Dear all
I am coming in late to the discussion and was intrigued to see the question about which assignments should be dropped to introduce blogging into a course. This was a dilemma for us last year when we wanted students to journal their learning progress and also communicate as a class.
So we decided to combine the two things through blogging. If blogs are the main means of communication and they are included as an assessment, students have no choice but to use them. If they are open, they also attract comment from the blogging community which enriches the learning experience for students. If weekly tasks - discussion questions, readings etc - are set as a guide, students can be given credit against criteria for every posting when the blog is assessed.
I would like to share a model of learning involving a course blog, students blogs and a course wiki which I have used for three courses, two of which were team taught with a colleague.
Student blogs are used as a progressive assignment to demonstrate reflection and progress in the course. They are also used as a means for students to provide feedback to each other and share ideas and discuss concepts in the course. The discussions which occur around the blog posts are integral to developing a learning community. There are links to the participants' blogs from the course blog. Students are encouraged to use a RSS reader to keep track of each other's postings.
All three courses are open content on
WikiEducator - the first two have just completed a semester with formal and informal enrolments and the third is just commencing with formal and informal enrolments.
1. Designing for Flexible learning Practice - DFLP
2.
Evaluation of eLearning for Best Practice3.
Facilitating Online Communities - this has just started.
I hope you find this helpful as a model. You might wish to join Facilitating Online Communities and try it out for yourselves. My colleague Leigh Blackall is facilitating on his own this year as I am on thesis leave....yes getting distracted by this discussion. :)
We are finding it works very well when all assignments are integrated and each student uses a blog as the focal point. For example, in DFLP - as well as analysis of weekly readings and exploration, students post ideas for their flexible development plan and their presentation of the plan (assignment two) on their blogs (assignment one) as they progress ending with the final plan (assignment three).
Bron