Blog Assignment for Online Students.

The purpose of asking you to present your understanding of each week´s material in your own on-line blog include:

1. Encouraging you to keep on top of reviewing and synthesizing the large amount of material we cover in this course.
2. Giving you a chance to see how others are understanding the same material through the color group “online communities” that we’ve created.
3. Giving me a chance to see how you’re doing in the course and offer my feedback.
4. Giving you a chance to see how others are doing and offer your feedback.

Each week, you’ll be asked to synthesize or provide an overview of the topics we’re covering for that week in your own online blog. The course WebCT site will include specific instructions for what I would like you to do in each week’s blog entries. But some general guidelines would include:

1. Be creative, but organized. Let the blog entry reflect your own way of understanding the material.
2. Be complete. Be sure you include reference to all the major topics we’ve covered or all of the specific suggestions I make in the weekly instructions.
3. Use online or other sources that you might copy and paste into your blog. But be sure you reference those sources and be sure you include your own text that explains each topic or each part of your entry.
4. In other words, DON’T just copy and paste other text and figures into your blog without showing me how YOU would organize them and how YOU understand the topic.
5. Don’t get bogged down in just making your blog look pretty, but be sure you get the information posted. I can help with some problems related to blog posting, but if your problems are due to your home computer configuration, please come to campus to work on your blogs.
6. BE SURE YOU BACK EVERYTHING UP! My suggestion would be to make your entries in a word processor, even pasting in online figures that you encounter. You can then save those to your hard drive or c.d. or floppy disk and copy and paste them into your blog entry. That way, you will always have a backup of your work if something should happen to your blog.

On providing feedback for your compaňeros:

The best feedback is detailed and focused on what is actually in the blog entry. It doesn’t make comparisons to others blogs, unless those comparisons are positive or used to point out a particular detailed aspect of the blog that might be illustrated in another group member’s blog. In order to help with this level of detail and focus, I ask you to point out the two best things and the two worst things about the blog entry you read. Then, please be sure you justify or explain why these were best or worst. It often helps to remind both yourself and the person you are evaluating, that “best” and “worst” are probably due to your own perspective and you should explain it that way, saying, for example…” for me, this doesn’t work because…” or “from my point of view that seemed so great because…”

In summary, then,

1. Please be concrete, direct, and detailed in your comments.
2. Please format your evaluation in the form of 2 best things, 2 worst things
3. Don’t compare with other blogs unless you are using another blog to point out a partricular detail.
4. Remember that your evaluation should be justified based on your perspective or point of view.
5. A colleague of mine says: “I always try to make my words sweet because one day I might have to eat them.”

GOOD LUCK AND GIVE IT YOUR ALL!