Learning to Write Publicly: Promises and Pitfalls of Using Weblogs in the Composition Classroom

Based on the results of our study, we conclude that the nature of assigning class blogging, or forced blogging as it is called among some instructors, presents unique challenges to instructors using the popular Web 2.0 technology to facilitate network literacy. While the networked nature of blogging offers opportunities for extending learning into the public sphere, it at the same time requires that the writing space in which students participate is a safe and protected one. Given the implications of asking students to learn to write in a public forum, it is important to balance the goal of creating an open, publicly available space for writing with the responsibility to provide a safe space for learning. Our study offers a preliminary view of the potential for assigning class blogs, revealing both promises and pitfalls. While much more research is needed to determine whether class blogging facilitates students’ understanding of network literacy, below we present several “lessons learned” from this preliminary work.

Lesson 1: Class blogs offer much potential for teaching network literacy.

Our study confirmed our initial thoughts about the importance for teaching network literacy in writing classes. If 95% of our students are already participating in the public, online writing spaces facilitated by Web 2.0 technologies, such as Facebook, MySpace, or blogs, we have a clear obligation to help them to participate thoughtfully and responsibly. There is certainly no shortage of news stories about the potential negative consequences of revealing too much personal information, too many opinions about an authority figure, or too harsh criticisms against an unanticipated reader when writing online. Inappropriate participation on public online spaces can be a product of the lack of a sense of the multiple and varied audiences of online texts, coupled by a perceived sense of privacy when writing online. To our concern, at the outset of our study the students reported a naïve understanding of the complexities of writing in a public online environment (i.e. “its [sic] just writing online”), putting them at risk of facing some of these negative consequences. While many of the student writers in our study understood blogs as public spaces, they also reported that they felt that they could share personal information and write as if communicating with a “best friend.” Such a perception of privacy arose out of the use of screen names and subsequent anonymity.

Despite this naïve understanding of the consequences for writing in a public online space, we feel that our study supports the notion that class blogging can help students to better understand both the rewards and challenges of writing in a networked environment with multiple and varied audiences, where there are real consequences for what a writer contributes. While the perceived audience for the class blogs was limited, consisting mainly of classmates, our results revealed that the class blogging assignment did help students to form a more informed understanding of this particular audience when writing. Many students reported that good blog posts are those that draw positive attention from their readers and provoke intelligent responses in the form of comments. Our analysis of the blog content supports this notion; many blog posts appear in the form of questions directed toward other classmates, and regular discussion via comments occurs on all of the class blogs. While the students in our study, for the most part, perceived their readers to be classmates, they also revealed a strong sense of that audience when addressing them. Therefore, it is clear that most of the students who participated in our study did write with an audience other than their instructor in mind, though they did not fully recognize their audience as potentially public.

Lesson 2: Instructors assigning class blogs have a responsibility to protect students’ privacy in a public writing space.

As noted above, many students in our study revealed a misperception of privacy when writing to the class blogs, as revealed through their comments and through their class blogging practices. While in our initial questionnaire 42% of the students reported that they understand that writing to blog spaces is public writing, other comments and the class blog participation revealed a perceived sense of privacy in the blog space. This perception, that a public writing space is in fact private, led to some concerns for us as instructors. We feel that because the students adopted a naïve understanding of their public audience when writing online, we have a responsibility to take measures to mitigate any potential consequences that may arise from this misperception. The instructors in our study did take such measures to protect students’ privacy online by requiring students to adopt screen names, maintaining administrative control over the blogs, and reminding students periodically of the public nature of the class blogs throughout the semester. The results of our study lead us to argue even more strongly for adopting similar measures to protect students’ privacy when requiring that they participate in a public writing space.

