Assessing blogs

How do we assess blogs in teaching? In the past I have tended to focus on the benefits blogging can bring to education. And this is an area I will continue to focus on. However for the next few weeks I’m going to look at assessing student blogging as an academic exercise. I’m not saying that the experience should be led by the method of assessment but what I intend to do here is explore as to how other practitioners have assessed student blogs and in doing so provide some tips. At the same time I hope to outline examples of how some of blogs have been used.

First off some useful ideas on how to get things going provided by David Warlick, (blog). They focus on getting tboth author and reader to ask themselves a series of questions. I’ve altered these slightly to put a tutor: student context to them.
When writing a blog, the student should ask:

1. What did I read in order to write this blog? What do I know and where did that knowledge come from?
2. What are all points of view on the issue?
3. What do you wish the readers to know, understand, believe, or do?
4. What will not be said? What are some of the remaining questions about the issue? (I like this one).

From the tutor perspective (or if you the student if you are using peer assessment) when reading a blog, ask yourself:

1. What did the student read in order to write this blog? What did they already know and where did that knowledge come from?
2. What are the other points of view? What are the other sides of the story?
3. What did the student want readers to know, understand, believe, or do?
4. What was left unsaid? What are the remaining questions and issues?
The next post will look at some practicalities.