Using blogs to engage students outside the classroom

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The majority of students enjoyed the blogs and found them to be useful in their learning.

In Cognitive Psychology, students often experience an “aha” moment when they realise how much of their lives can be seen through a cognitive lens.  These moments sometimes happen in the classroom when a lecturer explicitly makes the connection for the student.  More often, the students organically make these connections on their own outside of the classroom and when they do, learning all of a sudden becomes fun and relevant.  The blog is a perfect way to document these moments and generate “buzz” about the class.

For the Cognitive Psychology module, blog participation constituted 25% of the overall mark.  Students were required to submit 4 blog posts (one before each seminar) of 250 words each on broad topics related to the seminar topic.  In addition, they were to make 8 comments of 100 words each on other classmates’ posts.  They were welcome to contribute more (and often they did) but these weekly posts provided an opportunity for students to post their thoughts on a specific topic and were referred to during seminars. 

Students were told to make informal posts about their own observations whilst remaining courteous and respectful.  They did not need to cite journal articles or provide evidence for any arguments.  Instead, they were encouraged to draw from real world experiences to link with an aspect of cognitive psychology.  At first, students were tentative on how to approach the assignment and some of the first blog posts were extremely academic.  After some reassurances that the posts should be informal, they were able to draw from a wide variety of experiences and make interesting connections not only with cognitive psychology but from other areas of psychology as well.

The blog posts generated a lot of conversation online and offline.  Students were heard discussing the latest blog posts before lectures and even weeks after the module finished, I receive occasional emails from students with interesting links they found or stories to share that they would have posted on the blog.  Blogging was a safe way for students to share their ideas and opinions who may not be comfortable doing so during lectures and seminars.  Another interesting by-product from this assignment was the strengthening of connections between students; students who have never spoken to each other in class now were commenting on each other’s blog posts because of shared viewpoints.

The majority of students enjoyed the blogs and found them to be useful in their learning.

Blogging is an excellent way of providing students a formal assessment that is informal in nature.  A few things to keep in mind when considering blogs:

• Incorporate blogging as part of the assessment with clear deadlines and word count suggestions.
• Keeping the stakes low increases student confidence and engagement.
• Integrate the blogs into class discussions.
• Knowing that the lecturers are reading the blogs and finding them interesting is very encouraging to students.