Susan Dicklitch, Associate Professor of Government at Franklin & Marshall, has been incorporating blogs into her classes for several semesters and has scores of her students blogging. "I think it's important to be creative and on the cutting edge and link technology to what's going on in the Ivory Tower," says Professor Dicklitch. "It's not just getting a degree; it's about developing life skills."
Students in Professor Dicklitch's classes use blogspot.com to post commentaries of events and ideas related to course material. Blogspot was selected for its simple setup, user-friendly interface, and popularity. There are no specific blogging assignments, but her courses include a 25% participation grade that can be earned through both classroom discussion and blogging. "If you don't speak up in class, you have the blog option," she said, which works especially well for shy students and gets them more involved. "A couple students challenged me head on. In cyberspace it was much easier for them to do that." Concerns about identity were allayed by having students use screen names rather than their real names. Professor Dicklitch sees many benefits to blogging as an academic tool. It makes students accountable for what they say, gives them a sense that 'my opinion matters,' and exposes them to people outside the classroom. Occasionally, someone from outside the class will even post a comment, and the Site Meter tool shows where in the world people are reading from. It's "taking students virtually out of the ivory tower," she says. "They integrate what's going on around them with what we're studying [through the blog]."
Students link news articles from around the web into the discussions. The topics change according to both the course material and what's happening around them. "When the Amish shooting happened, we talked about why do people kill? Why do people commit genocide?" Professor Dicklitch said. They start class by briefly discussing new blog posts. Professor Dicklitch plans to continue incorporating blogging into her classes and looks for ways to improve the experience. "I'd really like to learn about vblogging," she says, which integrates short video clips with blog posts. "It's a lot of fun...not all topics fit a blog, and not all professors want to get into blogging...but I recommend that they try it because it really expands the classroom and allows to you to do so much more." Here are some of the blogs Professor Dicklitch has created for use in her courses at Franklin & Marshall:
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
| |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|