While no replacement for writing articles and books, and no one is going to get tenured or promoted through blogging (at least not today); but what I’ve called a serious blogger would get a big plus on the positive side on the ledger from me when it gets to merit review time! Failing to reward it would be failing to recognize that blogging is not just another new communication medium; it is a new way to do scholarship. Mark Sargent (a dean at Villanova) —Academic Credit for Blogging (Professor Bainbridge)
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I hear you, John! Since we often ask our students to get up and speak on subjects they know little about, blogging is a great way to keep ourselves humble when we consider how little we really know about all the intellectual and cultural activity that is going on in the wide world.
Considering that many faculty give up not only scholarship but any form of writing and discourse, blogging seems to me to have a huge value. At least we have to make sure we are writing well enough to be understood by one another, well enough to not humiliate ourselves on the WWW. But it also nudges us toward collaboration across disciplinary boundaries and probably stretches the imaginations of those involved. I think it should definitely have a meaningful place in faculty review.