Guide to Blogging in this Class

          See also: How to Set Up Your Blog

Blogging Basics

This course emphasizes doing things with texts instead of reading passively. For the blogging project, you will engage literary texts twice a week.

Minimum Requirements

• Two posts are due each week, one each by midnight before each class.
• All posts must be at least 300 words long if written or, if in some other medium, represent a comparable amount of work.
• All posts must engage the texts we have read for this course. Prompted posts, including the three "special" posts, must follow the specific instructions for their respective prompts.

Late Posts, Missing Posts, or Off Topic Posts

Late posts or missing posts receive no credit. Each late or missing post could cost you as much as two and a half percent (2.5%) off your final grade. Similarly, except when the instructor specifically says otherwise, posts that do not engage texts we’ve read in this course may receive no credit or partial credit. Students missing ten (10) or more posts or any of the special posts may not receive a passing grade for the course.

Two Passes

You may "pass" on two posts without penalty. Passes may not be applied to any of the "special" posts.

Blogging Portfolio and Evaluation Criteria

You blogging will be evaluated holistically, with the overall project being looked at. A portfolio will be used to assess both quantitative and qualitative aspects of your work.

Quantitative Evaluation Criteria

In assessing your blogging portfolio, first ask:

• Were all of the posts on time, full length, and on topic?

Late posts receive no credit, each costing up to two and a half percent (2.5%) off the final grade. Posts not meeting their respective prompt, not long enough, or not on topic may receive no credit or partial credit. Blog portfolios with no late, missing, or off topic entries usually earn at least a "B-" regardless of the overall quality. The grade assigned in answer to this quantitative question serves as a base grade onto which a quality grade is added, if applicable. Typical base grades based on number of missing or off topic posts for the final submission:

• 0 late or missing typically earns a base grade of B-
• 1-3 late or missing typically earns a base grade of C
• 4-7 late or missing typically earns a base grade of D
• 8-9 late or missing typically earns a base grade of F
• 10 or more late or missing earns a final grade of F in the course,
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Qualitative Evaluation Criteria

After counting to see how many posts were on time and on topic, ask questions about the overall quality of your blogging:

• Overall, do the posts suggest serious engagement with the texts and concepts of the course?
• Overall, are there a variety of kinds of posts, demonstrating creativity and intellectual risk-taking?
• Overall and over time, do the pattern of posts—and the written reflection—suggest growth of the student?
• Overall, do the posts suggest that the student was vitally engaged in dialogue with the instructor and other class members?

Poor and average work (for which the answers to these questions are “somewhat” or “mostly”) typically keep the base grade as the final grade. Strong and excellent work (for which the answers to these questions are “yes” or “absolutely”) can earn up to a full letter grade and a half beyond the base grade.

Portfolio

We will take stock of your blogging twice, once for a mid-semester assessment and then again at the end of the semester for a final grade. You will prepare and submit a portfolio to demonstrate and reflect on your work. Use the Blogging Portfolio Template (download .doc file here) and include the following:

1. Log of Posts: Include a log of all of the posts you've written, indicating whether they were on time, full length, and on topic.
2. List of Selected Posts: You will choose some of the best or most representative posts to be reviewed more closely than the rest. These are to be listed in the portfolio with explanations for why you chose them. There should be about three of these for the mid-semester assessment and about five for the final submission.
3. Self-Assessment and Reflection: Write a self-assessment addressing the qualitative evaluation criteria and a reflection on your blogging experience during the semester.

How to Write Blog Posts

Each post needs only to show that you’ve read actively and meaningfully. Posts should usually include at least one quotation from a course text. Over the course of the entire project, the all the blogs together need to demonstrate the qualities asked for in the evaluation criteria. For this, collectively, the posts should demonstrate a variety of ways of engaging texts. They ought to incorporate discussion of the course concepts often. They ought to include quotations or paraphrases of things said by the instructor or other members of the class (including links to the appropriate blog, if applicable) often. And they ought to show you increasingly becoming a better reader.

That said, this blogging project does not require formal writing, expect for one of the special posts. The best way to start creating a post is to just start. If you are going to write something, just start writing regardless of the quality you feel you are producing. Writing is a process and I am not looking for “perfection” on every post. I am looking for meaningful engagement and growth over the course of all of the posts. The posts do not need to be polished essays. They are informal blog posts. You may use, for instance, the first person I as often as you like. The basic thing is to get started and don’t freeze up because you can do better than you might think.

All blogging in this class starts with reading. In fact, the writing or creative activities you do in making your blog posts can rightly be considered as extensions of reading. Reading well—reading actively by underlining, taking notes, asking questions, and so forth—will get you well started on creating your posts. After you’ve read, you will need to write or create something that takes you deeper into engagement with the text. If I give instructions or a prompt in class, you will be able to follow that. However, for those times when you need to decide for yourself, there are quite a number of things you can do, such as interpreting a text, applying it to life, responding artistically, doing explicative work, doing background research, framing a theoretical discussion of implications that arise, and so on. I’ve listed quite a few suggestions below:

• Give an interpretation of the work and give details from the text that make the interpretation plausible.
• Borrow or adapt ideas from the activities we do in class.
• Borrow or adapt ideas from the prompted posts I assign.
• Summarize the work. Put in your own words what seems to be going on in the work, a description of the literal actions and settings of the work.
• Discuss a particular line or passage. Give an interpretation of them that might help contribute to an interpretation of the larger work or interpret them on their own.
• Discuss a problematic element in the work.
• Discuss an application of the themes of the work to real life. (If you use personal experience, in any kind of post, avoid things that are overly private, since everyone in the class will be able to read it.)
• Make connections between the work and something else which can shed light on it.
• Make connections between the work and something else that it can shed light on.
• Explicate the work: i.e. point out the technical or artistic devices and functions.
• Critique the “message” (or presuppositions) seemingly conveyed by the work.
• Respond to the work in kind: write a poem inspired by or interpreting or answering a poem, a story for a story, and so on.
• Translate the work to another medium: paint a short story, write a short story from a poem, put a scene from a drama into song, make a video clip of a drama, record a dramatic reading, and so on. (Note: If you choose to provide a creative response in a medium which will be complicated to post to your blog, you can bring the material to class and receive an extension for the actual posting of it because it may take more time to scan, format, or so forth.)
• Give two possible interpretations and discuss the differences.
• Give a description of material (historical context, literary devices) that can help us read the poem. (Quoted material for this, say from Wikipedia, you will also need to write something in your own words to connect the material to the texts as long as the minimum word count.)
• Describe or apply or show how to possibly apply a particular theoretical perspective to the work.
• Write out a number of loosely related notes or comments on a text, separated by numbers, without any transitions sentences, and give them an overall title.

There are more things you could do as well, I'm sure. Make sure that overall your blog displays variety, creativity and intellectual risk-taking. You don't need to make every post amazing. You don't even need to succeed with every post. Failing big shows significant risk which means serious participation. The overall picture is what I'm looking at. Some of the suggestions require significantly less intellectual or emotional engagement with the texts than others. If you consistently choose these kinds of posts—such as always summarizing and never taking a chance at something riskier—I may instruct you to choose more challenging tasks which require you to go deeper into the text and which add more value to your classmate’s learning experience. You should push yourself to meet the evaluation criteria explained above.

"The Guide to Blogging in this Class" by Paul T. Corrigan is licensed under a 
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.  Updated 12 August 2010.