An Academic Blog for Students

Every student will soon be a blogger at the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Arts and Sciences — and the authors won’t just be filling their pages with party anecdotes.

As part of summer registration, members of the class of 2010 are receiving from the college personalized “academic blog” pages, where they are asked to fill out what amounts to an online questionnaire. The students’ first online journal entries will focus on their intellectual interests, academic concerns and educational experiences. Many bloggers will outline their strengths and weaknesses, and create a personal mission statement.

The academic blogs aren’t meant for mass consumption. Only the student, an academic adviser and authorized university officials will be able to see the content. The idea is to formulate talking points for when freshmen first meet their faculty mentors in the fall. —Elia PowersAn Academic Blog for Students (Inside Higher Ed)

I wonder if the students will have the option to share their entries with each other.

I agree with what Steven D. Krause wrote in his comment… I wouldn’t call this a blog. It’s really just a private advising journal that happens to live online.

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  • I agree with your statement as well. Sounds like something you could do on JWEB at SHU minus the title of "blog." If it were more interactive and more public, I think that would qualify it as "blogging."

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Dennis G. Jerz