No More Slogging Through Class, Now It's Blogging Through Class

The beat goes on. Juco teachers like Kris Seago innovate like the devil. Does blogging cause learning? There are bloggers who are earning bucks from online advertising within their blogs. That might be the only lesson to be learned: a fool and his money are soon parted. If this is (fair & balanced) nonsense, so be it.

[x Austin Fishwrap]
ACC Students Blog For Class: Online Assignments Engage Students, Encourage Discussion, Professor Says
By Katie Humphrey

From homes, libraries and coffee shops, Austin Community College students are sharing their thoughts on election primaries, government spending, education and criminal justice policy.

And their online essays, written as blogs and posted for the world to see, fill requirements for class.

ACC professor Kris Seago started requiring students to maintain blogs when he taught an online course about Texas and local government during summer session. Impressed with the students' work and enthusiasm, he now requires blogging of all of his students in Texas and national government classes.

"Prior to this, I would have them write relatively lengthy academic papers, which I could just tell they despised," Seago said. "They weren't fun for them to write, and they weren't fun for me to grade. I thought, 'Why not try to get them to write papers online?'?"

The blogging accounts for one-third of students' grades — class participation and exams make up the remainder — and starts with an assignment to build a blog with links to both traditional and nontraditional news sources. Then the students pick an article on a topic of their choosing, as long as it relates to the level of government covered in class, summarize it and explain to their classmates why they should read it. Subsequent assignments build off of commentary on articles, their own editorials and commentary on classmates' editorials, among other things.

"I'm impressed at how it forces people to be interested or have an opinion ... and you're accountable to it," said Roni Taylor, 31, a part-time ACC student in Seago's fall semester Texas and local government class.

Educators have been incorporating online requirements into classes for years, starting with posts to message boards. They are venturing into blogs and wikis, programs that allow multiple users to produce and edit content, said Paul Resta, a professor at the University of Texas College of Education and director of the Learning Technology Center.

He encourages his UT graduate students to blog, and he also requires them to research and write an entry on an education-related topic for Wikipedia, an online user-written encyclopedia.

"That's much more interactive, much more engaging to students," Resta said. "How motivating is it (to write) something that only the professor reads?"

Brian Morgan, 16, a high school student who is dually enrolled at ACC, said he has been wanting to start a blog, and the class gave him a starting point. He said that he welcomed the opportunity to share his opinions with his classmates and that knowing they would read his essays compelled him to do more research to support them.

"The class ... is not so much about putting facts in your brain and spitting them out on a test or in a paper, but really helping you think about government and engage in it," Morgan said. "Instead of (a paper) being read by one person, or two at most, it's out there for the world."

[Katie Humphrey is a staff writer for the Austin American-Statesman.]

Copyright © 2007 The Austin American-Statesman

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