That being said, I completely agree that there are times blogs– like any other technology– are applied without sufficient thought. If the differences between writing in a blog, thus creating a social object and writing in a word processor, and so creating a paper product are negligible then the choice to use either is suspect!

I’d also throw this into the mix– there are not only melancholy and reluctant and busy students, but there are also students who take great pride in their independence and/or their firmness of opinion, to the point that it hinders their learning… learning is an act of (sometimes) calculated vulnerability. It can mean changing one’s mind, being persuaded, being contradictory in one’s own position. I don’t know you, so I don’t claim you are that way. But I do know that staking a claim too vociferously can almost by self-definition make it much harder than it should be. A favorite phrase relayed to me recently in this area “strong opinion, loosely held.”

Keep on, this is great stuff!

Maybe my experiences have been the exception to the rule, but I see an awful lot of it. From what I understand, we had several meetings concerning how we could get students engaged in a technology conference at school, and nobody, including myself, had a particularly good or practical answer. At the very least, melancholy students are a problem at this institution. It’s not even necessarily a problem of wanting to learn, I’d say it’s more “I want to learn about what I read in the course description, not about how I can set up my own blog, this is unnecessary and wasting my time and I could be doing this with Microsoft Word just as easily.”

Blogging is indeed a wonderful opportunity, but there are times where a classroom application thereto is brazenly unnecessary.

“What happens when the professor sets up a class blog for the sake of class blogging? First of all, most of the students don’t really care. They are not engaged, and they don’t feel like doing the work. This aggravates the professor. The professor becomes disengaged in the students.” (deleted rest)

I have to question your assertion that most students don’t care. I sincerely believe they do. What you may interpret as lack of engagement may just be a bit of apprehension. I know I’ve felt that way before when a Prof. gives me something that is very different. The students I’ve been around, for the most part, want to try and want to give their best. Are there a few who put on the “see-if-I-care” act? Yes. , But I believe even these students want to learn–it’s just buried for some reason.

As for not wanting to do the work–who doesn’t feel this way sometimes? Again, I’m looking deeper than the surface of “I’m bored and don’t care.” If I don’t get it, doing the assigned work is very difficult. At the end of a long day, with kids and their schedules and laundry waving at me, it would be very easy not to care. However, as an adult student I tend to reach out to my Profs when class confuses me-sometimes alot. I believe students, who don’t feel like doing the work, may have other things going on -stressed out, time mangement, learning difficulty in the class…

As for the Profs…I’ve never experienced a Prof who is not passionate about his vocation as a teacher. Disengaged? I don’t accept that. Sure, they are human as the rest of us and I’m sure they go through life with ups and downs. Classes aren’t easy but I’m still at it because of Profs who have this unlimited fire for what they teach. I always end the class carrying a small spark of their passion with me.

I’m not very familiar with technology (I’m typing with 3 fingers here) but I do approve of blogs. When one sits down to write, everything you couldn’t say in class, spills out onto the blog. The shyest person can get involved and the most vocal can have time to reflect and go deeper. Blogs open up an honesty that can connect students-to the learning-to the Prof. Voices can stand alone and intersect while thoughts merge and challenge. I have trouble speaking in class, but I do alot of thinking and writing about what I learn. Turning it into a conversation with others, would be a great opportunity

I would say that blogging (or wiki-ing, or any assignment, technology-based or otherwise) needs to be created with a purpose. I suspect that all of my colleagues have a goal (or often multiple goals) in mind when they create an assignment. What do I hope to accomplish? What form should it take? What sources do I expect students to engage with? How creative/analytical/exploratory/argumentative do I want students to be? How much freedom should they have to shape their own assignments? The list goes on and on.

For me the question about the use of technology is integral to every assignment I create. [Of course writing your papers on lined note pads is using technology. But Joe's raising the point that for some of these assignments the technology is transparent and well known, allowing students to focus on the content (their argument, their research, their style) without having to spend time figuring out to create a new page, while for others the time spent (in and out of class) figuring the tech out distracts from the focus on content.] I get that. As a result, it’s a conscious choice (one of many that I make when creating an assignment and a class) when I ask students to learn a new technology in order to complete my course. [And frankly I try to always make my thinking on the goals of assignments transparent to students (regardless of the tech involved), although not always at the beginning of the class -- sometimes having them struggle a bit on their own is part of my process.]

