'How are you going to grade this?': Evaluating Classroom Blogs. [Editor's Note: This post was written jointly by Jeff McClurken and Julie Meloni.]
Several of us at ProfHacker incorporate blogs into our pedagogy, and we have written on a range of course blog-related issues such as “Integrating, Evaluating, and Managing Blogging in the Classroom” (Julie) and “Tools for Managing Multiple Class Blogs” (Amy) among many others. In this post we (Jeff and Julie) will offer a few specific tips for evaluating course blogs and addressing the common question “how are you going to grade this?” No matter how the evaluation criteria is spelled out on the syllabus and reiterated throughout the course itself, students are likely to continue to ask “how are you going to grade this?”
Jeff notes he also receives this question frequently from other professors when they hear about his blog-related assignments. Following are some tips to improve the blogging experience for all involved: What about you? [Creative Commons licensed photo by Flickr user liewcf] Return to Top. Tools for managing multiple class blogs. Even if one doesn’t buy into the idea that blogging=street cred, a good number of folks are thinking about moving away from using a full-blown CMS such as Blackboard, Moodle, or Angel and using blogs to manage their courses instead.
For those who are considering that route, what are some of the tools that come in handy, especially if you’re teaching multiple courses? We’ve written about a number of these tools already here at ProfHacker; consider this a “round-up” post of sorts. A blogging platform. There are a lot of options out there, both free and paid. Among the most common are Blogger, WordPress (which can be hosted at WordPress.com or on your own domain), WordPress MU, and TypePad. A hosting service. A blogging client. An RSS reader. Here’s my setup: What other tools and/or setups are people using for managing their course blogs? The image in this post is by Flickr user Gideon Burton and is CC-licensed. A Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs. The pedagogical value and the challenges of integrating student blogging into your teaching is a recurring topic on ProfHacker.
Some of our earliest posts dealt with student blogging, and we have revisited the issue frequently. Most recently, Jeff and Julie wrote about that age-old question—How are you going to grade this? —when it comes to evaluating classroom blogs. Jeff and Julie offer a number of fantastic pointers, and they also refer to a blogging rubric that I use in my own teaching. I’ve never directly described how I grade student blog posts on ProfHacker, but I think it’s about time to share what has been a valuable tool, and to encourage professors to adopt and modify it to fit their own needs. I typically require weekly blog posts from my students, and though each post by itself may not amount to much, they cumulatively account for a substantial portion of a student’s final grade.
But when you have 15 or 25 posts per week, per class, how do you grade them all? How about you?