Ok, so I have, in the past, expressed a fairly dim view of forced blogging as a pedagogical tool. Admittedly, however, a lot of that came as hold-over from miserable experiences being forced to participate in online discussion board threads, which are a different animal entirely. Blogging, somewhat similarly to discussion boards, do not necessarily lead to productive interpersonal conversation. It is really easy for students, including me, to see blogs as busywork or annoying inconveniences to be gotten out of the way as quickly and efficiently as possible, which only requires meeting the minimum requirements for posting and commenting. This view is unlikely to lead to productive conversations about classroom topics. I still feel this is the case, but I have begun to see that a few strategies can help mitigate this tendency.
As opposed to previous experiences with blogging as a student, for Computers and Composition, I tried to finish the readings with enough time not only to write up my own response, but to then read the blogs of the rest of the class and comment while the readings were fresh in my mind. Having done this right before class, not only were my own thoughts on the readings fairly fresh in my mind but some of the ideas raised by others in the class. This often helped me notice when many of us were thinking along the same lines, which, I feel, influenced class discussion. In the last few weeks, I was also able to participate in some on-going conversations in comments because I could respond to others comments on Thursday, having responded to blog posts already.
Now, my positive outlook about blogging for this course might be influenced by the fact that my schedule gives me a large span of time to blog and comment before class, but I think that it is always within my power to get the reading and blogging done early enough to read others' blogs and comment on them before class.
In the past, I did not find commenting very useful. I do think that part of that was because I would comment a day or so after we had blogged on and discussed in class the readings and commenting on blogs seemed superfluous to class discussion. I did make an effort this time to comment before class while the readings were fresh partly because I had had some success having my students read and comment on each others' blogs at the beginning of class last quarter when I was teaching in a computer lab. This quarter, my students' commenting isn't as productive because we can't spend that time reading and commenting.
As a means of ensuring that students do readings and attempt to think critically and reflectively about them, blogs are a great eco-friendly alternatives to response papers, but the potential is for them to be more than that. Pedagogically, the benefits of getting students not only to post their response to the readings but also to comment thoughtfully on their peers responses are pretty huge. Students can help each other understand difficult readings by essentially collaborating on interpretation. The difficulty, however, is to get them to do that, and I've found using the first ten to twenty minutes of class to help further conversation is one helpful way, though it would be better if students would engage actively in reading and commenting as soon as they finish their own posts.
I found the posts of my peers thoughtful and interesting, often focusing on aspects of the readings that I did not. It was nice to see the directions others are taking in their learning and research and to have the opportunity to participate through comments. I think that the blogging aspect of the class worked well for me this quarter.
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