"I have 22 students and for the first time in teaching in 25 years EVERYONE is participating, and engaged, and enjoying learning," says Delaney J. Kirk, PhD, Professor of Management at Drake University. Delaney is talking about her Master of Business Administration class on Managing Diversity in the Workplace.
What's she doing differently that she hasn't done the proceeding 25 years? She "decided to add a class blog to the course as a way of allowing the students to take more ownership of the class and of their own individual learning as together we build a collaborative learning community." Delaney first started blogging on her work helping other college professors become better teachers and classroom managers, and decided to try a class blog as well.
Delaney posts three times a week to the class blog and students, as part of their class participation, read and write comments. So far, everyone is commenting, and the comments tend to be a paragraph or longer, well thought out, and intelligent. Students are also commenting on other student's comments, and the blog has created a real learning community. Contrast this to the twice-weekly class sessions, where perhaps five to seven students actively participate. I can't imagine a class where everyone actively participates, but clearly everyone is through Delaney's class blog. "I'm making it up as I go," says Delaney, but clearly her experiment is wildly successful.
The blog is private and password protected, but once class is over in June of 2006 she plans to open it up to the world to see what has happened. She's keeping it private initially to limit comments to students.
Currently, Delaney is the only poster, although as we mentioned everyone leaves comments. She will probably open it up and allow students to write their own posts in the near future. It's admittedly an experiment in action.
So, do the blog conversations parallel the class sessions? Not necessarily. Although some of the posts and resulting discussions do follow on from classroom material, Delaney feel free to post on any relevant topics and then watch the ensuing conversation begin. Sometimes she posts on somewhat controversial topics to get the students talking.
"I’m thinking this IS the future of teaching!" add Delaney. Clearly she's on to something!
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