Using Multimedia Blogs to Manage and Encourage Writing and Revision
Christian Sandvig (Assistant Professor, Speech Communication)
Speech Communications Assistant Professor Christian Sandvig talked
about the role that multimedia blogs play in managing and encouraging
students in their writing process. As a fourth year Assistant Professor,
Sandvig said he found it a struggle to develop a large lecture course
without much previous experience. He wanted writing to be a really
important feature, but didn't know how to create a writing intensive
course while still satisfying the students' needs. The number one
complaint he had from past courses was that assignments generated
too much work.
Therefore, he decided to create a series of blog assignments for
his courses (for example, http://199.niftyc.org/
) that featured course material. A blog is a shared online journal,
typically a chronology of events or thoughts of a person, and has
become increasingly popular within the last few years not only as
an educational resource but for sharing personal experiences and
opinions. After feedback on the first blog course (which had actually
increased the amount of writing students had to do compared to his
classes without blog tasks) not only were there positive comments,
but students actually found the blogs to be the best thing about
the course. According to Sandvig, that was the first clue that his
method was working.
At an enrollment capacity of 100 for Speech Communications 199,
Sandvig's department is facing increased demand for the course and
is considering opening up more seats. Despite the strong student
demand for the class, there are many advantages for teachers who
work closely with blogs, Sandvig commented. Not only do blogs give
students a chance for feedback and revision with their writing,
but peer review and public writing is a big feature of the online
journaling entries. Students feel that more people are viewing their
work and monitoring the quality of their writing. The "perception
of scrutiny may improve their writing," Sandvig said. Additionally,
the use of blog journaling provides students with the task of "regular
normalized writing," which promotes developing the skills to
write on a frequent basis.
One concern with doing any out-of-class writing assignment is plagiarism.
Sandvig believes that online blog assignments help undercut student
plagiarism by creating the perception that the student writing is
being monitored very closely and being "published" in
a more public arena than simply for the traditional individual reader/professor.
While the reality might be that any one student blog post is only
read by the teacher and a few classmates or a TA, and that some
less formal posts might even go unread by anyone, nonetheless, the
reality and the perception of greater readership and monitoring
seem to inspire students to take greater interest and care with
their writing. In his course students are required to complete eleven
individualized, course-specific blog assignments, of which they
have the opportunity to choose from a list throughout the course
of the semester. Sandvig found "remarkably consistent grading"
amongst himself and the teaching assistants when they followed a
course grading rubric for the online blog assignments.
Sandvig emphasized using blogs as an active learning technique.
For one such assignment, his students had to find "functional
explanations for why societies communicate" and become a 'misguided
archaeologist' and record their findings online. After locating
a communication technology they no longer had use for (some students
used old CD players), students had to think of what it may do if
they didn't know its purpose, relating the application of concepts
from class.
Ultimately, Sandvig recognized the prevalence of knowledge that
University students had in multimedia technology previous to the
course. Using the weblog publishing program called Movable
Type, essentially a content-management database system, Sandvig
simply gave students a basic training on how to post a message and
how to post an image. He found some students went above and beyond
any of his expectations by incorporating digital photography and
video to support their writing assignments. "The students have
a lot of experience in multimedia already. I never expected anything
like this to come out of the blogs."
Previously "terrified at designing a large lecture course,"
Sandvig came away from his blog-based class welcoming the idea of
increasing his students' writing while at the same time providing
a way to manage the class in a more efficient and organized manner.
About Christian Sandvig
Christian Sandvig is an Assistant Professor of
Speech Communication. His research and teaching focuses on communication
technologies and public policy.
- By Lauren Eichmann
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