In a Teaching and Learning Workshop presentation this past Friday, Kevin Lim, a doctoral student in the communication department, showed UB faculty and staff how they can reach out to their students and promote participation through non-traditional means.
Lim explained to his audience the basic concepts of Internet blogging and how professors can utilize this tool to foster student learning. In the two-hour session, he demonstrated the steps for creating a blog through free Web services such as Blogger and Wordpress. He also introduced tools like Really Simply Syndication (RSS) feed software that enables users to organize and view recent updates from thousands of blogs and online profiles.
According to Lim, blogs dedicated to academic courses can enrich the material presented in classrooms by allowing students to share and debate concepts and ideas. These blogs will constitute an alternative channel of communication between professors and their pupils and even help improve faculty-student rapport.
"Class blogging has many advantages. Blogging gives students recognition and responsibility. It is transparent, nonhierarchical and collaborative. In this environment, the students can develop a passion for the subject," Lim said. "The professor can let the students take the lead in the discussion and serve as a moderator."
According to Lim, there are numerous other benefits to academic blogs. Because of the anonymity afforded to everyone in the Internet environment, students can share thoughts and raise concerns that would normally go unvoiced in classrooms. The very format of blogging encourages open discussion, and students can work together to solve problems instead of going to the professor whenever they encounter difficult or confusing material.
"Online, there is less fear. Students are more willing to share their points of view," Lim said. "The blog also promotes a kind of collective and collaborative intelligence that is very beneficial to all students who participate."
Lim suggests that one key advantage of the academic blog is that most students are already familiar with its format. He cites statistics from the Technorati Web site that the total number of blogs has doubled every five months for the past several years. He speculates that many college students run their own blogs or regularly update their profiles on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.
"A lot of students have blogs that are just personal diaries of their lives. They are used to talking to each other this way. So why shouldn't professors use it as well?" he said.
Lim said that he uses RSS feed software to read the blogs and Facebook profiles of his students, and thereby learns much about his students before they even arrive at their first class.
"On the first day, I can call people by their first names, because I visited their profiles on Facebook and read their blogs. From the pictures posted on these sites, I can connect names to faces," he said. "This always surprises them and gives them a newfound respect for me, because they feel that I cared enough about them to check out their blogs."
Lim warned that everyone should understand and be willing to accept certain challenges before starting a blog. According to him, these challenges include the possibility of false or misleading information and the risk of copyright infringement.
"Right now, there is no vetting process for blogs. Anyone can post anything. It's like Wikipedia - anyone can edit it, and perhaps put in wrong information," Lim said. "You can also run into trouble with copyright infringement, because there isn't a clear distinction between public and copyrighted material."
He described how he rationalized the pros and cons of blogging.
"Believe me, everybody searches for you before they even meet you - especially your students. Even Homeland Security 'Google searches' people before allowing them to cross the border from the US to Canada," Lim said. "I don't want people to get just someone else's impression of me. I want to say my own mantra about myself, to control my own destiny and my own reputation. That is why I blog."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
