PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 20, May 4, 2006

Using blogs in course work helps improve students’ writing

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@uiuc.edu

Click photo to enlarge Christian Sandvig

Several years ago when Christian Sandvig, then a new professor of speech communication, was developing a course called Communication Technology and Society in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, he wanted to make the course writing intensive, but was concerned about managing the workload of grading the work produced by up to 100 students.

After reading scholarly studies on using diaries to enhance writing skills, Sandvig decided to try a high-tech twist on that tried-and-true tool:  blogs.

Blogs – shorthand for Web logs – are chronological, online journals. Thousands of users – known as bloggers – have adopted the medium, some as highly personal but public vehicles for self-expression and others for sharing information and encouraging discussion about politics, culture, education and almost any topic imaginable.

According to EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association that promotes information technology, as many as 50 million people currently use blogs and blogs are gaining acceptance as instructional tools.

Sandvig now uses blogs in three undergraduate courses and a graduate seminar course he teaches, although the grading and functions of the blogs vary. In the senior seminar, students’ blogs are graded simply on a pass or fail basis, and the blog serves as a forum for students to write about complex topics in the assigned readings.

 In “Communication Technology and Society,” an introductory course for undergraduates, graduate teaching assistants comment on the students’ blogs and students create a portfolio of their best entries to be graded. In addition to writing their own blogs, students in the course are required to review their peers’ work.

The results have been surprising, Sandvig said. Even students unfamiliar with blogging before taking the class readily embrace it. And, when the blogs are combined with Sandvig’s discovery-oriented assignments such as a technology-oriented treasure hunt, students become excited about learning, consistently producing work that exceeds the requirements: compositions that are longer than the specified word minimums or that incorporate other media.

“Students are always happy when they see something happening in class that they think of as a practical skill,” Sandvig said. “And it may be that blogging is for them a practical skill, when for faculty members it’s a means to a liberal arts education. Students see this as connecting to a broader sort of technology or social movement in society.”

The public nature of blogging improves students’ writing because they know that their peers and other people besides the instructor will be reading their work. Sandvig also shows students exemplary work from previous semesters and takes a few minutes at the beginning of each class to comment on selected blog entries.

The blogs have proven useful as course-management tools as well, allowing Sandvig to give more writing assignments without being swamped with paper or peppered with student complaints about getting too much work. Many students like the fact that the “Communication Technology and Society” course is paperless, since all the assignments are done electronically. And the Movable Type software used for the blogs allows Sandvig to monitor TAs’ comments and grading of students’ work.

“In the teaching evaluations, I’ve been gratified that the blogs have made a big appearance, and they’re often mentioned along with the educational goals that I had for the blog assignments,” Sandvig said. “The comments are all positive.”

Blogging has piqued the interest of many UI faculty and staff members, and Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES) has created a blog and e-mail listserv called “Teaching With Blogs and Wikis at UIUC” so instructors can learn how to create blogs and share techniques.

Other bloggers on campus include University Librarian Paula Kaufman, whose blog is called “Issues in Scholarly Communication.” Lanny Arvan, assistant chief information officer and a professor of economics, and Robert Baird, coordinator of instructional development and a professor of cinema studies – both staff members of the Educational Technologies Division of CITES – each write blogs on learning technology.

Arvan, in a recent interview with EDUCAUSE, said he created his “Lanny on Learning Technology” blog to share his thoughts with faculty and staff members and render himself more approachable.

Baird, who calls himself a “big believer in blogs,” also creates an annual photo blog of Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival for movie buffs.

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