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September 25, 2005
A model for online participation
I've been meeting with you all individually (note those who missed class last Wednesday should come by my office, OM 115, and sign up for a conference). One thing I've touched on with most of you is participation on this blog. Generally folks are a little behind on their participation. This is particularly troubling to me as I've given you a few "freebies" here in the first few weeks: a post to introduce yourself, a post just stating a link to your blog, a post for your NeoVox article, and a post, written in class, giving feedback on another person's article. Since most people are a couple posts behind, that means that many of you are posting only once a week (or less, since that would be an average).
The workload is only going to increase as the semester moves forward. So let me give you some specific guidelines for how to proceed with your THREE WEEKLY POSTS.
1. Write in response to the assigned readings. I usually post a question. You can respond/comment on that or post something else related to the reading. Try to demonstrate that you've read and understood it. If you struggled, ask some quesitons.
2. Post on a topic germane to class, something happening currently. News about blogging or copyright or emerging technologies or privacy. You can write about online culture. Yes, it might mean going out there and looking around, but I'd like to see you do that. Check out the feed in the left column here. It's providing SCI/TECH news from Wired, BBC, and NY Times. It's a place to start.
3. Comment on one of your classmates posts on this blog. Yes, I want you to read one another's posts and respond to them. The idea here is that we are trying to create a community of writers dealing with the subject of "cyberspace."
Let me give you a little, standard mathematical formula we go by in higher education. We estimate two hours of work outside of class for each our in class (lab doesn't count). So you should be doing six hours of work, plus the three hours of classtime on Tues and Thursday. I figure you'll spend around two hours doing reading, four hours working on web projects, and the three hours of classtime doing blog posts (that's for both your personal blog and the course blog). On top of that we have the two hours of lab where we are trying to learn more about web design.
Posted by Alex Reid at September 25, 2005 7:15 PM
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