Many instructors use blogs in philosophy classes, and if you teach online it is basically a requirement to have a weekly discussion board nowadays. Discussion boards/blogs are used as short supplementary assignments where students are required to post a certain number of comments in response to some prompt or reading.

 

One problem is that students go to the blog, do the minimum, and then check out. Christopher Long, at Penn State, has experimented with making student blogs a major part of his course.  As he puts it, the "blog is the course."  At the center of his effort is a rubric that defines what is required for a good grade in his course.  He tells the students that at several times during the semester he will review all of their postings and give each student a grade on contributions for that part of the semester.  One of the elements in the rubric is that the posts need to be distributed through the semester, so part of getting a good grade is to post regularly, rather than just before the date when he reviews the posts.  Long tells us that students are still actively using the blog, even though the course has been over for several months.

 

 

Robert Boyd Skipper, at St. Mary's University, has developed a somewhat different methodology. He also makes blogs a central part of the course and uses detailed rubrics. A common way to use blogs is to have a discussion board for the whole class, where students can start a thread or comment on someone else's posting. Skipper's model is different (see his article in Teaching Philosophy).  Each student has his/her individual blog, and other students visit that blog and enter comments.  

 

 

TΦ101 has been using blogs for parts of courses and has developed some blog instructions and grading criteria. When using an online discussion board or blog format, it is important to write a prompt that will really motivate students to want to respond. It is also important for the faculty member to be a regular contributor to the discussion board/blog, so that students know that the work is valued by the faculty member.  Although it is hard to get the students to do heavy analysis in their blog posts, it appears that when they do return to a formal writing project, their writing is stronger.

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Recent experience indicates that students, especially in online courses, will attempt to do the bare minimum in relation to weekly discussion posts. I've largely replaced the now "traditional weekly discussion board" in my online classes with Perusall, which in my experience generates more genuine student engage with the text and with each other. As of right now, Perusall is still free to use, so check it out. 

 

Source:

Christopher P. Long, Cultivating Communities of Learning.  Teaching Philosophy 33:4 (2010), pp. 347-362.  

Robert Boyd Skipper, The Blog Assisted Seminar.  Teaching Philosophy 34:2 (2011, pp. 119-132).

 

 

Update: August 15, 2011; 12/17/2025--D. Sackris