I currently teach two sections of a Composition II class here at Baruch College. My course theme is “Happiness,” and prior to the semester’s beginning, I’d been thinking a lot about the point that Daniel Gilbert makes in Stumbling on Happiness—that all humans need to have relationships with others in order to feel “happy.” Whether or not I agree with this statement is not as important as the idea that perhaps one way to approach the course theme might be to really think about communication and relationships that are constructed purely by language—not by the physical space of the classroom. So, to make a long story short, I began the semester with the idea that our blog would be an active space where the two sections of the one class could meet, write, and think.

I structured my syllabus so that, out of my 54 students, each week, two students from each section would be in charge of posting to the blog, and two per section would be in charge of commenting. I also provided “optional assignments” that students could either use as prompts for writing, or choose to ignore. But, about a month into our foray into blogging, I still felt disappointed by the space. It even felt tense, a huge problem for a class with the theme of “happiness.”

So I decided to confront them, and the quieter of the two sections surprised me by presenting a very interesting critique of our class blog. I asked the class to begin with a “focused freewrite” in which they needed to reflect on how they were engaging with the class blog thus far. Some comments included:

• “I hate how teachers think that they can become cool by forcing us to use spaces we think are fun to produce more academic prose.”
• “The blog is nothing more than another assignment. In fact, you even assign us when to write on it!”
• “I talk in class, I don’t want to talk at home.”
• “Aren’t these sites public? I heard that no matter how many years pass, if you write poorly on a blog, you won’t get a job.”

I then asked them to reflect on what a class blog should look like (making it clear that I believe in class blogs and have used them for years with a huge amount of success and student enthusiasm). The responses were not all that different:

• “Nothing can make blogging for class fun.”
• “Even if you don’t grade us on the blog, we still know that if we don’t write we’ll get penalized.”
• “I have my own blog, I don’t need another one to write on.”
• “Why should we have to participate in a communal blog when you, the professor, don’t do anything?”

I was really intrigued by this conversation and thought a lot about it. Why all the resistance, particularly from a class that is on the quiet side, but is also full of students who email me regularly? And, was the other section just being nice? Did they agree? If so, why didn’t they voice their discontent as openly? And, perhaps most importantly, where did I go wrong? What next?

James Hoff posted on a similar topic a while back. He made the interesting point that “despite our increasingly technological lives, or perhaps because of them, the creation and conservation of technology-free spaces where people can, and are encouraged to communicate face-to-face, free of distraction, with nothing more than their unique temperaments and their private store of knowledge and eloquence, seems more and more important to me.” Were the students reacting against the technology or against the pedagogy I’d laid out? To assign or not to assign…is that the real question?

My general belief is that students tend to enter a Composition classroom dreading the act of writing, let alone spending an entire semester doing just that. When I ask my students if they write outside of class they usually uniformly say “no.” But, they also uniformly admit to authoring thousands of text messages, instant messages, emails, blog posts, Facebook comments, etc. And, these things are all forms of writing. So, by using a blog I want to enable students to see “academic writing” differently, to lower the stakes perhaps, or to at least allow them a space where writing for school can masquerade as being fun.

I decided to change the environment. Not the look of the blog, but the look of my pedagogical hand. I sent both classes an email announcing the “rebirth of the Happiness blog”! An excerpt:

1. The main purpose of this space is for all of us to share ideas and thoughts, and to start conversations across classes. This is an informal writing space—write on what you want, how you want to, just make sure you keep it class/school appropriate.
2. From this point onwards, there are no specific “blogging” or “commenting” assignments. Since we all lead active lives and must have a lot on our minds, let’s use this space to share some of these things—many of which will organically relate to the theme of our course. Share things you’ve seen, heard, read that you found exciting. Share ideas you might be having. Pieces of creative work…Use videos, images, etc…In other words–just post. Enjoy. Have fun. Play with language.
3. You are each assigned to blog at least once this semester, and comment at least once, and that schedule still stands. I would encourage you to blog and comment more than that of course.
4. I will participate in this blogging endeavor in the same way that you do. I’ll make the occasional posts, sharing things that I find interesting, appropriate, exciting. And, I’ll say hello in the comment boxes.

The result—students are posting actively, unpredictably, visually. They are commenting and talking to each other in the comment boxes (although still not as much as I’d hoped). They are sharing Youtube videos, analyzing songs, reviewing movies, etc. The students who say little in class have been posting the most frequently. They are writing well and writing frequently. They are voluntarily sharing their critical ideas about readings from class. So, my lingering question is: can a transparently optional assignment really do that much harm?