I'm not sure how many of you are currently working with blogs in your class, but I've always struggled with giving adequate feedback on my students entries. However, I found this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education to be extremely helpful. How do you respond to your students' blogs?
2 comments:
I grade my students blogs on a point scale very similar to the one described in the article you referenced, Joel ... and unfortunately, I probably don't comment substantially on the blogs more than once or twice a semester. In some ways I feel uncomfortable doing any evaluative commenting in such a public forum, so my comments end up saying nothing much more than superficial positive "way to go" things - or perhaps expressing personal interest in the topic they are writing about. In my mind, these are the kinds of comments that are just as meaningful - if not more meaningful - when they come from peers, so I really encourage students to comment on one another's writing. I give one grade at the end of the semester that evaluates their level of engagement in exchange of comments: this lets them know that I do value the exchange enough to grade it and pay attention to what they are saying to one another, but keeps me from having to keep tallies of numbers of comments or word count. Additionally, I choose one blog (from the earliest posters) as exemplary for each blogging assignment. I "reblog" these excellent posts on the class blog, along with comments explaining why the post is a good example, to help other students see what the assignment is asking them to do. This practice not only helps improve the quality of all my students' blogs, but it also rewards those students who are doing excellent work (and creates something for the high achievers to strive for). So far, these methods work well for me. They have evolved over MANY semesters of trying different things that either create lots of extra work or are less effective.
I've never considered posting one final grade for the blogs at the end of the semester, but I like how that deemphasizes the rhetorical situation of grading while fostering a class conversation. Some students would obviously be irked by this method since they want to know their grades at the time, but overall, I'm sure this is very positive. And the reblogging is a great idea. I'll be borrowing that from you for the next time I teach fyc. Thanks for the response.
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