Ruminations of an Online Instructor / MD

Developing a Commenting Guide for Students on Day 29

The challenge for today was to develop an age-appropriate student commenting guide. Since I deal with college and graduate students, trying to get things down to the level of an elementary school student wouldn’t enter the picture, unless I put on my parenting hat (I have one that will be in third grade in the fall another who will be in first grade.)

I decided that I would start with my Six C’s on Being a Great Blog Commenter from Day 23 of the challenge and combine this with the current Discussion Board Guide that I have, written into the syllabus, for my online graduate. I also included the Grading Rubric I have adapted from one of the Online courses that I took. This could easily be adapted to grading blog comments.

Six C’s on Being a Great Blog Commenter

• Centered - Stay focused.
• Contribute - Share some information or something useful.
• Courteous- Be Polite.
• Credit - Give credit where credit is due. (Cite your sources.)
• Camaraderie - Commenting is a way of building relationships with other bloggers.
• Constant - Remember comments are permanent.

Discussion Board & Grading Rubric

Discussion Board
With an online course, the discussion board is where most of the interaction occurs among the students in the class; this is where you will get to know your fellow classmates often more intimately than in a face to face setting. Plan on logging into the Discussion board to read, post & respond to new postings several times a week.

We have a fairly small number of people in the course, so you should be able to interacting with each of your other classmates. When posting your response for the week you may want to post your own answers first before responding to your classmate’s posts.

Each week that there are discussions be sure to respond to at least one of the posts for each of your classmates, who have posted timely posts.

Discussion Board Posting & Netiquette
Since we all are likely to have different backgrounds and experiences in regards to bereavement, grief, loss and hospice, each of us is likely to be looking at different resources and areas that the others may not be exploring. We had different paths in getting here and so each of us may have different areas of expertise or uniqueness that can be contributed and shared with the class as a whole.

You may want to share interesting or inspiring resources from books, articles, video or other sources may be useful to help in learning material for this class or used with clients in a professional setting.

The Student Help Section for Blackboard has a good review with guidelines for Netiquette.

When responding to classmates’ posts, in particular, be courteous and focus on offering constructive advice instead of criticisms.

Discussion Board Grading
You will be keeping track of your discussion board posts and self-grading your own postings based on the rubric listed below along with the discussion board grading form. As you are posting your results be sure that you take time to reflect, and include thoughtful analysis of materials, insights about the materials read and/or presented as well as providing constructive responses (teaching) to each other.

Discussion Board Grading Rubric

Source: Van Duzer J. 2006. Discussion Rubrics, Introduction to Moodle Course.

Communicating the Commenting Guide

I like the idea of making the commenting guide a collaborative process and using a wiki. I think giving the graduate students the Guidelines on being a Great Blog Commenter with the Guidelines on Posting in a Discussion Board would be a good way to start.

If I needed to have something developed for myself, I would include the commenting guide as part of the course syllabus.

While I like the idea of using VoiceThread I am not sure if I would use a audio / video for my college students. I could see VoiceThread being helpful if one were trying to instruct younger students.

Continue reading Developing a Commenting Guide for Students on Day 29…

Blog Comment Strategy for Day 28

In looking at the challenge activity for today, I suddenly realized that I don’t have a particular Blog Commenting Strategy.

Prior to the challenge, I would comment under the following situations. I comment when

I find something or a post that I am interested in
If I think that an article has been done well, to leave praise
To leave a related link and share information.
To thank the blogger or commenter for something.

According Caroline Middlebrook in her post on Do You Have A Blog Commenting Strategy? there are several distinct goals when leaving comments on other people’s blogs. Caroline’s goals for leaving blog comments are:

Grab the attention of the readers
Grab the attention of the blogger
Develop my personal brand
Create some backlinks

Out of these reasons, I would only be using the “Create some backlinks” and “Grab the attention of the blogger” since this is the only category that fits with my other main reason for commenting, to share information. I hadn’t really thought about using blog comments to develop my personal brand.

If I start doing this, I need to ensure that my comments don’t end up being viewed as blog spam or Spam in Blogs.

More on Blog Commenting Presence

Michele commented on yesterday’s post, on Personal Branding:

…a big part of communicating about our brand and what we stand for, but we also say something about ourselves by the comments we leave elsewhere. How do you feel you communicate about yourself through the comments you leave on other blogs?

