Friday, October 14

references to blogs as work-diary for students

I will give a "tutorial" this semester at my department. This is a course which is usually combined with a lecture. The lecture that my tutorial is connected with is on the history of anthropology. Participation in the tutorial isn't compulsory but nevertheless there are usually around 50 or more people attending it.

Therefore we (I'm not alone, there is another, more experienced student whom I'm teaching with) will split the course into two smaller groups. We hope this smaller groups will enable the students to discuss more freely the reading assignments as well as what's not clear yet from the lecture .

Our requirements are:

* attending the course
* writing 2 essays - which were usually given to the lecturers in paper-format.

This time I'll try to get the students to write a blog about their reading-assignments (what we call a "Lesetagebuch"/reading diary in German) so that they'll get used to the idea of writing about what they've been reading/thinking about. As they comment or summarize what they read from week to week, writing the "big" essay should be much easier, I hope.

Marks will only be given on the essays that they have to write, but of course a glance at the weekly entries in the blog will clarify if the idea behind the "reading diary" works. What I am also wondering about is, if the students will start commenting each others entries or if they need incentives for doing so.

Tak at savageminds wrote in July about a similar teaching project that he's planning, I wonder though, if there are more people with experience in this area.
andrea[dot]handl[at]gmail[dot]com

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