Transforming Writing Instruction through Blogging Analysis of a Class Blog

Goals of the Class  Collaborative Learning  Emergent Pedagogy  Audience Awareness  Writing as conversation  Multiple perspectives  Understanding of blogging

Basic setup  Freshman seminar  2 sections, 30 students total  Class blog (everyone contributed in the same place)  No set assignments or topics  No set requirements for blogging  Formal papers derived from posts  Portfolio

Some numbers  500 blog posts; 1250 comments  265,000 total words (about 700 pages)  9,000 words per student (about 23 pages on the blog alone)  By October, averaging visits per day  Over 50% of visitors from off campus

Correlations Posts Comm Made Comm Rec’d Links Posts Comm Made Comm Rec’d Links

Posts and Comments Received  Top posters received 4 comments per post on average  Comment threads in many cases developed into conversations  Top posters/commenters responded to comments received

Comments Made and Links  Those with more links were more widely read and interested in adding to conversation  Making comments usually led to receiving comments (self-promotion)  Desire for the blog project to work

It’s all about linking  The one factor that affected portfolio grades was linking: the more links, the higher the grade  The top 5 posters averaged at least two and as many as 4 links per post  Wide range of topics  Models  Sources well integrated  Audience awareness  Complex arguments  More practice  More feedback  Learned more about their own writing

Audience: Before  “All I thought was my professor’s going to be reading this.”  “I was writing probably to myself... Because I didn’t know who I should talk to.”  “I really couldn't get out of the idea that we weren't just writing for our teachers.”  “I really didn't think that anyone outside our class and maybe their parents who had been told about the project would be reading the blog.”

Audience: after  “Nothing happened until we got an audience. It’s all about the audience.”  “I tried harder to write blogs with more mass appeal.... thought that if the topics had to do with news on a national level or topics that everyone could relate to, then more people would want to read them and I would draw in more readers.”

Audience: After  “When I realized that other people were gonna be reading this, I began to think of what other people's perspectives were, like what are they coming from, what are they expecting to see and things like that.”  “I was writing to an audience that was interested in the same topic.”

“Bloggers not only passively read the news, but also write posts, make comments, and create links. They get actively involved. This vigorous participation makes the ‘web’ look like a real web, a chain of connected sites. The absence of involvement makes the web look like a set of unrelated dots. You can only see the dots; you cannot see the whole picture unless the dots are connected.” Overall experience