cac.ophony.org

Now that I have (quite happily) amassed a few replies and even a pingback (!) here, I’d like to respond briefly. As I continue to think blogging in a course through, I have sort of quickly come to two conclusions–one, having a Course Blog in the way that Kate describes it sounds like a lot of fun.

In an email response awhile back, a faculty member at CWE told me she thinks that with blogging students take/have/hold more ownership than in simply responding to a professor’s comment in a Blackboard discussion, and that for this reason blogs can be quite productive. Kate and Mikhail both make this point, that blogs privilege the author.

Students having ownership is important to me, but also requires negotiating and some shaping at times. And I think this would be true in using a blog. Jim’s initial comments also sort of echo some of my hesitations to immediately begin using blog-writing in a course. If I’m new to it using the technology, perhaps a course like Writing in the Social Sciences is not the place i want to first try it, because already there are genres of writing that students need to learn well. Summary, analysis, critique and extensions. That for this first time teaching it anway, it could be me biting off more than I can chew. (Which i am quite good at doing.)

So my first thought being, this sounds cool and fun and potentially productive, my second thought immediately following is let’s dip our feet into the water and try the reading thing first. Blog reading. Kate suggests having students engage with the world through reading and responding to blogs.

(I like this idea, and as a side note, I also think it blows the high-stakes/low-stakes distinction out of the water. Let’s say I decide not to grade their responses: low-stakes. Blogging has a semi-public element to it, an audience in the ‘beyond:’ higher-stakes. I began having issues with the low-stakes/high-stakes distinction midway through my Writing Fellowship. It doesn’t surprise me that in using technology more now as a Communication Fellow, a case would appear in which this framework does not seem entirely useful or accurate.)

So let me be clear about the first conclusion to which I have come. There will not be a course blog in Writing for the Social Sciences at CWE. However, there will be a component involving reading content related blogs and responding to those. Hopefully, I can help shape students’ responses by asking that they incorporate some of the types of writing skills we learn in the course into their blog comments. And again, I wonder, how can I find good blogs with content specific to various social science issues and disciplines? I also would like to know if anyone has any thoughts if there are existing blogs where people are writing on social science issues, that might be appropriate sites for students to comment on the readings we are doing? Am I asking someone else to run a blog for my class?