A simple google search turns up numerous sites offering advice on the pedagogical uses of blogging, sample assignments, assessment strategies, etc. (Not to mention the heated debates over Blogs vs. Term Papers - but let’s not go there.) Much harder to find, however, are discussions of the design of class blogs, and how design considerations may affect student participation, and even the quality of student work.
It seems obvious enough that an attractively designed page will be more inviting to students, will encourage them to spend more time there and to put more effort into their posts. But there’s more to it than luring them in with eye candy. The visual look of your page can communicate to students whether you are inviting them to a “hang,” where they can show up in their mental pajamas, relax on digital beanbag chairs, and chat over popcorn and root beer, or to a dinner party, where they will need to tuck in their shirts and use the correct fork. If you opt for the more formal tone, how will you balance academic standards with giving students a sense of ownership of this digital space? The more students can identify positively with the class blog, the harder they will work to make their posts meet the standards that the visual presentation subconsciously conveys. If your blog is open to the public, what kinds of readers would you like to attract? Professionals in the field who will respond substantively to the posts? Your students’ peers? Younger students, so that your class can act as the “experts”? Your design will convey to users who is invited in, and how they are expected to behave.
All that still seems pretty obvious, and more or less superficial. But consider a particular pedagogical problem. A colleague of mine recently attempted to use a blog as the medium for discussion of a particular book among his students in a particular course. The results, he said, were so disastrous that he will never attempt it again. Now, this colleague is no technophobe, has no fears that the blog spells the end of liberal education as we know it. So what was the problem? One student, he said, had posted so frequently and so diligently, with long diatribes that attacked the book under discussion and the opinions of other students so vigorously, that the other students felt he had completely hijacked the space, and either stopped putting effort into their own posts, or stopped posting altogether.
There are low-tech approaches to this problem, of course: just as he would have done with a student who was dominating discussion in the classroom, my colleague spoke to the student in person, urging him to tone down his rhetoric, etc., all to no avail. But could design have prevented this from seeming like such a problem in the first place? What if the class page was set up so that, from the home page, the user saw only the first few lines of each post? That would have the effect of equalizing all of the voices in the conversation, at least in the initial view. Neither the students nor other readers would have to scroll down past one classmate’s endless rant in order to get to the thoughtful comments of others farther down.
Furthermore, this format would encourage students to craft their first sentences more carefully, in order to spark a reader’s interest, and to convey the main idea. The structure itself builds in an intrinsic reason for what otherwise seems to students like just one more pointless requirement: “Wait - we have to have a main idea?”
So, should you rush right to your class blog and adorn it with cutesy pictures, flashy fonts, and eye-catching colors? Maybe. But first, you will need to think carefully about what you want your blog to accomplish. Then you will want to study the other posts on this page for design principles that will help you achieve your goals.
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