How do I read all of that writing?
Posted by: doug in blogging tips, collaboration, blogs, Web 2.0, generalIf you’ve been bit by the blog-reading bug, you know that you can very quickly fill up your RSS reader with way too many subscriptions. Fortunately, most of the time, you don’t have to read and respond to each and every post. It is easy enough to skim through collections of posts, looking for those that are most relevant. And of course, there is the wonderful “Mark all as Read” button, a feature in most RSS readers, which instantly relieves the guilt of falling 3 or 30 or 300 posts behind on your reading.
But what happens when blogging and commenting on other students blog posts, becomes a central part of a course? With 20 or more students each writing one or more posts a week, just keeping up with the blog can quickly become a significant part of the weekly workload - for both the students and the instructor. Can students and teachers get away with hitting the “Mark all as read” button?
This is one of the challenges that has come up in a class I’m helping out with this semester that has turned a long-standing paper portfolio project into an online portfolio incorporating both blog-like and wiki-like interaction. When asked to give feedback on the project, nearly all of the students wrote that they like how the online portfolio gives them the opportunity to post their ideas, reflect on their readings, and continue class discussions outside of class. There was wide-spread agreement that the portfolio was an integral and useful part of the class. But when asked what could be improved, several of the students mentioned having difficulty keeping up on what their peers are writing. A few said that it was hard to sift through the many posts to find those that are most relevant each week.
We initially thought that “tagging” would be a solution to the latter problem, but so far it seems that the students don’t really use the tags to navigate the site. We added a “Top Tags this Week” block to the main page, to help students keep track of the topics that are receiving the most attention in class. We also switched over to a short abstract for each post on the front page, so that students didn’t feel as if they have to read every word of every post. This helped a bit, but students still noted that they were sometimes overwhelmed by all of the posts. And so, we’ve come up with a dashboard view, that allows students to quickly choose what they want to read based on the authors and titles of each post.
In addition to improving the layout and design of the site, we’re also thinking about how to frame student expectations. One initial hope for this project was that it would take the individual and potentially lonely act of producing a portfolio and make it social and interactive. Students can click on the “My Contributions” page to see their own evolving portfolio, or they can dive into the river of news, or the tags, to explore the work of their peers. Unlike the paper-based portfolio project, we wanted students be able to benefit from and build upon the work of their peers. This is certainly happening - students are starting to reference each others posts, and are occasionally extending upon their peers’ post ideas and formats. But the process of selecting, reading, and reacting to the work of their peers remains challenging.
And so, I’m asking for your help. If you were tasked to create an introductory guide to course blogging, what advice would you give to help frame students expectations? How would you help them deal with the inevitably overwhelming flood of information? What other advice would you give to make sure students time and energy was put to best use in these environments?
I’ll put a few of my initial ideas into the comments, but I’m most looking forward to seeing what you have to say!
Entries (RSS)
November 21st, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Select, read, and react - You don’t have to read everything - instead, take the time to select, read, and react. For selecting what to read, remember that tags are your friends. You can use them to keep up on the issues and topics that are most important to you. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of your peers’ posts, click on a tag or two and just read the posts on those topics. Another common strategy is to skim the page first, picking out one or two key posts that you want to return to and read completely. When you do choose to read something, read critically, with an eye toward forming an opinion of your own on what the author has to say.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:58 pm
For comments, “Agree” and “Disagree” are just the beginning- you can also:
extend (I agree that cats are better pets than dogs, and I’d also argue that they are better pets than lizards)
support (I’d like to offer three more reasons cats are better pets than dogs),
question (Are cats, as you say, really friendlier than dogs?)
qualify (While it is true that some cats can be trained to do amazing tricks, this is certainly not the case with all cats)
connect (For more discussion on which animals make the best pets this link is worth a read)
summarize (so far, we’ve determined that….).
November 21st, 2007 at 5:34 pm
One thing that may help is asking students to respond to a certain number of posts/people per week. This relieves them of the “oh my gosh gotta read everything!” blues, ensures that all students receive at least some feedback, and brings everyone to the page where everything’s happening (your “dashboard”).
November 23rd, 2007 at 11:21 am
Thanks for jumping into the discussion Dorothea! - You’re right that communicating the guidelines for responding and commenting is essential.
For this project the instructor asked for a certain number of contributions per week - whether they were full posts or comments. This allowed students to choose when to shift their focus between writing new posts and reading/commenting on their peers’ work. Perhaps this leads to another potential guideline for students:
If you’re not sure what to write about, focus on reading and commenting. Look for ideas that spark your interest in your fellow students’ posts. In your comments, work to help the author and your classmates dive deeper into the topic.
We’re off to a good start. What other guidelines might we offer students? What existing resources have you seen that do a good job tackling this question?
December 17th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Here’s another one: Mimicry is good. Just make sure you link to your sources. One of the students in this class attended an outside of class lecture and decided to post notes and commentary on the event. Another student, who also attended the same event, saw the post, and decided to extend the discussion by posting his own commentary. This second student then asked other students in the class who had attended the event to do the same, and linked to the original post to cite his source for the idea. This is a good example of a class blogger coming up with a new post format, that provides inspiration and motivation for other bloggers to enter the discussion and share their ideas.