Instructional Blogging: Promoting Interactivity, Student-Centered Learning, and Peer Input

Stuart Glogoff wrote up his experiences teaching with blogs. The article is from 2005, and its main usefulness for me is that it validates some of my own practices — giving students individual blogs, requiring students to read and comment in peer blogs, and acknowledging that students will quickly abandon their blogs if they feel nobody (including the instructor) is reading them.

As a valuable e-learning tool, blogging can be used in a number of ways to engage students in discussion, exploration, and discovery. It is appropriate for both hybrid and fully online courses. As my institution’s primary support person for instructional blogging, as well as an instructor who has integrated blogging into his teaching, I can attest that it works best when integrated into a coherent pedagogical approach, vested in an appropriate educational theory, and updated regularly by participants. As more instructors use blogging, we will have the opportunity to assess new applications for this emerging instructional technology. It will be interesting, for example, to learn whether blogs promote virtual communities after a course has ended and grades have been assigned. More importantly, extending contact between instructors and enthusiastic students through a topical blog could provide a practical way to mentor and encourage exceptional students to continue their studies in relevant fields. —Instructional Blogging: Promoting Interactivity, Student-Centered Learning, and Peer Input.