[Air-l] is this ethical?

[Alex Halavais]

On 3/16/07, Jill Walker <jill.walker at uib.no> wrote:
> I also make my students blog in public - although like Doug, I've
> come to the conclusion that blogging doesn't work well with
> unmotivated students.

Motivation in the classroom is complicated, but one of the reasons I
regularly have students blog, and blog in public, is precisely because
it provides for intrinsic forms of motivation to learn. I guess I've
been lucky, and have always had pretty overwhelmingly positive
responses to blogging.

For it to work, I think students need to understand that it is
important to you (and to their grade). This at least provides the
initial impetus to put time into understanding what blogging is and
how it works. For many of my classes, the vast majority of the grade
in the class is based on individual blogs.

But once that initial introduction is complete, I find that students
are motivated to write when they believe that more than just their
instructor or TA will be reading what they are writing. Much of that
motivation comes of having their peers be able to read what they are
thinking, but many are also encouraged by the idea that they might
have a wider audience. In many cases, I make gathering such an
audience an explicit part of the evaluation: if you can demonstrate
engaging in a cross-blog conversation with others in the class or
outside of the class, I think this represents the best sort of
learning through blogs. Kevin Lim and Derek Lackaff have taken this a
step further this semester, offering "awards" for the student blogs
that get the greatest exposure (cf
http://com125.wordpress.com/awards/).

- Alex



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// Alexander C. Halavais
// Social Architect
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