Course Blogging

At the moment I've got three course blogs:
Shop Talk (http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/shoptalk/) for students in our new Professional Communications Certificate Program
Legal Technicalities (http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/legals/) for the Legal Secretarial students
T.Recs (http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/trecs/) for the Outdoor Rec students

When you visit them, you'll notice a lack of activity—just a couple of student comments, and everything else is teacher-generated. I've recently invited my students to become joint authors, and while a couple of them have expressed interest, no one has taken up the invitation yet. I'll be delighted if and when they do.

The tentative conclusion I'm drawing from this is that students have to be as interested as the teacher in the blog as a way of succeeding in the course. We (relatively) early adopters often forget that our colleagues and students aren't always as interested in these gimmicks as we are.

So unless the experience of showing up and contributing to the course blog is a happy and productive one, students will give the blog little or no attention.

I can put something on the blog that's critical to some short-term need of the class, like a heads-up about a snap quiz, and I've done something like that with the Legals (whose program induces a lot of quiz anxiety). Students, being highly efficient, don't want to expend any excess time and energy on a course. If blogging seems unneeded for course success, they'll avoid it.

That puts the onus on me to figure out ways to make the blog seem at least as important as the textbook and other learning materials. Well, I'm working on it!