How to Develop a Multi-User Course Blog

 

A multi-user course blog is a blog written by a team of student contributors. That means multiple students contribute to a single course blog content by writing posts. This type of blog can be very successful for course blogs. However, you can’t just set a group of individuals loose and expect your course blog to be successful. It takes planning, organization, and ongoing management to create a great multi-user blog. Follow the tips below to develop a course blog that has a chance for success.

1. Communicate the Goals and Focus of the Course Blog

Don’t expect student blog contributors to know what your goals are for the blog. You need to explain what you want to get from the blog and give them a specific topic to focus on in their writing. Otherwise, your team blog will be a mashup of inconsistent and possibly inappropriate content that doesn’t relate to your objectives. Identity your blog’s course objective and educate your students about it, so they understand it, accomplish your learning objective, and succeed at the assignment.

2. Develop a Course Blog Style Guide and Author Guidelines

It’s essential that you create a sense of consistency in your course blog, and that comes through the writing style, voice, and formatting used in the blog posts written by student contributors. Therefore, you may need to develop a style guide and author guidelines that cover the way students should write, grammar requirements, formatting requirements, linking requirements, and so on. The style guide and author guidelines should also address the things contributors should not do. For example, if there are specific resources you don’t want them to mention or link to, identify those names and sites in your guidelines.

3. Assign a Student Blog Editor

You may decide you need a student blog editor who has experience managing online content for your course blog to be the best that it can be. This student will review posts for style, voice, functioning links, appropriate images, and so on.

4. Create an Blog Contribution Calendar

Course blogs are better when the content is organized, focused, and consistent. Therefore, a clear contribution calendar helps to keep all student bloggers on track and ensure the blog content is interesting, useful, and not confusing to readers. Contribution calendars also help to make sure content is published at a time that is consistent with your course readings, assignments, exams, grading schedule, etc. It’s generally not a good idea to publish 10 posts at the same time as this can cause some posts to never appear on the main posts page of your course blog, minimizing that post’s potential audience.

7. Provide Feedback to Students

Communicate directly with students through email, Blackboard, in class, or during office hoursto provide feedback, praise, direction, and suggestions. If your student contributors don’t feel like they’re an important component of the blog and don’t feel like they’re given the information they need to be successful, then you’ll limit the potential success of your course blog, too.