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Writing Showcase: Christian Sandvig

Student Blogs, Creative Assignments, & The Power of Public "Publishing"

Tools: Movable Type Blog

Instructor: Christian Sandvig, Speech Communications

Course: Speech Com 199: Communication Technology and Society

Students: 100 Communications undergraduates

Learning Objectives: create a writing-intensive course while maintaining student engagement and keeping workload manageable for students and instructor and TAs

Pedagogical Model: Online Publishing as a Motivator of Student Engagement and Collaborative Learning

Online Writing Affordances: multimedia "essays" are easy/free through use of various multimedia such as images, videos; ubiquitous authoring, distribution, publishing; sharing of student work with off-campus professionals, friends, and family

Resistance & Concerns: FERPA; student cheating by posting empty posts to hit deadlines and then composing entry after the deadline; too much work to manage; too great technical learning curve for typical faculty or TA or student;

Strategies for Campus Adoption: brown bags, presentations, and articles showcasing faculty exemplar; public nature of blog can speak for itself; faculty development initiatives aimed at promoting the sharing and development of creative and engaging assignments (some writing assignments are simply more engaging and interesting to writers and readers than others)