Blogs in CIS courses
In my initial post, I mentioned that I used a blog as a supplement to my course on the technology, applications and implications of networks. My students also do term projects, and I have them maintain project management/progress blogs. This allows me and the other students to see what they are doing and track their progress.
Larry Press
lpress@csudh.edu
bpastudio.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/
-----
I require students in my intro IS course to maintain a Blog throughout the semester. Each week they need to post an entry in response to one of the questions in the book and also a current events in IS post. A few of the students have gotten really into it, even putting Google Adsense on their Blogs.
As an added incentive I give extra credit for the best Blog each week.
Regards,
-Ross
Dr. Ross A. Malaga
Associate Professor
Management and Information Systems
School of Business
Montclair State University
338 Partridge Hall
Montclair, NJ 07043
(973) 655-3419
malagar@mail.montclair.edu
-----
That's a very good idea. I wish I had thought about and used it earlier. Please do share with us your insights on using blogs in teaching.
Shaosong
Shaosong Ou, Ph.D. Candidate
Information & Operations Management Dept.
Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California
Tel: 206-400-0316, Fax: 206-400-0316
http://oss.usc.edu/
sou@marshall.usc.edu
-----
Rather than using a public blog, I use the forum features within webCT to support my bricks-n-mortar class.
-Andrew
Andrew Urbaczewski, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of MIS
School of Management
University of Michigan - Dearborn
19000 Hubbard Drive, FC 164
Dearborn, MI 48126
+1 313 583.6302
SKYPE me at aurbaczewski
andrew@urbaczewski.com
"You cannot win with people who believe in their own entitlement"
-Angela Hamilton
-----
Chris Wagner and I used a blog in our EMBA class earlier this year. We made it a requirement for students to create their own blog and to submit at least five entries (in an 8-class course). Some were very good indeed. I can provide more detail if necessary. Robert
We used xanga - http://www.xanga.com/fb5807
If you want to see the blogs of the students (which are not private) then try (for example)
http://www.xanga.com/MariaYSCheung
http://www.xanga.com/ChengAgatha
http://www.xanga.com/EddieStupid
Robert Davison
-----
I teach at ULPGC (Canary Islands, Spain). My course is on "IS for Management" and "IS for International Entreprises". I maintain a blog in Spanish, and use it in class, and there is even one of the lessons dedicated to blogs as such. In the blog I post all kind of commentaries on things that have relation with IT, IS and Information Society.
Regards,
Jacques Bulchand
http://www.personales.ulpgc.es/jbulchand.dede
http://jacquesbulchand.blogspot.com
jacques.bulchand@gmail.com
-----
I have been using weblogs and wikis on several occasions in class. My arrangement is different from yours. I ask students to set up and manage their own weblogs, and then link to them. This allows me to quickly observe any activity in student blogs.
I recommend the use of Xanga or Modblog. I started with Blogger (Blogspot), but liked the much better functionality of Modblog and the higher reliability of Xanga. Check them out!
You may find the following article interesting: "Learning with Weblogs: An Empirical Investigation"
Regards,
Chris
iscw@cityu.edu.hk
-----
In response to Larry's query, I thought I would post our experience.
We teach a "core" set of classes that the students must all take together. (9 credit hours Fall and 9 winter.) We have a "content managed" student website that we have set up. We, the faculty, post to it. My secretary posts to it. The students post to it. Our student organization posts things to it. We have links to our "official" IS website, and to our IS calendar. We also have a link for students to sign up for the program IS list server. We have organized it into several different categories to make it easier to follow.
The students post notes and questions about classes and about assignments as well as general IS topics of interest. We encourage them to share and collaborate on understanding topics and issues (at the conceptual level). We think it helps them learn more. It has worked well. It really helps the students to get into the IS discipline. It gets lots of activity.
As you know content managed websites are easy to set up -- like wiki sites.
The URL is http://island.byu.edu/ Take a look at it.
Robert Jackson
"robert_jackson"
-----
Larry,
I have been experimenting with blogs. I made the students create their own, thinking this was a cool new technology that they could connect with, since blogs seem to be so hot right now. But apparently most of them don't read or use blogs much, and they have shown little enthusiasm for posting their own reflections. I think part of the problem is that it is so public. So you have given me a new approach!
I gave a paper about my experiences recently at ISECON 2005 (Oct. 6-9,Columbus, OH), which I have attached. It has some useful references, if you haven't already seen them. Let me know if you want to chat more about this. By the way, I'm going to try LiveJournal in future instead of Blogger.
Thanks,
Cathy Beise
Catherine M. Beise, PhD
Information & Decision Sciences
Perdue School of Business
Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD 21801
410-548-4034 410-546-6208 (f)
cmbeise@salisbury.edu
http://facultyfp.salisbury.edu/cmbeise
-----
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_6/huffaker/ is an interesting article on the topic.
I have been using blogs for student assignments for the last year, and have different experiences, like some of the students are reluctant to share their work with the rest. Like as if grades are a zero sum game, and they are afraid of loosing momentum to other, not so smart students. My blogs are in norwegian …
Best wishes from
-arne
professor dr. polit Arne Krokan NTNU
phone + 47 91897473 mail: arne@krokan.com
url: www.krokan.com
-----
I have my interns maintain a blog of their experiences. When there are many interns (as over the most recent summer semester) it's very good. With fewer interns (like this fall) there's (obviously) less interaction, but it's still okay. http://foxweb.marist.edu/horde/blog/view.php?bid=1252
- Alan G. Labouseur
Alan.Labouseur@marist.edu
-----
At Ball State University, Center for Information and Communication Sciences(CICS), we are using weblogs as part of our graduate core course, ICS 602: Human Communication.
In work sponsored and supported by our Human Factors Institute component of the CICS Applied Research Institute, we have been experimenting with weblogs for three academic years. This is to explore whether weblogs can help build Distributed Collaborative Community (DCC). Research in DCC has been ongoing in the Human Factors Institute for about 4-5 years. Collaborative systems are the holy grail of the information industries now—and no one has really figured out how to optimize collaborative community using information systems. Weblogs are an interesting medium toward that end, it may be.
We linked your weblog from three of the www.cicsworld.org
weblogs:
http://www.cicsworld.org/blogs/ginther/archives/2005/11/other_blogs_in_teaching.html#more
http://www.cicsworld.org/blogs/jaygillette/
http://www.cicsworld.org/blogs/renaissance/
We appreciate your work, and your accomplishment in the weblog you have built.
Socrates says, “which is more important, the opinion of the mass who have no knowledge of a topic, or the opinion of the person who knows about the topic?” Socrates thinks it’s the second, and we hope you’ll take our opinion of your accomplishment as one of the latter.
Best regards,
Jay Gillette
++++
Jay Edwin Gillette, Ph.D.
Professor of Information and Communication Sciences
Center for Information and Communication Sciences
Ball State University
Muncie, Indiana 47306 USA
phone: 765.285.3285
FAX: 765.285.1516 FAX
email: jaygillette@bsu.edu
and
Chairman, Advisory Council
Pacific Telecommunications Council
2454 South Beretania Street, 3d Floor
Honolulu, Hawai'i 96826 USA
phone: 808.941.3789
FAX: 808.944.4874 FAX
email: info@ptc.org