Submit a Request

Articles in this section

See more

Best Practices for OU Blogs

  • Article Updated:

The OU blog activity allows students and teachers to exchange ideas in the form of text and visual media by posting comments. They are great for allowing students to keep a private teacher-student journal, create a portfolio of their work, or keep a running class-wide blog where they may better flesh out their ideas. 

Here is how to add the OU Blog activity to your course site:

  1. Log in to GauchoSpace, enter your course site and Turn editing on.
  2. Select the week/section block in which you would like the activity. Then, click +Add an activity or resource.
  3. From the All Tab, click OU blog

    Course__Hard_Knocks_101__Topic__Add_OU_Blog.png

  4. Enter a name and description for the blog. Adjust the other settings for the forum as desired. See the Key Features and Settings section below for more information on the various OU blog settings. 
  5. Click Save and return to course at the bottom of the page.

Individual Blog Settings

One key feature of the OU blog activity is the varying levels of visibility. How you want to structure your course blog will dictate which individual blog setting you use. An OU Blog can be set to:

  • No (blog together or in group): Individual blogs are not used--There are no individual blog sets, everyone is part of a bigger community (depending on 'Group mode' setting)
  • Separate individual blogs: Individual blogs are used privately -- Individual users can only post to and see their own blogs unless they have permission to view other individual blogs.
  • Visible individual blogs: Individual blogs are used publicly -- individual users can only post to their own blogs, but can view other individual blog posts.

Blog_Individual_Private_No.png

Tags

Tags are a handy organizational feature in OU Blogs as they allow students and instructors to filter posts by pre-defined or student-created labels. Some example tags might be based on week, topic, group, TA section, concept, or text.

To use tags, scroll down to the Tags tab in settings and enter tags of your choice separated by commas. Students can also create their own tags based on what is helpful for them. If you'd like to require students to use tags, select from the Tag options available in the drop-down menu.

As shown below, students' posts will appear with tags noted at the bottom of each post. They can also be located in the Tags block on the right-hand side. This may be especially helpful for a class blog where everyone's posts are part of one long-running thread. 

\Class_Blog__Tags__-_Google_Chrome_2021-03-04_13.36.png

When setting up the OU Blog, you are given the option of giving a grade in the settings. If you choose to grade the blog posts, you can assign a grade to each student for their posts and comments in the blog. The two options for grading are "Teacher grades students" and "Use ratings".
  • "Teacher grades students" is best used when you want to give students a single grade for their overall performance in the blog. 
  • "Use ratings" is best used if you want to give individual grades per post to students.

The following are instructions to set up grading for your students:

  1. Log in to GauchoSpace, enter your course site and Turn editing on.
  2. Locate and open the OU Blog that you would like to enable grading for.
  3. Once in the OU Blog, go to the Administration block and click Edit settings.
  4. Scroll down to the Grade section and select the dropdown menu under Grading. Your options are "Teacher grades students" or "Use ratings".
      • Turning on the grading feature creates a single item in the gradebook.
      • If you want to grade each post and comment individually, you will want to use ratings. 

Editing_OU_blog_-_Google_Chrome_2021-03-04_15.54.5.png

When using "Teacher grades students", here's how to grade the posts:
    1. Instructors can access the grading interface by selecting Participation by user on the main blog page.
        • Here you will see a list of your students and columns for numbers of Posts and Comments each student submitted as well as a column for Grades.
        • On this screen, you will be able to assign a grade using drop-down menus next to each student's name.

          Weekly_Reflection__Separate_Individual__By_Partici.png

    2. To see the Posts of a students, click the Details link next to their name. You will be taken to a screen with tabs for Posts, Comments, and User Grade. 

Weekly_Reflection__grading.png

Weekly_Reflection__grading_interface_1_.png

Weekly_Reflection__grading_interface_2_.png

When using "Ratings", here's how to grade the posts:
  1. Instructors can rate each student's blog using the drop-down available under each blog

    Student_Portfolio__Visible_Individual__Avg._of_Rat.png

      • One advantage to this is being able to view and grade each post on the same page.
      • The ratings will translate into a grade in the gradebook based on the "aggregate type" selected by the instructor in the OU Blog settings. For example, an average of ratings will take an average of all the posts rated and convert that into a grade.

Below are three scenarios in which you may find the OU Blog to be useful

To set up an OU blog for private use (visible only to the instructor and individual student) you will want to use the "separate individual blogs" setting. This will allow students to keep a private weekly journal for reading responses:

 

Editing_OU_blog_-_separate_individual_blogs.png

Note: We recommend using an OU Blog rather than a Forum for private journals intended for instructor access only.

In the "separate individual blog" setting, each student can do one of two things:
  1. Create a new post
  2. Comment on their own posts.

Here is what a student sees when using the OU Blog interface:

 

Weekly_Reflection__Separate_Individual__Teacher_Gr.png

Here is what an instructor sees when using the OU Blog interface:

Weekly_Reflection__Separate_Individual__Teacher_Gr.png

 

Note: As an instructor, you'll continue to see all the posts deleted by you and the students. However, students can only see the posts they specifically deleted, and not posts that were deleted by their peers. Meaning if student A makes a post and then deletes it, student B won't see student A's deleted post anymore; only student A will see their deleted post (greyed out/shaded). 

Instructors can choose to set up a class-wide blog for students to view and post to collectively. This might be useful if the instructor wants to host a group/class activity, such as a scavenger hunt, where students are asked to post their own photos to be shared with the class as a whole.

To do so, you will want to choose the "No (blog together or in group)" setting. In this setting, the ability to sort by individual users is no longer available, and all posts appear as part of a shared blog in a single thread. This allows for everyone to view posts as part of a bigger community. This OU Blog setting might be especially appealing for multi-media courses and activities where students are being encouraged to showcase their work.

Scavenger_Hunt__Private_Separate_to_Public_Visible.png

 

In a "visible individual blog," students will be able to view posts and comment on other students' entries. Students and instructors can view posts by specific individuals through the Visible Individuals drop-down menu above.

Instructor View:

Scavenger_Hunt__Private_Separate_to_Public_Visible.png

 Student View:

Scavenger_Hunt__Private_Separate_to_Public_Visible.png

 

In some cases, you may want to have students create individual blogs and then at a later date have the blogs made public to the entire class. There are two ways in which you can switch a private blog to a public one:
Separate individual blogs to Visible individual blogs

Let's say you want students to keep a private student portfolio to be shared with the class at the end of the quarter during a final presentation. An OU Blog would be adaptable for both of these situations. First, to keep the blogs private throughout the quarter, set the blog-type to separate individual blogs. Upon the completion of the activity, an instructor can make the blogs public but separate to each student. For this, we recommend using the visible individual blogs setting. This allows for student's individual blogs to be displayed publically while maintaining that only they can view and post to them.  

Separate individual blogs to No (blog together or in group)

Alternatively, an instructor might want students to keep a running portfolio throughout the course with the aim of bringing everyone's work into a class blog to create a collage at the completion of the activity. Similar to the scenario above, an instructor could keep the blogs private initially and then change the setting to No (blog together or in group). This would bring everyone's posts into an open forum as part of one class blog where students can view and comment on each other's posts. This may be well suited for displaying posts and responses to concepts or texts (think word association, photography, creative writing, etc.). 

Powered by Zendesk