Where I think I really have an issue with your argument here is with the notion that students are losing out on content by spending time learning a new technology. First of all, every course I create leaves out much, much, much more “content” than I can possibly cover in a single semester. So, each class is a series of choices I have to make about what gets left out. Are students disadvantaged by the material I leave out of my US History Survey on the battles of Revolution so that I can focus on the popular culture of the time? Maybe, but since I can’t cover everything then I have to focus on the areas that I think are most important in creating a general student experience of learning about the past.

I’ll give you another example with even more of a parallel: I could probably cover those Revolutionary battles if I didn’t spend a third of class time engaged in class discussions of primary sources about the Revolution (and other topics), but instead lectured every class period. Lecturing is an incredibly efficient way to dispense content, though fairly problematic in terms of learning content and even worse if you want to build more skills than just passive note-taking and oral processing. I choose to leave out historical content in order to encourage a set of academic skills that I think are useful beyond the classroom (reading primary documents, understanding context, placing yourself in the past, contributing orally to an ongoing discussion, connecting the words of people in the past to the modern perspectives).

For me the use of (newer) technology fits this category as well. Yes, I’m asking students to do something new, or to push themselves, or to think about doing something in a different way, and yes, that potentially takes away from their time to read about those darn battles, but that’s a choice I’ve made as the creator of the course. That choice is based in my desire to balance the skills and content portions of my class (that’s an over-stated dichotomy here) to provide the best possible experience for the students going forward, not just in that course, but hopefully in others as well.

[I haven't discussed engaging students directly here. I would simply echo Gardner's perspective on this in his comments above, adding only that by being as transparent as possible about my thinking with my students that I'd like to think I've been fairly successful as engaging a sizable percentage of them over the years.]

This is now an obscenely long blog comment, and one that I think I may republish on my own blog in case it doesn’t make it through Spam Karma 2 or you decide to ban me from posting.

I’m presenting myself as a student who is trying to think like both a student and a professor, it’s been a challenge.

While I think an instructor would be wise to address your “Students Don’t Use What They Don’t Think They Need” argument, I’m wondering what gives students the ability to know what they need and the best way to achieve that - especially the English 101 class that you refer to.

I agree that technology for technology’s sake is never a good thing, but it is another thing to blame the technology when something goes bad. How many PowerPoint lectures have you sat through where instructors just read the slides? This is not the fault of PowerPoint - it is just not good use of it.

Similarly, UMW Blogs is not a magic bullet that makes teaching or learning easy, or even easier. But it has the potential to make the learning amazingly better when used well. But it is also like any instructional tool (even binders or Tablet PCs) - when used poorly, it doesn’t help much.

Note that I’m not talking about students who are having trouble learning. If a student is having trouble but is passionate and committed to the course and learning, I’ll do whatever is humanly possible to help that student.

And if a student disagrees with me, so long as respect and civility exist between us–and yes, that goes both ways–I’ll do everything I can to help our differences be part of the learning, too. This can be quite exciting, actually.

But if a student has made the decision “no passion for me, no commitment from me,” then I think that “student” may be the wrong noun. “Attendee,” perhaps, but not “student.” I do my best to get my students involved and enthusiastic, and I’m always eager to learn new strategies for spreading the joy (thinking of our beloved Rev. Jim here), but it ain’t all up to me!

Jeff, what’s your view?

Note that I’m not talking about students who are having trouble learning. If a student is having trouble but is passionate and committed to the course and learning, I’ll do whatever is humanly possible to help that student.

And if a student disagrees with me, so long as respect and civility exist between us–and yes, that goes both ways–I’ll do everything I can to help our differences be part of the learning, too. This can be quite exciting, actually.

But if a student has made the decision “no passion for me, no commitment from me,” then I think that “student” may be the wrong noun. “Attendee,” perhaps, but not “student.” I do my best to get my students involved and enthusiastic, and I’m always eager to learn new strategies, but it ain’t all up to me!