Presenters:

• Dr. Paula Hudson – Assistant Professor, Doctor of Physical Therapy Program – Elon University
• Rick Palmer – Instructional Designer, Instructional Design & Development – Elon University

Example Blog They Used in Classroom:

• Tests and Measures

Possible Assignment Candidate’s for Blogging

• A flat assignment – an assignment that is boring. Something that students hate to learn and teachers hate to teach.
• Bored?
• Collaboration is an active model, but you don’t have enough time in the classroom
• Struggle to stay Relevant

How does Blogging Address these Issues?

• Extends the time students are actively involved in the class
• Expands the collaboration between students in the classroom

Other Cool things:

• This assignment can go outside of the classroom
• Can tap into the innate competitiveness in the classroom to kick up the energy
• Small groups can easily work together to create content
• Comments can be moderated (beneficial posted, others not)

Cons

• There is some time and labor on the setup
• There are some things to learn from it.

Response from Students

• They loved it already
• They are looking for something that sets them apart from their peers when they graduate. They liked that they could put on their resume that they have a web publication.
• Anywhere – they can do this assignment at home, in PJ’s, in kitchen.
• My work matters – people are using it and coming to it.

Response from Teacher

• Less time in class
• Achieve goals
• Final product that is awesome, and can be shared
• Students were very engaged
• Liked that students could be competitive and responsive

Game we Played

This was really a cool part of the class. They set up a mystery activity where we all logged in and posted our clues and then read the clues and tried to post a solution. It was great!

Thoughts about Blogging and Us at UNC

I have had the opportunity to help a professor in the past with a cinema course. He had students post video’s online that they found on YouTube and other sites that had to do with the genre they were studying. He also had a course requirement that they post a certain number of posts and comment a certain number of times. It was really productive and when they were done it was a great resource for others.

It would be great to take a look at a syllabus with a faculty member to see what kind of ideas we could generate about boring, but necessary, activities.

Any takers?

Oh this is just awesome!  I just read about how an author, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, is using his blog to solicit feedback for a book he is publishing.  Blog’s are really going mainstream when this happens.

Great idea though!  One we have been using in education for a while… peer feedback.  Of course a blog potentially offers a much more diverse, and larger number of reviewers.