blogging can enhance students’ sense of ownership in the conversation, since it’s taking place in a setting they are more familiar with – and in which they hold more personal stakes.<\/p>\n Finally, there’s some strong evidence that students enjoy it. A 2008 joint study by the University of Melbourne and Griffin University found that of the digital activities students engage in on a daily or frequent basis, blogs were among those they most desired to see incorporated into their classrooms.<\/p>\n Blogging as a Joint Venture: Laurie McMillan and Lindsey Wotanis<\/strong><\/p>\n To help give a sense of the many varied and creative ways blogging can be adapted to different instructional needs, Laurie McMillan and Lindsey Wotanis offered to share their experience using blogs across two different classes – an English class taught by Dr. McMillan and a Communications course taught by Dr. Wotanis – during a study abroad experience in Ireland. Both instructors work at Marywood University in Scanton, PA.<\/p>\n Tell us a little about the class in which you used this assignment. What kind of atmosphere did it have? What kind of group was it overall?<\/strong><\/p>\n Our blog, \u201cEncountering Ireland,\u201d (www.encounteringireland.wordpress.com<\/a>), was a joint venture among two classes studying abroad together in Ireland in the summer of 2012. In the first course, \u201cENGL 399: Special Topics\/Place-Based Poetry and Film,\u201d taught by Laurie McMillan, Ph.D., associate professor of English, students examined Irish poetry and film, while writing and producing creative, place-based works of their own while abroad. The second course, taught by Lindsey Wotanis, Ph.D., assistant professor of communication arts, \u201cCOMM 448: Creating Community through Story,\u201d was centered on the way community journalism can help to foster a sense of place-based community. Students enrolled in this course wrote and produced feature stories and multimedia on people they met and the places they visited while abroad. Both courses were complementary in design and scope, and the blog project allowed students–most of whom were enrolled in both courses–to explore their own experiences through writing while simultaneously publishing their work for a greater audience.<\/p>\n Because this project was executed in the first iteration of these study abroad courses, the class sizes were small, and several of the students enrolled were non-traditional students. Six students traveled to Ireland, though only five were enrolled in each course. The size of the classes and the fact that they were taking place in the summer–and partly abroad–made the environment more relaxed; this allowed for us to experiment with a new digital tool in a collaborative way.<\/p>\n Tell us a bit about yourselves as an instructor. What’s your teaching philosophy in a nutshell? What most defines your approach to instruction overall?<\/strong><\/p>\n We have similar teaching philosophies, which allowed this collaborative project to work well. In a nutshell, we both believe in a hands-on approach to coursework, which is whenever possible designed with real audiences in mind. When students write for real audiences, the writing experience is more authentic and helps them to connect their assignments with the world beyond the classroom walls. Requiring students to conceptualize and write pieces for publication meant that students needed to think critically about the rhetorical situation.<\/p>\n We also believe that writing is a process of revision and exploration. The work that the students did on the blog allowed them to post a mix of polished and unpolished writing, but always with a particular audience in mind.<\/p>\n How would you describe your experience\/comfort teaching with digital\/technology-based materials?<\/strong><\/p>\n We had both experimented with digital tools in previous courses. Lindsey used WordPress as a publishing platform for a news reporting courses in the spring of 2012. In that course, students spent an entire semester researching, reporting, and writing about hunger in the Scranton, PA, community. During that process, they worked together to design the platform on which they would publish their finished news reports. Throughout the process, the students contributed more traditional blog posts, where they wrote about what it was like learning about local hunger. The finished product, a site called \u201cHunger Bites<\/a>,\u201d was presented to the Marywood community at the conclusion of the semester.<\/p>\n