Proposal Medium Project

What could an assignment on a blog look like? Especially if it has a certain format, like a proposal or annotated bibliography? I think it would look alright... no? Let's try the Proposal Medium Project in this entry.

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To: Important People

From: Me

Re: Proposal Medium Project

Date: June 7, 2021

My college redesign idea is all about the usage of blogs in the composition classroom.

BACKGROUND

My Master's research WAY back in the early 2000s revolved around The Bison Blog, a community-based blog for NDSU students. I posted intriguing and goofy prompts and generally kept the blog thriving for over a year. Then, my research began: coding that blog for complexity of writing as well as errors. The errors were few and far between; the complexity evident. I did use blogs in an abstract sense when I landed my job at NDSCS in 2005, but the practice truly fell by the way side... now, I'm bringing them back to add even more student control and choice to my classes!

WHY

Shouldn't students compose and create in a space that is THEIR OWN? This redesign would allow students to use blogs to compose their writing in a space that is THEIRS. Designed by them! "No offense" to LMSs, but ones like Blackboard contain rather sterile environments. They are clunky, too, and in using blogs, not only do students control their space, but the LMS can't potentially "steal" their information that they share in there. {After the semester, students could delete the blog if they don't want anything more to do with it - can they delete what they've left in the LMS?}

HOW

Within the first few days of class, I will allot time for students to log into Blogger and create their blog. They should use this time to play around with it, too. In this time span, students will be asked to post an introductory entry AND respond to the Feedback Bootcamp Slides (Step #1).

WHEN

Students would use their blogs on a weekly basis to complete groups of activities and brainstorm/draft their Large Projects. The final product for Large Projects could be placed on the blog, but since blog entries are meant to be brief, students might want to use Google Slides or Prezi for those beefy pieces.

WHERE

Students can use their blogs anywhere; I tested out using Blogger on my phone, and it worked just fine. I would hope students would save their eyeballs and use our classroom computers or their own laptops, but I want this process to be able to be completed anywhere. I've heard the Blackboard app isn't as intuitive for this kind of work...

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