Testimonials

Matthew Kuperus Heun
Associate Professor
Calvin College Engineering Dept.

A few of my thoughts on the weblog that we did for the South Africa interim class:

* I have watched the blogging phenomenon since its beginning, being an avid reader of scripting.com since its inception, since before the word “weblog” existed, actually. I never felt the desire or need to do a personal blog, but I was really happy to try the technology for this interim class. I think blogging is very appropriate for the situation where you want to inform a pretty wide audience of details of group activities. The capability for comments and other feedback from readers provides added value.

* I am extremely pleased with how our blog turned out. I printed the blog and was amazed to see 54 pages of student-generated content. If I had told the students prior to our departure that they would be responsible for 50+ pages of content in a class journal, I might have had a revolt. But, the blog provided an organic way to develop the content in an incremental way AND keep stakeholders (parents, adminstration, etc.) updated on our progress at the same time. The whole process with the blog was extremely beneficial to the success of our class, from my point of view.

* Perhaps the two biggest benefits of doing the weblog were (1) compiling a journal of our activities and (2) informing parents of our progress. It is no small thing for parents to trust two profs to care for their children, especially when the group is half a world away. So, it was essential to keep them informed of what was going on.

* It worked really well to have students responsible for the content of the blog. We asked one student to write one entry for each day. They chose their own pictures and wrote their own text for that day.

* I brought my laptop computer with us, so the students could compose their entries in the kombis, at the pool, in bed, or wherever. They used Word to write the text, and we used iPhoto to collect the pictures on my Powerbook. Then, when we found an internet connection, we uploaded the content.

* It worked well to have one student volunteer do all the posting for the entries. I had one student (Scott Admiraal) who was willing to take some time to post the entries whenever we had a connection. He just took the word documents and pictures and made it happen. This off-loaded the work from me, and I was able to concentrate on running the class rather than keeping the blog going.

* It was easier and better to have one student do one really good blog posting each day than to have 18 students emailing their friends and family back home about the events of every day. We didn’t have the kind of bandwidth that would have been required for each student to be on a computer for one or two hours each day. First, we literally didn’t have a connection for many days. Second, our agenda was so packed that we literally didn’t have the time to spare. The benefit of this approach is that the students don’t feel compelled to do email all the time. They can concentrate on other community-building activities, socializing, playing cards, and whatever, during some of their non-academic time on the trip.

* The students got more excited about the blog as time went on during the trip. The excitement came from seeing the large number of hits we were getting. The large number may have been because the blog was featured on Calvin’s homepage (thanks CIT!). Whatever the reason, when the students knew that their text was being read, they took more care and were more thorough in their entries.

* I’m very happy that we took the time to provide logins for each student in the course. That way, their name is listed on the entries directly. Its a nice touch, and it increases their sense of ownership of their entry. I believe that the quality of the postings increases when a specific name (rather than the profs name) is attached to each post.

* I would rather use a blog than email for communication with students in a regular on-campus class. However, I would want the blog to be behind the usual KnightVision username and password authentication system. I would not want the content to be visible to the entire world as our South African interim blog was.

* It would be good to have the username of the person who is editing the blog listed on every editing page. That way, you always know who you are when editing an entry. This would have been a big help for our blog czar who was posting content for everyone.

* It would be nice to have an option to view the weblog in chronological order. I know that this is not web-loggish. But, I printed the entire blog as a keepsake of the trip. It would just make more sense for the printed version to have everything in chronological order, not reverse-chronological order.

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