Blogs + Education

Blogster is about to be hit by another tidal wave of weekly writings, all rippling out of the small college town of Chico in northern California.

Starting in February, every Monday morning for 12 or 13 weeks, 150 students will be posting short articles (about 350-650 words) on topics and issues discussed in my course on Multicultural Literature. This is the fourth time I'm trying out this teaching strategy at Chico State University. Basically, it works like this: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we "discuss" key questions related to a given work of literature that we are reading that week (for example, a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro or a short story by Salman Rushdie). Obviously, the word "discussion" is relative, given the size of the class (although if Powerpoint slides are used effectively, I find that I am able to get a certain amount of back-and-forth discussion going in the lecture hall). The class discussions are intended to stimulate thoughts, ideas, and reactions to the literature that then get translated into a Blog article written by the student and posted early Monday morning for me to review and for readers of the World Wide Web to enjoy.

Does it work for the students? Does it work for me?

Well, the jury is still out on that question. Just as Blogster is constantly upgrading and refining its support system and platform, so am I also trying to improve my Blog-driven course so that it develops into a win-win opportunity for the students, for me, and even for the general reading public who gain instant access to the writings of contemporary college students.

My enthusiasm for using Blogs in a college class, however, is tempered by my concerns. Let me put the case more straightforwardly in a list format.

Questions and Concerns:

By posting weekly articles on the Web, are my students thereby contributing to a kind of verbal inflation that threatens to transform cyberspace into a junkyard of wasteful words?

In an era of text-messaging and social networking, how do I demonstrate the value of polished prose? (Ideally, a good Blog should not only be free of spelling and grammatical mistakes, it should also have an attractive and compelling stylistic voice).

What about those students who have understandable reservations about using tools of technology (such as their compromised privacy or the remoteness of writing to a cyberspace audience rather than a professor)?

Affirmations:

On the other hand, by writing to the world (rather than a single reader), students are participating in a far more realistic enterprise. They might even feel empowered that they have readers in Singapore or Sydney who care about what they might have to say on issues raised by great works of literature.

And the world writes back!! Students not only get feedback from me, but also positive praise (or cutting criticism) from "objective" outside readers.

In fact, one of my goals in the class is to demonstrate to the students that Blog-writing is an art, not just a form of instant communication.

Do the positives outweigh the negatives? Yes, by and large. I feel enough confidence and faith in the Blog set-up to want to continue with the experiment for the immediate future. Yet I am not so arrogant as to think that it is problem-free. Nor do I claim to have all the answers to the issues raised in this article. After all, that's what makes teaching so exciting and keeps many of us going back to the classroom with eager anticipation, year after year.