Following project description moved from Student projects. --Helen Foster 10:08, 24 April 2008 (CDT)
Blog Assignment Type
What is it for?
Blogs are inherently user owned and driven by definition, however teachers would like to have a way to use blogs as assignments in their courses, comment, grade, etc.
A solution to this conundrum would be a new Assignment type that makes it possible for a student to easily submit the link one of their blogs to an assignment in a course, and have that blog entry privately graded and commented on by the instructor of that course. The blog entry itself remains public along with all of the student's other blogs. The tool would provide a time filter in the Assignment, so that the instructor could limit the blog entry posting dates that will be accepted (both to ensure 'fresh' entries and to keep the list of entries the student chooses short for frequent student bloggers).
I suggest a blog assignment type that functions as follows:
Teacher: Teacher creates a blog assignment, this puts a grade in the gradebook and provides an assignment link for students to see.
The teacher can configure options to allow a blog entry posted in the last X days to be used for the assignment.
Students: When students enter the assignment they see a drop down menu of all their current (blog entries posted in the last X days as chosen by the teacher) blog entries, and they choose one to satisfy the assignment.
Assessment: The teacher goes in to the Assignment, views the blogs that are linked from the assignment, leaves comments (the comments only show up to the student when they view the blog assignment), and gives a grade.
The blog entries themselves stay on the student's blog, only the grades, links, and comments go in the assignment (optionally the assignment scrapes the student's blog and loads the full text in to store for backup and restore).