It may seem contradictory that we are encouraging instructors to monitor closely student writing to protect their privacy when writing to a public space. This contradiction, however, is not surprising based on research by Internet communication scholars, who recognize the increasing concerns among computer users about the potential privacy issues posed by the global reach of the Internet and the ease with which information can be recorded, exchanged, and distributed. Gurak (1997) notes computer users’ fears about privacy issues emerging as early as the 1970s and 1980s, when online activists raised concerns about “Big Brother” (p. 47). Our findings provide reason for remembering such concerns about student participation on class blogs today. We believe that student privacy can be protected in ways other than using technological controls to exclude access to student writing and make the blog space itself private. Instead, we advocate an approach that requires that instructors carefully monitor and guide student writing in the public space, using student errors in judgment as learning opportunities without larger consequences. We encourage instructors to review online activity to ensure that students’ writings do not offer information that may have potential negative consequences, such as blog posts that include details that may enable an outside reader to identify an individual student or content that could have negative consequences if distributed widely and read by someone other than classmates. Such monitoring may require removing content, and using such occurrences as teachable moments for a class of student bloggers. We agree with Gurak (2001) that “[a] good guideline for cyberliteracy is that you should never post anything on the Internet, whether on a Web site or via email, that you would regret seeing in a different context” (p. 113). Based on our study, however, for a generation of writers who have grown up with writing in online environments, reminding students of potential consequences may not be enough. It may require some additional administrative attention to blog content with student privacy in mind.

Lesson 3: It is difficult for instructors to “manufacture” a public audience for student writing.

Those who teach writing and those who have taught using class blogs have noted the value of assigning writing tasks that reach an audience beyond an instructor in an effort to teach the social nature of writing. Likewise, we feel that class blogs offer students an opportunity to better understand their writing as a social activity. With that in mind, we launched this study with the intention of exposing students to writing to a public audience when writing to a blog space. As other instructors familiar with class blogging have noted, however, attracting a public audience for student writing is not easy. Despite our efforts at encouraging students to use techniques to attract outside readers (such as frequent linking and the presentation of provocative but well-grounded commentary), what we discovered as the semester progressed was that while all of the class blogs had the potential to reach a public audience, virtually none of them were doing so. That is, there was no evidence on any of the class blogs that they were being read by anyone other than classmates and the instructors participating in our study. While we did not employ tracking mechanisms to reveal who was reading (though we can certainly see the usefulness in this approach), we did note that no comments from outside readers appeared during the semester. Therefore, while the class blogging assignment offered students the opportunity to write to a public audience, it did not facilitate the creation of that audience.

There are many additional ways that writers are able to attract readers to their blogs. While one is contributing writings of interest to readers, others include creating blogrolls with other members of a blogging community, using the trackbacking features, and reading and commenting regularly on popular existing blogs. Such requirements were not put in place given that these tasks are time-consuming, requiring either a higher level of technological attention to the blogs from instructors or efforts to gain membership in other blog communities from students, and could not be facilitated in the space of one semester. While our instructors were not able to successfully manufacture a public audience simply by encouraging students to link to other web content in their writings, at the conclusion of our study we began talking about ways that a more public audience might be garnered. Other methods for creating a more public audience might include cross-class collaboration, or even cross-university collaboration on class blogs.

With these lessons in mind, we remain optimistic that blogs are useful tools for teaching writing in the undergraduate classroom. Despite the fact that the students in our study remained largely unaware or unwilling to engage a larger, public audience while writing to class blogs, their attention to their perceived, insular audience of classmates (and, at times, instructors) suggests that they at least understand writing to be a social, collaborative activity and are therefore able to write in a meaningful way beyond the classroom. This is especially important in the context of Web 2.0, where the construction and dissemination of knowledge depends on the participation of multiple parties. When 95% of our students are already reading and writing to these spaces online, it is no longer sufficient, or even necessary, to simply teach them how to access these technologies. Just as most already possess basic computer skills before entering the undergraduate classroom, the vast majority of our students suggest they are proficient—even comfortable—in using Web 2.0 technologies. Since our traditional goals of helping students better understand how audience, genre, and purpose relate to academic writing ought to be skills that are transferable to spheres outside of the classroom, we believe embracing pedagogical tools—in this case, blogs—that help students foster an understanding of network literacy is more important than ever. And though we lack evidence that the participants in our study attracted a public audience that actively engaged with the class blogs, our analysis of the blogs reveals that students ultimately have the potential to write and shape conversations outside the classroom. It is our hope that composition instructors will continue to embrace the spaces in which our students are already reading and writing to in order to help them understand writing not as a solitary activity that must be endured, but as a collaborative effort that can have meaningful implications for their social communities.