Illinois Compass 2g, Creating Blogs

Blog writing assignments are another medium for reflective learning. With this type of assignment, students are expected to display their research, analytical, and communication skills through a series of commentaries meant for consumption and comment by their peers.

In the course, on the Blogs listing page under each Blog title, students can see if the Blog belongs to a Group, the Course, or to Individual Students. Group Blogs can be read by all course members, but to make an entry, the user must be a Group member.

Similar to Journals, Blogs can be used as a graded assignment or ungraded to gather opinions and information.

Instructors can create one or more Blogs for use by students in their courses. Blog topics must be created before students can add their entries.

How to Create a Blog Topic

1. Open your course.
2. Ensure Edit Mode is ON.
3. In the Control Panel, in the Course Tools section, select Blogs.
4. On the Blogs listing page, click Create Blog on the Action Bar.
5. On the Create Blog page, type a Name for the Blog.
6. Type optional instructions for the Blog. Format the text and add images, links, multimedia, Mashups, and attachments using the functions in the Text Editor, if needed. Attachments added using the Text Editor can be launched in a new window and have alternate text added to describe the attachment. Alternatively, under Blog Entry Files, browse for a file to attach to the Blog entry.
7. Under Blog Availability, select the Yes option to make it available to users.
8. Use the Display After and Display Until date and time fields to limit the availability of the Blog. Select the Display After and Display Until check boxes in order to enable the date and time selections.
9. Under Blog Participation, select Individual to All Students or Course.
10. Select Allow Anonymous Comments for Individual Blogs or Allow Anonymous Entries and Comments for Course and Group Blogs, if needed. NOTE: If you make comments or entries annoymous, you as the instructor will also not have the ability to determine the author of the comments or entries.
11. Under Blog Settings, select Monthly or Weekly Index Entries.
12. Optionally, select the check box to Allow Users to Edit and Delete Entries.
13. Optionally, select the check box to Allow Users to Delete Comments.
14. Select No grading or the Grade option and type the number of Points possible. Points possible will apply to one or more entries made by the user to the Blog topic. Once a Blog is set to be graded, a column is created for it in the Grade Center. NOTE: It is permanently gradable and cannot be set to No grading.
15. Click Submit.
    

The Blog topics appear in alphabetical order on the Blogs listing page. Columns can be sorted by clicking the column title.

Viewing Drafts

To view or add saved drafts, click View Drafts on the Action Bar on the Blogs listing page.