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

Another factor of network literacy that we hoped to foster with the class blogging assignment is that of engagement with a larger social network. Blogs allow for the kind of connectivity that is largely specific to Web 2.0, in which the boundaries between readers and writers become blurred and user participation in the activity of creating online content is key. Instead of the one-way presentation and passive reception of content characteristic of static webpages, blogging is a social and collaborative writing space. We noted earlier that writing is a social and collaborative activity, carrying meaning only when connected to the social contexts in which writers and readers are situated. Following LeFevre (1987), who acknowledges that writing is an open, two-way system “in which an individual who is at the same time a social being interacts in a distinctive way with society and culture to create something” and Bruffee (1984), who emphasizes the importance of viewing writing as a “social activity,” we believe that the interactive nature of blogging can help students understand the social and collaborative nature of writing that is even more pertinent online: rather than purporting a false image of the solitary student writer tapping into his or her individual genius, student bloggers can practice composing in a space that is highly interactive, with real readers and the potential for real responses. Class blogging activities can offer students the kind of dialogue, collaboration, and community interaction that allows them to see the social nature of writing. The class blogs can serve as open forums where students interact with one another to arrive at common understandings. Through the class blogs, student writing can be informed not only by their interactions with an instructor, but the shared experiences of the class community and, potentially, the contributions of a myriad of readers and writers online.

While blogging offers such potential, the students in our study reported that they did not expect their writing to reach a larger social network outside of the classroom. Rather, they felt they were writing for an audience of their peers when they participated on the class blogs. As reported in the post-blogging questionnaire, only 8% of our participants believed their class blogs reached a wider audience; 88% percent of students considered their classmates to be among the intended audience for their blog posts. Interestingly, however, only 50% of our participants identified their instructor as an audience for the class blogs. It follows that the general consensus is not that class blogging is “just another assignment” for an instructor, but a social writing space that speaks to classroom peers rather than to an authority or outside audience. With our above concerns about students’ misperceptions about privacy in mind, we are nevertheless optimistic about the potential for students to participate in a highly social and collaborative writing space with a community of their social peers when writing for class blogs. Such community-based writing is a key component to network literacy and, we think, to engaging with the online world at large.

One reason for our optimism rests in the frequency in which students anticipated and responded to posts written by their classmates. Of the students in our study, 40% reported commenting on others’ posts at least once per week, 40% commented at least once every two weeks, and all but two students offered a response to others’ writings at least once during the semester. Taken together, based on our quantitative analysis of comments on the class blogs, the four blogs are made up of 257 posts and 486 comments, or approximately 17.13 posts and 32.4 comments per week. In other words, each blog averaged at least four original posts and eight comments on said posts each week. Many students claimed the motivation for responding to other students’ posts was merely to fulfill a course requirement (“we were required to,” “we had to,” “I only post to get a good grade.”); however, even the complaint of “forced blogging” was often qualified by a desire to respond to posts they found “interesting,” “appealing,” or when one “had a good argument [in response].” An analysis of students’ posts reveals that these comments were rarely off-topic (4.73%) and were generally supportive (97.33%) in tone, even when the commenter disagreed with the original poster. Others said nothing of a course requirement and simply reported feeling compelled to comment when the issue at hand was one they could identify with or otherwise had an existing opinion on (e.g., “I felt the need to state my opinion on each post that I made,” “I only left comments if I really liked what they had to say or wanted to put my two cents in.”).

Responding to other students’ writings on the class blog, then, became common practice on all the class blogs. In order for written responses to lead to a “social activity” that has real value, however, a dialogue must take place in which comments become two-way communication, showing that they are received and responded to in a meaningful way. A closer look at the nature of those comments on the class blogs reveals that 46.7% of the comments served to signify an agreement with or general support of the original post without shaping, expanding upon, or otherwise adding dimension to the existing post. As a case in point, one post details a student’s appreciation for Will Ferrell movies, and the student responses that follow merely agree with or recycle the same themes of the original post (e.g., “I totally agree, Will Ferrell is hilarious.”; “Yeah I agree with what everyone’s said. Will Ferrell is unique and has his own way of making a regular comedy absolutely hilarious.”; “I could not agree more that Will Ferrell is one of the best comedic actors of our time.”). These comments did little to further the conversation, but instead simply stalled the dialogue by echoing sentiments that have already been expressed without adding new information.

