Weblog as Online Class Management Tool

Lee Lefever’s Common Craft site has an excellent piece on how to use weblogs with discussion boards in an online community. Many of his points translate directly into an educational environment. Here are a few examples:

• “With the community manager [teacher] having complete control of the weblog, they can use it to develop a stronger voice in the community without interfering with the discussions. The weblog becomes a representation of the manager’s [teacher's] thoughts and interests, which can help develop trust and culture more quickly.”
• “Weblogs can be used by a community manager [teacher] to point to specific discussions. This allows the manager [teacher] to recognize and link-to examples of best practices [outstanding student comments] and discussions that represent the community’s [course's] focus.”
• “Members [Students] may be motivated to post effectively by seeking to be recognized on the manager’s [teacher's] weblog”
• “Thanks to weblog categories, the manager [teacher] can post a wide variety of subjects and still provide an archive of community information [the class' insights] in an organized format.” [I love this one.]
• “In times when member [student] participation is slow or non-existent, the manager [teacher] can still provide content to members through the weblog.”

Good stuff!

(Found via Column Two.)

Michael Feldstein is the founder of e-Literate who currently works as the Senior Program Manager for MindTap at Cengage Learning. For more information, see his profile page.

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