I realize that I’d set up a different presence for commenting on the Edublog Blogs and for commenting on Blogger Blogs

For Edublogs I am drdyer

I liked the Voki so much that I decided to use it as my edublogger persona. The Voki was also a way of creating bit of a different blog presence and blog comment presence from the one that I use for Blogger, perhaps to create a new presence for my edublog.

For Blogger Blogs I am Kirsti A. Dyer (probably going back to Kirsti A. Dyer, MD)

My Blogger presence uses a real photo of myself that is a couple of years old. This is the photo and the name that I use professionally , so the Blogger presence is more of a professional representation.

Answering Michele’s question: How do you feel you communicate about yourself through the comments you leave on other blogs?

I think that my blog personas send out a strong ‘professional’ message, so much so that it may discourage others (particularly in my Blogger blogs) from commenting. Since my Personal Branding, or Strong Internet Presence involves my background, my credentials and my professional degrees, I don’t believe I could do this any differently, unless I were to create a different “Mom Blogger” persona for use in a more personal setting.

Continue reading Blog Comment Strategy for Day 28…

Day 4 Blog Challenge - Post a Question

Wow. It’s Day 4 already of the 31 Day Challenge.

One of the things that I hadn’t really thought of would happen quite so soon, is the number of comments that I’ve been receiving in response to questions, issues and problems related to the challenge.

This level of blog commenting activity is entirely new to me, since I’ve been keeping several blogs on other topics that get much fewer daily comments.

Refining My Personal Goals for the 31 Day Comment Challenge

One of the goals that I’d posted for yesterday was

7. Encourage others by visiting a new blog at least every other day.

I am going to update or refine that goal for today

7. Encourage others in the 31 Day Challenge by

• Responding to my blog posters comments within 48 hours.
• Visiting a new blog at least every other day.

With starting into a new Summer Session Tomorrow, I realize I have to give myself a reasonable window to respond to blog posts.

I also realize that since comments are being tracked and that people are theoretically monitoring their posts that those leaving comments should be seeing my comments without me needing to contact them or post responses in their blogs.

Activity Day 4: Ask a Question in a Blog Comment

The activity for Day 4 is to ask a question in a blog comment. It does seem that asking a question when commenting on other blogs could be a very good way to get a blog discussion going especially when interacting with students.

Asking questions is a very common technique in normal classrooms and in online classrooms.

Continue reading Day 4 Blog Challenge - Post a Question…

Joining the 31 Day Comment Challenge & Major Frustrations

I received an email update yesterday from Edublog encouraging me to Join the 31 Day Comment Challenge and I decided to sign up.

I am # 92 on the list, signed up the the Ruminations of an Online Instructor / MD blog.

Getting this blog up and running is my personal summer project, so joining the challenge seems like a good way to accomplish that goal.

The primary purpose of the 31 Day Comment Challenge is to encourage participants to

“spend a month of focused commenting for us all to become better blog citizens by actively participating in conversations and sharing our learning, especially with those new to blogging.”

My Personal Goals for the 31 Day Comment Challenge

1. Get the Ruminations of an Online Instructor / MD Blog up, running and established.
2. Follow along as possible the 31 Day Comment Challenge Daily Activities.
3. Meet, interact with and leave blog postings for other fellow participants.
4. Learn more about blogging and educational uses of blogging.
5. Record and reflect what I am learning about the process.

Activity Day 1: Do a Commenting Self-Audit
The questions for the first day were about the frequency of commenting on other blogs and tracking blog comments. Since I don’t tend to comment on blogs in general, my frequency is nil and there are no comments to track.

Activity Day 2: Comment on a Blog You’ve Never Commented on Before
This was pretty easy, since I was confused a bit about the process. I left one comment on Silvia Tolisano’s Langwitches Blog on the 31 Day Comment Challenge- Are You Up for it? post about needing a crash course in ‘blog comment speak’ and about using coComments without installing it.

I left a second post on Sue Water’s Edublog post on How keep track of new comments on other bloggers’ posts still trying to figure out how to get coComments to work without installing it into a browser window.

Continue reading Joining the 31 Day Comment Challenge & Major Frustrations…