However, other students reported that they commented when they “had something important . . . to add” or “wanted to argue against” another student’s position; there is evidence of at least one or the other in about 53.3% of posts on the blogs. One example from a class blog illustrates this heightened level of engagement in a social and collaborative online writing space. In response to a class reading, Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia,” a student created a post that offered a brief summary of the text and a relevant quotation, followed by his or her own feelings of surprise about Jefferson’s remarks. The student then anticipated a possible counterargument to his or her claim: “However, in his defense, although he was racist for our times, he was at least for the abolishment of slavery.” The student then invited other students to respond, asking for others to weigh in on whether Jefferson was “a cold hearted soul that should be removed from the textbooks” or justified in his actions and perhaps “even a little ahead of his time?” Two students posted in Jefferson’s defense while a third, claiming to agree with the first commenter, actually charged Jefferson with hypocrisy, not racism, and thus attempted to shift the direction of the debate. A different student then attempted to clarify the communal stance (“It seems that we are all in agreement that he was a slaveholder, but not a racist man”) and added further speculation about Jefferson’s life. Two other students added comments that seem directed at the original post and not at the ongoing discussion in the comments section, and the thread ends. This example illustrates a variety of opinions represented by different students from the class, where individuals raised questions, agreed and disagreed with others’ claims, attempted to clarify the debate and arrive at consensus, and added new information. Such posts illustrate the type of social and collaborative activity that can be facilitated by the interactive nature of blog technologies.

A similar situation happened in a different class blog, where the original post drew thirteen comments in response to the provocative suggestion that the residence halls on our campus are racially segregated by the university. While some students speculated on the validity of that claim, others raised questions about the nature of segregation and self-segregation in current society, theorizing on why it still exists and offering solutions to the problems on both a local level and for the greater community. As the instructor of this particular class noted, “in all of these comments, students displayed an awareness of differing views and the necessity of mediatory language and rhetoric to build bridges between people in the class (i.e. their audience) that have different perspectives on the issue of segregation.” Such building of bridges and attempts to come to agreement reveals the potential for collaborative meaning-making in the blogosphere. In addition, this instructor mentioned that this particular debate led students to take action outside of class based on the blog dialogue: one student further discussed these issues with her peers in the student government, though there is no evidence that a formal investigation took place. While this example is not necessarily the norm for class blog postings, it nevertheless is emblematic of the potential for a networked environment such as a blog to encourage interactive dialogue that can have implications for the “real world” outside of a classroom space.

During a post-semester interview, the instructor of the blog discussed in the previous paragraph reported that “[t]he most rewarding aspect of the blogging assignment, for me, was watching students mediate difficult social situations in a virtual written environment, and then translate lessons learned through those virtual dialogues into action in real life situations.” Our analysis of the blog content confirms this idea that social engagement can be fostered, at least in part, through class blogging. The results of our study reveal that students can become engaged with and write about issues with relevance to their lives outside of the classroom without necessarily having a wider public audience in mind. This level of writing as social action, however, cannot occur unless students go beyond merely assenting to an original post by raising related questions, challenging arguments, and otherwise adding new information relevant to the issue at hand. It is not enough to ask students to treat a class blog in the same manner as a paper that might only be read by an instructor; students must take advantage of the social and interactive writing environment that blogs invite through the comment function. Ideally, students would do this themselves, without instructor intervention, but we would do well to actively encourage this sort of two-way communication. Simply requiring students to comment on each other’s work may lead some to respond to ideas they already identify with or agree with, without the expectation of furthering dialogue or working together to refine ideas and formulate new, informed thoughts and positions. We have already noted that even those who claim a course requirement as the primary motivation for leaving comments still gravitate towards topics that interest them. In this study, nobody “forced” a student to relay class discussions to the student government, after all, but the blog space made such activity possible. Thus, while students did not necessarily engage with other bloggers outside of the class blog, they nevertheless were socially engaged and practiced the type of interactive writing with their peers that has the potential to promote writing as a social activity outside of traditional classroom spaces.