Each semester I take a look back and try to find what I didn’t like about the previous semester. I’m always tweaking. I teach Web Writing and to distract my students from their fascination with design I make them write a blog. A blog makes students concentrate on the writing and not the design. Yes, we discuss design and how it affects the way the audience may respond to their writing, but at least students are concentrating on writing, since this class is their upper-level writing course.
Last semester I went easy on them with their blogs. This semester the requirements for their blogs will be:
1. Minimum of 20 posts
2. Quality of writing
3. Inverted pyramid style
4. 250-500 words
5. Pictures, charts, and graphs
6. Video podcasts of their own
7. Interviews
8. Quality of reporting information
9. The blog must have a theme/topic that they stick to. For example, politics… not politics and sometimes a movie review
10. Follows web writing style such as chunky/short paragraphs, hyperlinks, and using multimedia within their stories.
The whole idea is to get students to start telling informative stories and to market their work. I’m working on the worksheet now for them to follow for the semester. I will then grade their blogs for their midterm. So, this will help students keep up their blog rather than try to write 20 posts all at the end of the semester. Yikes!
I think this will promote:
1. better quality of writing
2. an understanding of citizen journalism
3. learning to write to an audience because the one thing they will have to do is to use statistics to track who is reading what
I’m excited about this new tweaking of my Web Writing class. Yes, it’s a lot of writing, but it will be well worth the effort.
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You are correct: these students will only improve if they practice their writing. Your plan establishes some objectives that will help students understand what and why and help you more easily grade.
I may have to run over and listen in this semester!
Wow, I am glad I had you last semester and not this one! I feel sorry for all the people that I told that this was going to be an easy class