Interactivism: Using Blogs to Transform the Writing Classroom

Transforming Writing Instruction through Blogging Analysis of a Class Blog

Goals of the Class
Collaborative Learning
Emergent Pedagogy
Audience Awareness
Writing as conversation
Multiple perspectives
Understanding of blogging

Basic setup
Freshman seminar
2 sections, 30 students total
Class blog (everyone contributed in the same place)
No set assignments or topics
No set requirements for blogging
Formal papers derived from posts
Portfolio

Some numbers
500 blog posts; 1250 comments
265,000 total words (about 700 pages)
9,000 words per student (about 23 pages on the blog alone)
By October, averaging 250-300 visits per day
Over 50% of visitors from off campus

Correlations - .438 .827 .659 Links Comm Rec’d Comm Made Posts .438 .827 .659 Links - .275 .863 Comm Rec’d .275 - .548 Comm Made .863 .548 - Posts

Posts and Comments Received
Top posters received 4 comments per post on average
Comment threads in many cases developed into conversations
Top posters/commenters responded to comments received

Comments Made and Links
Those with more links were more widely read and interested in adding to conversation
Making comments usually led to receiving comments (self-promotion)
Desire for the blog project to work

It’s all about linking
The one factor that affected portfolio grades was linking: the more links, the higher the grade
The top 5 posters averaged at least two and as many as 4 links per post
Wide range of topics
Models
Sources well integrated
Audience awareness
Complex arguments
More practice
More feedback
Learned more about their own writing

Audience: Before
“ All I thought was my professor’s going to be reading this.”
“ I was writing probably to myself . . . Because I didn’t know who I should talk to.”
“ I really couldn't get out of the idea that we weren't just writing for our teachers.”
“ I really didn't think that anyone outside our class and maybe their parents who had been told about the project would be reading the blog.”

Audience: after
“ Nothing happened until we got an audience. It’s all about the audience.”
“ I tried harder to write blogs with more mass appeal. . . . thought that if the topics had to do with news on a national level or topics that everyone could relate to, then more people would want to read them and I would draw in more readers.”

Audience: After
“ When I realized that other people were gonna be reading this, I began to think of what other people's perspectives were, like what are they coming from, what are they expecting to see and things like that.”
“ I was writing to an audience that was interested in the same topic.”

“ Bloggers not only passively read the news, but also write posts, make comments, and create links. They get actively involved. This vigorous participation makes the ‘web’ look like a real web, a chain of connected sites. The absence of involvement makes the web look like a set of unrelated dots. You can only see the dots; you cannot see the whole picture unless the dots are connected.”
Overall experience

Interactivism: Using Blogs to Transform the Writing Classroom

by Laura Blankenship on May 27, 2008

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Interactivism: Using Blogs to Transform the Writing Classroom — Webinar Transcript