Although students spend more and more time online, not all are truly tech savvy. Before using a blog or wiki, assess how comfortable your students are with the technology required.
Two of the newest online tools available to writing instructors, blogs and
wikis, can be a boon to student writing, but instructors who have used them
say it’s important to employ them purposefully.
For instance, blogs—online journals that include text, photos, videos, and
Web links—emphasize one person’s perspective and are useful for monitoring
students’ grasp of material.
Wikis, which allow students to create and revise Web pages quickly and easily,
are ideal for group work. A wiki can be edited by anyone at any point in the
process, and all revisions are recorded.
Associate Professor Jamie Callahan originally turned to blogs to solve a problem
with one of her graduate courses. Callahan, who teaches in the Department of
Educational Administration and Human Resource Development, knew her grad students
weren’t doing the required reading for the class.
Callahan tried quizzes, one-minute in-class writing assignments, and mini-papers—to
no avail.
“Those things took time away from class, and students weren’t really reflecting
on the reading: they were simply trying to guess what I wanted them to say,”
Callahan explains.
After attending a UWC workshop on teaching with blogs and wikis, Callahan
asked students to write blog entries reflecting on assigned reading. It worked.
Callahan has now used blogs in a half-dozen classes and plans to continue.
“I feel certain that my students are not only learning more, but learning
more deeply. Blogs enable that to happen,” she says. “Blogs became the vehicle
for me to create the kind of learning atmosphere I wanted in class.”
Callahan can access her students’ blogs at any time to check progress. She
knows who’s making regular entries and who’s posting five minutes before the
deadline. And she—and other students—can offer feedback.
She assigns a nominal grade to the blog to make sure students follow through,
although for some that’s not necessary.
“I’ve had some students continue to maintain the blog and use it to talk about
other classes,” she notes.
For Nancy Small, a lecturer in the Department of English, it was a wiki that
helped her solve a familiar teaching dilemma: knowing who contributed what
in a group project.
She actually forbids students in her English 301 technical writing course
from meeting in person. Instead, they’re required to use the wiki’s discussion
forums and chats to complete their work.
“This helps me track their participation. At the end of the semester, if three
people tell me the fourth in their group wasn’t contributing, I have a digital
record to refer to,” she explains.
Wikis are also convenient— for Small and her students. “I think about doing
this kind of project without a wiki. It would be doable, but clunky. A wiki
streamlines it.”
She also thinks the wiki helps prepare students for the workplace: “Wikis
are being used more and more in business. Students will inevitably encounter
some form of collaborative work environment. It may not be called a wiki, but
they could be working with one person from Bangladesh, one from New York, and
one from Montreal, all on one document.”
Concern about her students’ future careers also prompted Small to add a blog
to her advanced composition course. Her students keep a professional blog discussing
their career goals and offering links to Web sites relevant to their field.
Small envisions the blogs as “online professional portfolios” that will supplement
her students’ resumes when they apply for jobs or graduate school.
Before adding a blog or a wiki to a class, Callahan and Small suggest that
instructors assess both their own technological capabilities and those of their
students, who aren’t always as tech savvy as we assume. While Callahan says
blogs truly “took no effort,” her one experiment with using a wiki failed,
because neither she nor her students felt comfortable with it. She plans to
try again, but only when she has more time to experiment.
Small and Callahan also agree that before adding a blog or wiki to a syllabus,
instructors should consider what they hope students will gain. As Callahan
sees it, instructors have to be “strategic about what they’re trying to accomplish
and not use the technology because it’s the flavor of the day.”
Instructors interested in learning more about teaching with blogs or wikis
are invited to attend a UWC faculty workshop on the subject on Monday, December
10th at 2 p.m. in Heldenfels 004. The workshop will be conducted by Candace
Schaefer, associate director of the UWC, and Jeff Kurtz of Instructional Technology
Services. To register, visit writingcenter.tamu.edu.
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Fall 2007 
