By Gabriel Martinez, Feb 13, 2009 in Musings
This semester I am teaching a course on economics and ideology ("Markets, State, and Institutions"). The idea is to get students to understand why “the other side” would argue for policies that seem crazy. Formally, we try to examine the philosophical basis for, say, Barack Obama's or Ron Paul's policy proposals, and then examples of the actual policies themselves. As usual, eliciting student participation has been quite difficult. This always befuddled me: the topics are incredibly interesting, extremely timely, and passionately argued. In my ideal, the class meetings become something of a salon, with students making sensible, intellectually honest, well-informed, passionate arguments in favor or against positions. Kind of like the Lincoln party I hosted last Thursday night.
Well, it doesn't turn out that way, for reasons that are well discussed in other posts in this blog. Students have generous hearts and are earnest and sincere, but frankly they are often more interested in themselves and their friends than in the world around them. No doubt, current events are often kind of depressing. Many students don’t like to fight but rather look for consensus and approval from their peers. The argumentative ones often focus on making themselves interesting (often to themselves). Blah, blah, blah, you know all this.
At my university we have the added constraint that most students tend to come from relatively similar political persuasions. We don’t advertise ourselves that way, and we surely don’t require it. But it does mean that political arguments aren't easy to enkindle. (Actually, the biggest problem has been that instead of arguing along Rawlsian or Nozickian lines, they tend to rely on Aristotle and John Paul II.)
The traditional techniques we use have their demerits. For example, one might require a "response paper." Should it be due before class? Students may well not know enough (that's why they go to class, we hope). After class? Then the paper doesn't help them to think through the class topic and participate actively. The biggest demerit of the response paper, in my mind however, is that it doesn't take advantage of the students' … well, vanity, and desire to look good in front of their peers, to fit in, to look relatively smart.
The ideal, then, would be a medium that takes advantage of students' natural goodness and goodwill and their desire to look good and not embarrass themselves in front of their peers. It encourages some intellectual work, but with no expectation of perfection. It is thoroughly visible to all of the other students, and even to friends and family back home. It allows for a certain degree of informality and even silly self-expression. And it incorporates an expectation for response-and-counter-response among the participants.
That sounds like a blog! You can check out our (very limited and imperfect progress) at http://thecopperclub.blogspot.com/. Blogspot allows you to list posts by category and it puts a time stamp on postings: both of these features are useful for course management. But you'll see that I haven't mastered the art of preventing procrastination.
6 Responses to "Blogging as a teaching tool"
Phil Hamilton on Feb 15, 2009
Thank you for raising this important topic. You're right on in terms of students' deep reluctance to debate controversial issues and to take strong positions on one side or another. Again, you're correct that often times they simply don't care about a particular topic (of course, their own lives are much more interesting than, say, Abraham Lincoln's economic ideas!). The biggest thing, in my mind, is their wanting "to look good and not embarrass themselves."
The blog does indeed seem to be an ideal medium for student to exchange contentious ideas among themselves. Indeed, an Internet exchange seems to provide a freedom we don't quite have in our face-to-face encounters. Online courses have used a variation of the blog for quite a while (i.e., "chat rooms").
I have no experience, however, using blogs in my classes, nor with online course chat rooms. So, my question is how have you worked the blog requirement into "Markets, State, and Institutions" this semester? Is each student required to write up a blog posting on some topic? Are students responsible for reading and responding to blog postings before each class? Does the blog take the place of class discussions altogether or does it provide the jumping off point in which to begin an in-class discussions?
I think this has a lot of potential, but I'd like to know a few more details.
Gabriel Martinez on Feb 16, 2009
Dear Phil: The requirement is that they post a response to the reading (recently, a response to specific reading questions) on the blog, before class. In the ideal world, this would provide students with an incentive to read and think before class. Frequently we refer to someone’s post in class. Occasionally someone makes such a useful point that I’ll mention it specifically and ask that person to elaborate. Because it’s a public post, the other students often have read it and chime in. If someone has a suggestion, I’d love to hear it. It's still a work in progress and we'll see how (and whether) I use it in future classes.
Lee Trepanier on Feb 17, 2009
I like the idea of incorporating the blog into the classroom, but I have a couple of nut-and-blots type questions. First, is how do you grade the student’s post on the blog? Do you grade it like you would for a short essay, where mechanical aspects count, such as grammar and syntax? Or do students get credit for just posting a comment? Also, how do you control for the time-response factor? What I mean is if the students are graded on the content of their posts, what does mean when the first blog covers the main points, leaving just scraps for the rest? With written essays, students can make the same point over but with the blog, students wouldn’t be able to do so (or, rather, they could, but it would be tiring to read).
Gabriel Martinez on Feb 17, 2009
It's intended as a no-pressure assignment, but I do tell them that I'm looking for thoughtful comments. The format encourages short jabs (rather than complete answers), so the likelihood that a single post covers all points, and covers them thoroughly to everyone’s satisfaction, is relatively low (and it hasn’t happened yet). But the problems that you point out are certainly real. Any suggestions?
Lee Trepanier on Feb 18, 2009
One possible solution is to allow an idea or “main point” limit per student, thereby preventing a student to cover all the topics in a single blog posting. But I’m not sure if there is a fool-proof method to solve that problem.
Another concern is workload. Do you find the blog posting created more work for you or the equivalent amount to grading short essays?
Gabriel Martinez on Feb 18, 2009
Well ... students are also required to write 5 medium-length papers on a variety of topics (the financial crisis, education, health care, unemployment, and Wal-mart) presenting the arguments from the various ideological alternatives. So at this point I'm giving them credit simply for posting, although the expectation (encouraged by vanity) is that the posts will be thoughtful.