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last.updated 6.7.10

 

Blog Entries & Community Analysis

Purpose

There are three primary purposes for the blog entry assignment:

  • First, to supplement the assigned reading for the course by giving the individual students an opportunity to do research on the topic(s) that you will be focused on for the rest of the course projects. Therefore, it is recommended that you focus your choices around a single, relatively narrow topic
  • Second, this is a writing in the disciplines exercise in which you will be given some generic expectations and parameters to follow. By following these guidelines you are practicing the production of scholarship within the discourse community of writing studies and distance education
  • Third, this is a writing to learn exercise in which the process of writing up the blog entry helps you understand the content and how to articulate this understanding to the discourse community. The instructor's feedback will help you with this goal


Instructions–Choosing Articles

For each entry, you will want to find one academic, refereed article or chapter about a writing and distance learning-related topic that you plan to be the focus of your course projects. There are many topics related to teaching writing from a distance; use part of your entry to justify why the article fits with this course.

You will find a total of five articles. These texts...

  • should be based upon issues that you are interested in learning more about
  • should be based upon ideas that you want to both support and refute
  • cannot be text assigned for the class
  • cannot be texts your peers have already discussed in a Blog Entry for this class

Refereed scholarship has been judged worthy of publication by other experts in fields related to teaching writing from a distance. Consult the resource page for a list of related journals; additionally consult various edited collections.

Other texts that qualify include...

  • academic journal articles
  • chapters from an edited collection
  • chapters from an academic monographs (no more than two chapters per book)

Texts that do not qualify include...

  • most popular publications, such as certain magazines and web pages (consult instructor)
  • newsletters
  • book reviews
  • academics' websites

This list, of course, are not exhaustive. If you have any questions whether an article or chapter qualifies, consult the instructor. Entries for texts that do not qualify will not get credit.

Also you are discouraged from pulling chapters from a "how-to" text. While some of these are written by academics and published by academic presses, they do better at explaining what to do, than why to do it. You will need the latter to help justify your practices for the pedagogical rationale.

Variations from these parameters are acceptable, but consult the instructor first.

Instructions-Writing

For each blog entry, you will want to...

  • Compose a bibliographic citation for the article you have read. You should use MLA or APA formatting; be consistent.
  • Under each citation write a 300-500 word review of one article. For each entry...
    • identify the author's argument (sometimes it will be explicit; other times it will be inferred)
    • briefly summarize the main points that the author makes to support the argument
    • briefly review the article: Would you recommend this article to your peers or scholars in the field? Why or why not? Or under what circumstances would you make the recommendation? (You are encouraged to use the first-person singular pronoun to distinguish your voice from the author(s) you are reviewing)

While these three points need to be addressed, this list does not define the order in which these points need to be presented.

After you compose your entry send an email to the instructor directing him to your post by placing the URL in the body of a message.

Instructions-Community Analysis

Blogs have the reputation of fostering interactivity between the person who composes the original post and her/his audience. Therefore you are encouraged to take advantage of the program's affordances by reading your peers' entries and using the comment feature to engage them in discussion. Use the list below:

Tesha http://thewritingprocesses.blogspot.com/
Diane http://mrsmithperspective.blogspot.com/
Christy http://cgilr001.grads.digitalodu.com/blog/
O'Neika http://www.thoughts.com/Ohinnant/blog/
Szuzsanna http://zsuzsannabpblog.blogspot.com/
Chvonne http://humanwanderlust.blogspot.com/
Susan http://eng795reviews.blogspot.com/
Cynthia http://cynthiapengilly.com/category/teaching-stuff/
Danielle http://danielleatadistance.blogspot.com
Nathan http://nathanserfling.blogspot.com/
Nancy http://nancykwarren.blogspot.com/

After all of the blog entries have been submitted, each of you will have the opportunity to study the effectiveness of the blog as a pedagogical tool for a distance learning course. Based upon what the group of graduate students in this class did, you will answer the questions:

  • if we use blogs in our distance learning writing courses, will the interactivity they afford help to foster a community among one's students?
  • also could the assignment been designed in such a way as to better faciliate the goal of creating community? Try to go beyond, "the instructor could have required us to comment," as your only response. Had the instructor required comments would a community actually resulted?
  • was there evidence of community in other aspects of the course other than the blogs? what facilitated this? why did it happen?

Write a 1000-word response to these questions by drawing specific evidence from yours and your peers' posts and comments, as well scholarship about online communities.


Criteria

Logistics for entries:

After you compose your entry send an email to the instructor directing him to your post by placing the URL in the body of a message.

  • The Blog Entry assignment will cumulatively be worth 50 points. All students will start with 40 points and your grade will be adjusted according to the evaluation of each of the five entries. Each entry will be graded using the following scale...

    check (or 0) = You did the work satisfactorily and on time. If it is an earlier entry, use the instructor's comments to guide how you compose future entries

    +1, +2= You demonstrated various degrees of engagement with the ideas and you turned it in on time. Use features that the instructor liked as a model for future entries

    –1, -2= Your work demonstrates a misunderstanding of the assignment or minimal effort, shows that you do not understand what an academic text entails, or was not turned in on time.

    - 4 = No submission

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

  • a sense of audience–do you provide enough information and detail about the article that your audience of peers gets a clear sense of the article's content? Likewise do you only highlight important information?
  • an informed understanding and discussion of teaching writing from a distance, as well as other topics the text covers
  • do you provide a substantiated opinion of the text?
  • a professional persona and an understanding of the discourse community
  • appropriate use of conventions, including MLA or APA citation formatting

Logistics for Community Analysis

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

  • a sense of audience–do you provide enough context for your evidence–both from the blogs and the scholarship–that your audience can follow your argument?
  • an answer to the prompt questions that supported by research and examples
  • an informed understanding and discussion of teaching writing from a distance, as well as other topics the text covers
  • an ability to apply scholarship about online and distance learning communities
  • a professional persona and an understanding of the discourse community
  • appropriate use of conventions, including MLA or APA citation formatting