Blog Project: Evaluation

The process of evaluation of this project will require several steps and many participants. I will begin by evaluating the initial entries each student makes on their blogs to see how they present their argument. This portion of the evaluation will involve looking at each student’s choice for blog form (colors, layout, fonts) as well as how each blog post is titled and written. After evaluating initial posts, I will focus my further evaluation on received comments and responses to these comments. I will be looking to see how each blog master initiates conversation in their blogs and how they respond to comments they receive from various participants. My hope during this time is to see how well my students present themselves is a less familiar form (blogs) as well as to see how they respond in an environment that, for many, is less threatening because of the unfamiliarity factor where participants may or may not know who the person is who they are responding to. Finally, each student do a two-fold analysis: 1) they will present an evaluation of one of their peer’s blogs they were involved with, basing their analysis on how well they see the blog master presenting their information and how well they feel the responses were to comments made on their posts; and 2) they will write a short evaluation of their own blog, focusing on their use of rhetorical strategies, audience acknowledgement, and participant response, to analyze their strong and weak points in conversing about their argument.
I believe that success or failure of this writing project will be fairly easy to evaluate since students will be required to participate in both their own blogs and the blogs of others. Also, the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of this particular pedagogical choice will be seen in the final evaluations each student presents. Of course, it is my firm belief that the true value of this lesson will not be known for some time; in fact, it may never be well-known to me. This is because I believe that what my students do today will, if the gods are kind, stick with them through their college careers and, possibly, into their future, as they step into new and extended discourse communities where they will be able to present themselves effectively and efficiently.