Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students — Campus Technology
Good beginning advice for anyone wanting to use Blogs with students for reflection and learning. I might add though that evaluation is trickier for blogs. As the author mentions, an instructor’s comments on blogs should be “supportive and constructive and not intrusive otherwise the student(s) will cease to post.” This seems to contradict the advice in step 4 about clear rubrics, which are evaluative and may be perceived as not supportive or as intrusive. My experience suggests that there has to be a balance between evaluation and encouraging openness. Students, for any assignment, can quickly figure out what the instructor is “looking for” and write to that, rather than writing for reflection and learning. So, the instructor has to be clear, as the author mentions, about their learning objectives for the blog and then determine if evaluation is necessary and, if so, the nature of that evaluation.
