{ The Comp Blog }

I've been following Samantha Blackmond's work this week because she is friend of Debra's and Mark's, and because she is teaching a course on gender, race, and technology even as I write. I am thinking about the value of a course blog like hers, or our like ours, to someone not in the course.

I was struck by how many students were willing to say things like "I don't like theory," this is hard and therefore boring--the kinds of things I know I hear from my students on an all-too-frequent basis. As a lurker, I find it worthwhile (reassuring and depressing) to see these thoughts made visual.

I was also impressed by the quality of responses, the amount of writing going on, the interaction--in general, making a class like this visible reflects really positively on the students and the instructor (despite what I said above). Maybe we just need to be selective about the class blogs we preserve and promote ; )

After looking at our data, in which students enjoyed the expressive / social function of weblogging, I was interested to see how academic this blog is. A close analysis would probably reveal quite a bit of "group building" going on, but none of the "venting", getting things off my chest preferences of our students.

More later, perhaps. I might even ask to send these students a quick survey--I'll have to check our IRB statement.