Blogs are often seen as Web-based diaries, but they can also be used as platforms for exchanging experience, discussing, and expressing personal opinion. When blogs are used in teaching, both students and teachers can produce posts and read and write comments on other contributors’ posts. Blogs become platforms for sharing and producing content either as individuals, in groups or in a larger community.
Blogs can act as academic platforms for reflection by both students and teachers in a course and raise the profile of the academic learning.
In other words, blogs can function as an academic resource for the students themselves, for exams or later in their studies, and for the outside world, which can be motivating for the students. Moreover, teaching blogs can offer an opportunity for reserved students to communicate in other ways than during plenary sessions and lectures.
As a teacher you should consider if it is a good idea to use blogs as course blogs or group blogs:
Use teaching blogs in connection with:
Students may use the blog to submit sub-assignments in the shape of posts which can be used included in a major final assignment in the semester. You as a teacher can choose to assess the students’ blog posts, thus including the blog posts and comments in the assessment of the exam.
While students are studying abroad or in an internship, they can write about their experiences in an individual or shared course blog related to the internship. Their fellow students and teachers can then follow their activities and learn about a process that may not otherwise be very easy to follow, and may also write their comments and reactions along the way. In this case, blogs provide an opportunity for reflection on experience, theory and relationships, which may help relieve the students’ feeling of being isolated during internships or study periods abroad and may create a closer link between these periods and the university courses.
You as a teacher may give feedback in comments on the students’ blog posts or ask the students to give peer feedback on each other’s work posted on the blog.
You as a teacher may use the blog, including the students’ blog posts, to focus and adapt your lecture in accordance with the students’ understanding of the academic material. You may also ask the students to evaluate the course and their own learning process in concrete blog posts.
During the course, students can create posts in a course blog on theories, methods, theorists or academic subjects introduced in the course. You as a teacher can ask the students to take turns at creating content for the blog, which turns the blog into an academic resource that can support the students when preparing for exams.
The students can use the blog format to reflect on their own learning, their academic outcome and their own performance, for instance in a Reflection blog. This can benefit the students’ self-regulated learning.
It is preferable that students experience a connection between teaching activities and activities on the blog. This may be achieved by making it clear how and why blogs are used in the course, for instance by using a blog as an academic resource at the beginning of the semester and for feedback on specific assignments later. It may also be achieved if you as a teacher prioritise being present on the blog, for instance by giving systematic feedback on the work posted by students as comments on the students’ blog posts.
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