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  • Date: Monday, August 04, 2008 Time: 9:00 am Category: Blogging, Instructional Technology, Web Development Tagged Blogging, Instructional Technology, teaching, WordPress Discussion: 2 Comments

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In addition to my web development duties here at the Office of Information Technology, I am an adjunct faculty member for the School of Journalism.  I’ve been teaching PR319 – Public Relations Editing and Design for the past 4 1/2 years or so.  Being inclined to post materials for my students online anyway, I’ve always had an online component to my course even though we meet once a week.  In the past, these have been static html pages linking to documents and/or providing information on how to do some things.

Last year, however, I decided to try using what is arguably the most widely used and popular blogging tool to manage my course content online.  I installed WordPress on my personal web hosting account (a relatively inexpensive account that I pay for with a web hosting company).  Installing WordPress is easy, but you don’t have to install it yourself to use it.  But, you don’t even have to use WordPress.  Utilizing a blog for a course is easy to manage and makes delivering content to your students super easy.

You might ask, why not use eCampus instead?  Well, you can, this is just another tool that you might be interested in using. The concept of blogging itself warrants exploration as it has many uses in the classroom.  In using a tool like WordPress, one can get a better feel for how that might work.

WordPress has three basic types of content: posts, pages, and comments.   Posts are best for news items or items that are timestamped.  Posts in WordPress are by default displayed on the main page of most WordPress themes.  Posts are added to the site’s RSS Feed and can be subscribed to.  [You can opt to have a page display as the main page, though.] Pages, on the other hand are best for content that is “timeless” and doesn’t need to be timestamped.  Pages are not part of the RSS feed by default.  Comments are usually tied to posts, but you can have comments on pages too.  Comments also generate an RSS feed.

Ok, so now that the technical explanation is our of the way….

I set up pages for the course syllabus, the class schedule, general project instructions, final project information, and contact information.   For each assignment, I set up posts with detailed instructions and the due date prominently displayed in the post title.  This included tests as well.  I also created a How-to section pertaining to each assignment.  Additionally if something came up during the semester that I needed to explain in more detail, I could post and have it displayed at the top of the page (at the beginning of the feed, if you will).  Now, the real beauty in WordPress is not the ease of use in which all of this can be set up – which (is pretty darn easy), but the ability to forward date (timestamp) the posts.  So I can, in essence, create the entire course at the beginning of the semester and specify on what date and at what time I want the post to appear on the website.  This is especially handy for tests, but it minimizes the risk that the students will visit the first week, completely overwhelmed with information, and not pay as much attention to new information as they need to as the semester goes on.

Once you are finished with the course, you can then go back and reuse the posts for the next semester by simply changing the dates and updating downloads like tests and the syllabus.  This is also a good time to refine any of the posts that may have been confusing to some of the students or you found prompted a bunch of questions.

One thing I have not done in the past is allowed comments.  I am considering allowing that this semester to make the site more collaborative.  Other ideas I am tossing around are:

1. Allowing the students access to blog with updates about their projects.  In my class each student selects an organization (real or fictional) and develops basic public relations materials for it (logo, letterhead, business card, advertisements, brochure, and a newsletter).
2. Adding screencasts about using the software.
3. Asking questions and asking the students to reply in the comments.  Typically I don’t have much time to have discussions in class because so much of it is about how to use the software to create their projects.

I know I am barely scratching the surface in what I can actually do with this platform and to enhance the student experience.  On the other hand I don’t want to complicate it too much and water down the primary objective of the course – to teach the students about desktop publishing in a public relations context.

Regardless, using a blog to manage the timing and delivery of information is a huge help for a busy person like myself.