Sixty courses in the past year have used blogs here at Duke. Whether you’ve used the course blogs, or are considering using one, read this ProfHacker blog post about evaluating class blogs (with ideas for using blogs, communicating with students, setting expectations, providing feedback, and, well, everything you’d like to know). Read the comments, too! If you are more comfortable with discussion boards, the suggestions and ideas still apply. This post summarizes a tremendous number of ideas, suggestions and lessons learned, so save yourself time designing your own student writing assignments by learning from others.
In addition, read Pedagogy and the class blog, which provides a rubric and discusses ways to make the class blog successful, including grading, commenting, and having students blog about blogging. In the comments section, participants discuss using a class blog for classes of up to 60 students.
Previously, we described a technique for grading discussion posts, even for large classes.
Image credit: Annie Mole – Flickr Creative Commons license