One problem with having a course blog is how to keep the blog or discussion forum active throughout all of the weeks of the semester and throughout each individual week. Often when professors have course blogs, they’ll require some number of posts a week or some average number of posts over the span of the semester. The problem is that often ends up with a bottle neck of posts at the end of some time period, and the students can’t really engage each other.

The scenario should be familiar. No one has posted anything, so there is nothing to respond to. Suddenly it’s Friday. There is nothing on the blog to engage with and and each student is stuck writing their own post on Friday night. They post their individual post and then don’t bother to engage with other students. Call this a “Pacing Problem” — an ideal course blog would have student actively engaging each other throughout the week.

Since encountering the pacing problem several years ago, I came up with a simple way to structure course blog requirements that pretty much eliminated my pacing problem. Here are the two main things I do.

1. Word Count Requirement Rather than Number of Post Requirement
   The first step is to have a word count requirement (rather than a number of post requirement or number of comments requirement). I make it 200 words by the end week. Allow the students to distribute those words across several posts, and allow comments on posts to satisfy a significant majority of your blog posting requirement. My students can satisfy their 200 words by writing a primary post, or commenting on a primary post. They can also distribute that 200 words across several comments on several different posts. Word count requirements that can be distributed across several threads are much less daunting requirements, and students are more likely to take a peek at the blog if there isn’t a large requirement looming over them. Once they get to the blog and see something they can drop 50 words on, they start writing. Once they start writing, they usually stretch it to something more substantive once the creative process starts. Even if they don’t write something longer than 50 words, fine, that just means there will be more conversation happening on the blog because they’ll engage another post. It seems pretty win-win either way. But the bottom line is that a word count requirement of 200 as opposed to a single post count requirement is way more likely to encourage discussion, and it’s easier or a student to distribute their participation across the week. If you don’t like the idea that it would be possible for a student to go the whole semester without ever writing anything more than a ton of ho-hum 25 word quips, the next item can fix that while also solving another huge problem with course blogs.
2. Assign Each Student At Least One Substantive Monday Post
   Create a schedule and assign each student one or two weeks where they must post a single, substantive 200 word primary post by Monday morning. You can even make this Monday 200 a special assignment (e.g. it must be a summary of some argument/topic that came up in the readings that we’ll be discussing this week.) This is a huge step in eliminating that Friday bottle-neck, because it guarantees that there will be a few posts to grapple with first thing Monday morning. If students have a word count requirement like the one specified above, you’ll get several students looking to satisfy at least part of their Weekly 200 early and suddenly discussion is happening early in the week. It pretty much snowballs from there. This is also where you can instill more substance if you’re worried about the above Weekly 200 requirement being rigorous enough for your course learning objectives. Just require a few more substantive posts on top of an easier to satisfy word count requirement.

These two things simple things have drastically improved the flow of blog discussion on my course blogs. I don’t get bottle necks of posts, and I get students who actually discuss with each other. The two main things this achieves that helps solve that pacing problem are that (1) you’ve guaranteed that there will be something at the start of every week. This gives students who are looking for to jump in on a discussion (rather than draft their own 200 word post) some fodder for discussion. By letting a majority of the blog participation be satisfied by commenting and be split across posts, you’ve structured your blog in a way that encourages students to jump in and start having a conversation, and you’ve removed the part of blog discussion requirements that seems so daunting and might make students avoid checking the blog entirely.

Having those two features as part of your blog structure will almost certainly help with the pacing problem. I’ll add one more thing to be mindful of that can kill blog discussion. Stay out of the discussion. In my experience, when professors start to weigh in, it stops discussion. A lot of students seem to no longer want to weigh in on a thread that the professor has weighed in on.

I have a couple of folk-psychological explanations as to why professors tend to kill discussion threads. Here’s a possible explanation as to why. When someone weighs in that many regard as the knowledgeable expert, some will have a tenancy to think that anything worthwhile raised on this topic was likely raised by the expert. They use that (false) assumption to second guess the merits of whatever it is they wanted to say. So your status as expert (in the eyes of your students) could be a catalyst for their self-doubt and they keep quiet.

Here’s another reason to stay out of the discussion. You will likely raise objections/comments that other students were also thinking. Every time you weigh in on something , you risk saying something that one of your students could have said as part of their weekly 200.

Important: If you adopt this policy, explicitly tell your students that you’re adopting this policy to not inhibit discussion. Let them know that you will still be very active in reading the blog. It’s also a good idea to mention good posts in class from time to time. This will re-enforce the idea that you are taking the discussions seriously, and that the blog isn’t meaningless busy work.

That’s it. Hope it helps.