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Recently Franci Cronje - a colleague of mine - ran a blog project with her 2nd year students. Some remarkable blog posts were created.
Teaching with blogs is not as straightforward as it may seem, and Franci shared her experience with me:
Could you briefly describe the project you gave the students?
The semester module dealt with the Body, the Ideal Body, and the Other. Thus, this intervention could be as ‘open’ as possible, with the Cape Town campus students in mind. The project basically had two sections: Firstly, the intervention itself, and what they decided to do with their own bodies, and secondly, how they documented that intervention, and theorised about it, on a daily blog which ran simultaneously.
The physical intervention required them to ‘leave their own comfort zone’, so to speak, and do something to their body that would make them feel uncomfortable in their daily dealings.
The proof would have been in the pudding, as they needed to theorise about this intervention, drawing on the theoretical work as presented in the articles as part of the curriculum.
**See the full brief at the bottom of the post**
I'm interrupting Franci here to insert an example of one of the blogs created:
M writes:
I have decided to go back to basics for two weeks. This means no more make-up, hair straightening, push up bras, attention-diverting accessories or layered outfits. I cannot enhance my appearance in any way.
I happen to be incredibly self-conscious and even my closest friends have never seen me without make-up on.So this should be awkward...
A Quote from her blog "dollparts":
"Until who I am/strive to be corresponds with who I look like, I am not sure I will ever be comfortable in my own skin."
You can see some more example links at the end of this post. Back to Franci:
This project required students to expose aspects of themselves that they might normally have kept hidden. How did the very public nature of blogging impact on this project?
The public aspects of the project were definitely enhanced by the platform, and most students really liked the visibility of this. However, the opposite was also true. See the next answer…
Blogging is a new experience to most of these students. How did they react to having to use this medium?
About 60% of the students really took to the project like ducks to water. They liked the public platform, and six or seven of them actually started independent blogs after the completion of the project. Some say that the act of blogging actually changed their outlook on social media in a hugely positive way. A handful of students were seen to have quite lively discussions with unknown blog readers, personal friends, and people not part of the class sphere.
However, some students were lured into ‘a stream of consciousness’ while blogging every day, and thus thought that the public act of putting down your own thoughts would be words enough to get a good mark. They loved the platform, but forgot that it was actually meant as an academic exercise.
A handful of introverts actually hated the platform so much, that they under-performed considerably when taking their other academic performances into consideration. They felt the body intervention was invasive, and the publicising of it, even more so.
I gather that you had to keep track of students’ blogging progress during this project. That requires a fair level of "teaching energy". What advice would you give somebody who is considering using blogs in this regard?
I would advise some kind of peer assessment to be part of the formal marking. To even just visit all 52 blogs daily during a two-week intervention, takes at least two hours per day. I limited my visits to half every second day. That meant that I would at least get to every blog every second day. I think it is important for the students that they feel that you are taking an active interest in the blogging though, so I would say that this is time well spent.
The contact time every day would not change next year, however I think I would make more comprehensive notes daily in order not to have to spend so much time after the project on the assessment. I would
