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

Sixty-seven students and three instructors across four composition classes at Northern Illinois University participated in our study. Students in each of the classes were asked to participate on a class blog during the Fall 2007 academic term. While all students in the classes were required by their instructors to complete the assignment of class blogging, participation in our study was voluntary. We went through the formal Institutional Review Board (IRB) review and approval process for the project, and collected signed consent forms from students who agreed to participate. In addition, to maintain confidentiality, we did not release information about individual student participation in our study to the instructors. At the beginning of the semester, students were trained in using the free blogging software (Blogger®) to post and leave comments on a class blog created by their instructor for each class. Each student selected an anonymous screen name to use for his or her blog posts, but his or her identity was known to the instructor and other members of the class. Each student was required to post to the class blog once a week on an assigned course-related topic or content of interest linked to on the web. The instructors guided students in their blog writing by collectively creating a rubric for blog postings. Students were encouraged in this rubric to link to existing web content and to contribute to ongoing online conversations in ways that might elicit response, such as by clearly stating an informed, though perhaps divergent, opinion on the topic. These guidelines were formed with the goal of helping student bloggers to attract outside readers to the blogs.