Blogging for Uni

Blogging For Uni

Education is not something I blog about often but it is something that is important to me. I’m not a great fan of traditional systems but learning in general. It doesn’t matter what you learn, it matters that you learn. Some people go on to do awesome, world-changing things it’s their studies, some become corporate high flyers & others do their own thing.

 

What do you do when a university is trying to be modern but fails spectacularly because they are fitting new media into a traditional framework?

 

I’ve seen courses that require you to blog weekly as your “participation” in the subject. I understand this tool being used for distance education, but I feel it’s often graded incorrectly. In the instance of coursework classes, I found that we had to blog an “original” response to that week’s required readings. I experienced this in a mixed class, and this doesn’t work very well.

Blogging For Uni

By mixed class, I mean a second year undergraduate class that is also being run as a postgraduate class, but half the enrolments in the undergrad side are actually from first years, just because the class didn’t have specific prerequisites.

 

I don’t know the best way to mark these. I understand that the lecturer or tutor wants everyone to make an original blog post because that way there’s no copying. But it just seems to run into first in, best dressed.

 

And many students have never used a bulletin board before. The same questions get asked over & over again. The worst part is that the tutor gives a slightly different answer each time, so for the few students who actually read all the posts on the bulletin board, they end up panicking that the assignment has been changed.

 

I am returning to study this year – in the same course where I experienced these blogging assessment issues. It’ll be interesting to see how things have developed in the past few years with incorporating ‘new media’ into university courses. I wonder if I’ll have to do these mini blogging exercises on forums as assessment again.

 

Have you ever struggled with fitting new media into a traditional environment? Do you have any tips for me?

 

10 Replies to “Blogging for Uni”

  1. Interesting dilemma, sorry no solutions…
    I have often wondered how different the Information Systems degree with e-commerce major would be some nine years on…

    1. It’s interesting to see how things have changed. When I did my undergrad, which wasn’t really all that long ago, I was the odd one out for taking a laptop to uni. I don’t think that would be the case anymore.

  2. It would certainly be a difficult thing to grade, even teach to some degree because one of the best things about blogging is you can choose to do it however you want!

    1. Exactly, but I’m not sure the assignments were blogging in the truest sense πŸ™‚

      1. Joined this convo very late (sorry) – but this issue really bugs me. As part of an online postgrad degree this year, I had to write three academic essays and hand them in as word files AND blog posts. At first I thought the blog posts would need to be written entirely differently – because blogs are not academic essays. And I intended to embed video and integrate images and all the rest. But no, it was to be verbatim. We were directed to a 2 minute video on blogger about setting up a blog as well. So I spent all my time writing lovely essays, did a few minor tricky things with the blog (as clearly the expectations were low and there was no way I was going to continue with this beast – in fact I was embarrassed that someone would find it). Then I got the assessment back… turns out they wanted it both ways – an academic essay with all bloggy bells and whistles for each post – and the feedback I got on improvement was what I wanted to do with the blog in the first place.) I could not argue with the marks – I got what my work deserved and they are lovely people too, just (a) it wasn’t clear to me what they wanted, aggravated by (b) my distaste for posting an academic essay as a blog post. Thanks for providing an opportunity to get that off my chest, I feel better now hehe πŸ™‚

        1. Hi Rowena,
          I’ve never heard of handing in assignments as essays and blog posts – wouldn’t that double the marking of the lecturer?
          Did you have to actually start a public blog for this? That’s an interesting dilemma if that is what happened – what if you already work online and have a public image to consider? You may not want that topic linked to your name just yet, or to dilute potential search rankings for your name.
          I think studying online is so good for convenience but I’ve yet to find anywhere that has really managed the balance of interaction well.
          Hope the studies go well!

  3. Well a Vlog would certainly make things interesting. It would be interesting to see the criteria that is expected for your blog post each week.

    1. So far it doesn’t look like I’ll have to blog. Or they realised that what they were asking wasn’t really blogging πŸ™‚

  4. I haven’t studied for more than 20 years so I’m like a dinosaur in that respect. I hope you can get some helpful tips or support with it. Good luck.

    1. It already seems hard to go back and it’s only been a few years for me!

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