Blogs in Instruction

Getting Started with WolfBlogs Guide for Students

See the new guide: Getting Started with WolfBlogs for Your Course in Five Steps

I created this guide for instructors who wish for their students to create a blog for a course. Hopefully, it can get your students started on the right track!

Posted at 10:29AM Aug 15, 2006 by DUCKETT, KIMBERLY in General  |  Comments[3]

Instructional Uses of Blogs Workshop

This Friday, May 19 Elliott Fisher in Learning Technology Service and Kim Duckett from the NCSU Libraries are offering an Instructional Uses of Blogs workshop. The session will be from 10:00-10:50 in the ITTC Lab 1b.

The workshop will cover:

• What is a blog? Definitions, characteristics, and anatomy
• Instructional uses of blogs - examples and strategies
  
• Hands-on training in using WolfBlogs
• Comparison of blogs to other discussion tools
  

See the LTS Workshop and Seminar list to register! The registration system may list you as waitlisted so email Kim Duckett to let us know that you're interested. NOTE: The workshop is now almost full. We will be offering the workshop later in the summer so email Kim if you're interested.

Posted at 04:28PM May 16, 2006 by DUCKETT, KIMBERLY in General  |  Comments[0]

Empirical Test of Blogging in the Classroom

 The Higher Ed BlogCon 2006 ran throughout April and offered a variety of asynchronous webcasts about blogs and podcasts in higher education. I viewed a number of presentations and highly recommend them. I can't figure out how long the webcasts will be available, but I especially recommend checking out An Empirical Test of Blogging in the Classroom (23 minutes).

Nicole Ellison and Yuehua Wu in the Telecommunications, Information Studies, and Media department at Michigan State did an interesting assessment of Nicole's use of blogs in her course. Their research questions centered around  the effectiveness of blogs as compared to traditional papers in the classroom. I think their study offers some useful insights into how to use blogging well if you are having students keep their own blogs rather than reply to one centralized blog authored by the instructor.

For example, they discovered that students tended to spend less time on their blog assignments as compared to traditional paper assignments when they also had to post a comment to another student's blog during the same week. It seems the students might have perceived that the two-part blogging assignment was too time-intensive when it required developing their own post then commenting on another student's work. As a result, it might be better to split such tasks between two weeks -- one week have students post their own thoughts and the following week have them read other students and comment.

There are other useful ideas in the presentation as well.

Enjoy! Kim

Posted at 09:47AM May 03, 2006 by DUCKETT, KIMBERLY in General  |  Comments[0]

Calling all instructors!

Interested in using a blog in your course? The NCSU Libraries is working with instructors to explore using blogging in courses. If you're interested, contact Kim Duckett, Librarian for Distance Learning and Educational Technology Services - kim_duckett@ncsu.edu or 513-3653.

Already using a blog in your course? This blog is for you. What are your exeriences? What works? What hasn't worked?

Posted at 05:50PM May 01, 2006 by DUCKETT, KIMBERLY in General  |  Comments[5]