Center for Teaching & Learning

Teaching Tips: Ideas for Teaching with Blogs

Ideas for Teaching with Blogs

• Ask students to provide commentary on a subject or to deliver arguments including supporting evidence. Or ask them to post links, articles, or media files that relate to the topic being studied and explain why they were chosen.
• Ask students to interpret what they learned, showcase their grasp of the material, and present information to their classmates. They can post their presentation slide shows or videos to the blog.

For peer-to-peer teaching and support

• Assign one (or two) students to be scribes for each class session. Have them take notes for their session and post them to the blog. This is particularly useful for discussion classes where you want the majority of students to be focused on the discussion instead of trying to take notes.
• Have one or two students, in rotation, be responsible for posting a “problem of the week” and describe how they solved it. This becomes a study guide for the class.
• Ask all or specific students to post discussion questions for the next class session. This will alert you to what is uppermost in their minds about the topic, and will help them focus.

For group work

• For small groups: Use a “group blog” to share resources, questions, and drafts related to a group project. They can also use the blog to record their progress and keep track of who is responsible for what.