In addition to my eleventh hour Christmas shopping, I finally have had a chance to sit down and articulate my thoughts on blogging in BIT320. So let me just jump right in....
Overall, the class blogosphere has allowed me to see the benefits of blogging as a knowledge management tool as applied in a collective working environment. It has been particularly exciting, as it would appear that we, as a class, have been coming to this realization as the rest of the world does so as well. While blogging itself is still somewhat of a work in process and the potential to view it as a forum for incessant rambling of online devotees remains, I feel our experience gives credence to the potential value of the blogging movement.
As far as transferability goes, there is a high level of which I feel will be revealed in the not so distant future. As technology becomes increasingly more commoditized, so too will the need to more efficiently share and manage information. In order to fully realize the value of blogging In a classroom setting, the commitment of most if not all participants, and perhaps most importantly the administrator/professor, is required. Bud's constant monitoring of issues both within the blogosphere and at the beginning of class allowed for questions to be addressed that students' peers could not or simply did not address. While it may be unrealistic to expect a less-technically savvy/dependent Art History professor, for example, to exhibit this high level of commitment, there a certainly a significant number of professors that I can think of from my own experiences that utilize email almost as though they were using an instant messenging service. These educators, who are both willing and able to make themselves remotely available to respond to their students issues, are obviously those that would take most rapidly to blogging and the subsequent realization of its benefits.
As far as participation from students, it is evident that this is a highly debatable topic. In initially utilizing the class blogosphere, it was indeed necessary to mandate participation in order to introduce the medium and increase students' familiarity. However, I feel that once this is established, it is necessary to specifically encourage value-added participation. This is not an issue unique to blogging. Most professors utilize some form of grading based upon class participation, but I have found the best classroom experiences have been those in which the professor does not just reward students for merely being present, but for addressing challenging issues and most importantly, asking relevant, thought-provoking questions. While Bud did indeed state that blog participation grading would be based on value-added, setting a quota seemed rather contradictory. It would be interesting to see how students' blogging activity would continue after an initial quota was removed. I would speculate that after an initial familiarization period, in classes where students would truly benefit from sharing knowledge, they would realize the benefits and take to blogging on their own if rewarded for value-added.
While "value-added" is indeed a rather subjective measurement, utilizing it in place of a quota would serve to minimize the dichotomy inherent in blogging in classes that utilize a "curve" grading system, i.e. Business School classes. In classes where students' grades are dependent upon how they rank against their classmates, it is almost as if we have an incentive not to share information. As Project 2 progressed, I became increasingly aware of this issue. For example, with the possibility of receiving 10 points of extra credit for successfully implementing an RSS feed, a group that achieves this daunting task has little incentive to blog about it since our projects are graded according to rank. Sharing this type of truly valuable information must either be intrinsically motivated by students' desires to maximize the learning experiences of their peers (sorry, but not very realistic at the B-school), or be done so out of their own self-interest in anticipating that the professor will realize the value of their contribution. This is not to say that the quota system did not encourage valuable contributions, as evidenced by contributions of students such as M Go Blue. However, in order to truly maximize the contributions of all members, value-added must be rewarded or the curve system must abolished, or both. That being said, it comes down to which aspects the administrator has control over in implementing a class blogosphere.
If you have made it this far, I hope this blog has provided some food for thought. I'm interested to hear any feedback, in agreement or not. Best wishes to everyone this holiday and thanks for a great experience this semester.
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