I am blogging this as a reference for myself. It's a good idea for revising my weblog rubric.
Guidelines for Evaluting Classroom Blogs | Kairosnews
While it's never the case that all the students in a particular class like blogging, I feel my experiences with blogging in the classroom have been successful. I give students a broad range of topics on which to blog, I require them to blog the notes they use for their oral reports, and I occasionally devote class time to blogging. I've been fine-tuning the mechanism I use to evaluate their blogs, and I just posted my latest version.
The mechanism includes "coverage," "depth," "interaction," "discussion," "xenoblogging," and "wildcard".
"Coverage" -- Students should blog at least once on the major texts or topics covered in the class. (I post discussion questions and prompts, but rarely "assign" any.)
"Depth" -- of the entries that students choose for the "Coverage" component, a certain number should be examples that demonstrate a student's ability to delve deeply into the subject.
"Interaction" -- of the entries chosen for "Coverage," a certain number should be responses to peer blog entries or classroom discussions.
"Discussion" -- of the entries chosen for "Coverage," a certain number should demonstrate the student's ability to launch a meaty discussion via comments.
"Xenoblogging" -- a term I just made up; bascially, this is giving the student credit for posting comments in peer blog entries. To help students figure out what I mean by this, I cooked up a quick taxonomy, comprising the "comment primo" (which launches a discussion on someone else's blog), the "comment grande" (a long comment posted on a peer blog, which you can then advertise via a cross-blog posting), the "comment informative" (in which a commenter uses his or her particular knowledge in order to flesh out a general or incomplete statement made in a peer's blog entry), and the "link gracious" (which draws attention to the source of an idea or to a good conversation happening on someone else's blog).
"Wildcard" -- students get credit for being creative and taking risks with form and/or content. It can be related to the course subject matter, or not. My feeling is that if more students post material that interests them in the community weblogging space, then the whole community will benefit.
I posted the guidelines on my "American Lit I" course page.
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