Blogs and Discussion Boards
Friday, May 5th's, brown bag was led by Craig McKenney and Matt Schwisow. The topic was using blogs and discussion boards for students to post their work and to interact with each other. Both Craig and Matt teach writing, but it was easy to extrapolate beyond their assignments to other things instructors could do.
Craig has provided a lot of information on his web site about how he uses blogs and his rationale for doing so: http://flightline.highline.edu/cmckenney/studentwork.htm. The site shows Craig's point system for grading and links to a couple of student blogs as samples. It is well worth reading. (By the way, one of Craig's "lessons learned" is to have students use Blogger.com.) *
Matt gave a thorough demonstration of his discussion boards on Blackboard. It was noted in the discussion that there are good and bad sides to teacher postings. On the postive side, the teacher can model how to give feedback (and, models proper language structure, for language learners). On the negative, teacher postings can attract students to read and focus only on the teacher's comments.
Blackboard's discussion board offers a couple of other handy grading tricks: the teacher can sort by author to count contributions for tracking points and can see how many times each message has been read.
Both Craig and Matt responded to the question: what's the difference between using a blog and a discussion board? Craig said a big advantage of blogs is that students can personalize their blog sites, which gives them a sense of ownership of what they post there. They can put up photos, their favorite links, choose their own color and design schemes, etc. Angi Caster, a participant in the discussion, said, "it's where they live."
The idea is that these personalized blog sites are more comfortable than a formal "academic box" that they've had no input into designing. So their writing to their blogs is authentic: it is posted with an awareness that it has an audience that is potentially wider than just their teacher or even just their teacher and classmates. Unless they restrict who can view their blog, anyone on the internet can read it. Their writing then tends to be a truer reflection of who they are.
On the question of blogs v. discussion boards, Matt was asked if those spaces lend themselves differently to essay and dialogue. The ensuing discussion in the group reflected a feeling that the discussion boards are "faster," more flexible for prolific dialogue, and that language used in them would tend to be both less formal and more succinct. But a disadvantage to discussion board postings is that you have to click on the subject lines to open the messages, whereas the blog is already open, and so are any comments (again, unless the blog owner sets them to be hidden).
Both Craig and Matt felt that which medium is better depends on the assignment, how the teacher sets up the assignment, and its learning goals. The discussion teased out a lot of detail about how each can be used for instruction and how they work as learning environments.
*Another point from Craig's demo was that he has students create a new posting for each assignment revision, rather than having students make the revisions in their original posting. In this way, students can see their progress by comparing their later versions with their early ones.
Friday, May 5th's, brown bag was led by Craig McKenney and Matt Schwisow. The topic was using blogs and discussion boards for students to post their work and to interact with each other. Both Craig and Matt teach writing, but it was easy to extrapolate beyond their assignments to other things instructors could do.
Craig has provided a lot of information on his web site about how he uses blogs and his rationale for doing so: http://flightline.highline.edu/cmckenney/studentwork.htm. The site shows Craig's point system for grading and links to a couple of student blogs as samples. It is well worth reading. (By the way, one of Craig's "lessons learned" is to have students use Blogger.com.) *
Matt gave a thorough demonstration of his discussion boards on Blackboard. It was noted in the discussion that there are good and bad sides to teacher postings. On the postive side, the teacher can model how to give feedback (and, models proper language structure, for language learners). On the negative, teacher postings can attract students to read and focus only on the teacher's comments.
Blackboard's discussion board offers a couple of other handy grading tricks: the teacher can sort by author to count contributions for tracking points and can see how many times each message has been read.
Both Craig and Matt responded to the question: what's the difference between using a blog and a discussion board? Craig said a big advantage of blogs is that students can personalize their blog sites, which gives them a sense of ownership of what they post there. They can put up photos, their favorite links, choose their own color and design schemes, etc. Angi Caster, a participant in the discussion, said, "it's where they live."
The idea is that these personalized blog sites are more comfortable than a formal "academic box" that they've had no input into designing. So their writing to their blogs is authentic: it is posted with an awareness that it has an audience that is potentially wider than just their teacher or even just their teacher and classmates. Unless they restrict who can view their blog, anyone on the internet can read it. Their writing then tends to be a truer reflection of who they are.
On the question of blogs v. discussion boards, Matt was asked if those spaces lend themselves differently to essay and dialogue. The ensuing discussion in the group reflected a feeling that the discussion boards are "faster," more flexible for prolific dialogue, and that language used in them would tend to be both less formal and more succinct. But a disadvantage to discussion board postings is that you have to click on the subject lines to open the messages, whereas the blog is already open, and so are any comments (again, unless the blog owner sets them to be hidden).
Both Craig and Matt felt that which medium is better depends on the assignment, how the teacher sets up the assignment, and its learning goals. The discussion teased out a lot of detail about how each can be used for instruction and how they work as learning environments.
*Another point from Craig's demo was that he has students create a new posting for each assignment revision, rather than having students make the revisions in their original posting. In this way, students can see their progress by comparing their later versions with their early ones.
posted by Janiasea at 9:30 AM
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