Over the past six weeks, students in my COM106 Writing for the Communication Professions class at Rider University have been “getting intimate” with blogs, analyzing what makes a blog work (or not). In September, each student selected an active blog to follow for six straight weeks. Each week, I posted an assignment related to the writing of those blogs so that my students would need to take an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at what goes into writing a blog. At the end of each week, they recorded their observations in online “Blog Analysis Journals” on Blackboard.

I’m grading the online journals now, and I’m happy to report that the assignment seems to be a big success! I’m so grateful for the energy and passion that most of my students pour into their work and into the overall learning experience. Their energy keeps me motivated to learn more, too!

Now, I need to analyze what I’m doing here on my own blog, and I need to make my blog more active and a model of “blogging best practices”… Do you have any suggestions for me? If you write a blog, what works for you — and what doesn’t? What “blogging best practices” do you recommend? Please share your comments here!

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Kathy Magrino