Why we are blogging

In case some of you are still grousing about why we are blogging, here's one good reason - you'll be doing it in the university. Or, to put it in another way, we're doing Uni work at MJC.

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The Straits Times Interactive
Jan 8, 2005

Blogs used in NUS tutorials

By Sandra Davie
EDUCATION CORRESPONDENT

NATIONAL University of Singapore students taking up the philosophy course on Reason and Persuasion attend tutorials with a difference.

Every fortnight, they have the usual face-to-face sessions with their tutors. But every other week, they attend tutorials online, by contributing to a discussion in a weblog set up by their course lecturer, Assistant Professor John Holbo.

The NUS Centre for Information Technology, which provides IT support for NUS lecturers, said a handful of them have started using blogs to teach their courses, and to keep track of their research students.

In the United States, blogs are being used extensively by teachers and university professors to teach, and to share research information and invite feedback.

Among the academic blog groups is Volokh Conspiracy, founded by Professor Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In NUS, lecturers such as Assistant Professor Adrian Cheok from the department of electrical and computer engineering and Prof Holbo use blogs to supplement their lectures and tutorials, as well as to check on the progress of their students' work.

They post follow-up discussion questions and topics, and make announcements or clarifications to points made in lectures. Some also include exam hints and advice on how to write academic papers.

Prof Holbo said blogs are especially useful for popular courses taken up by a large number of undergraduates. Instead of setting up tutorials for all students, they conduct some of the tutorials online, by adding their comments to a discussion set out in a blog.

For Prof Holbo's course, students are required to add their comments to the blog tutorial at least three times a semester.

At the end of the semester, the students must compile their postings and submit them to their tutor for grading. The score will be added to their year-end grade.

Prof Cheok, who began using blogs more than two years ago, said blogging is a familiar medium to many of the students, who maintain their own personal blogs.

'Even for those new to blogging, it is as easy as sending e-mail,' he said.

Students who have attended these 'blog tutorials' gave it the thumbs-up.

Miss Serena Tan, 19, who took up Prof Holbo's course, said: 'It is a lot less intimidating than trying to contribute in a tutorial class. It has also got me into the habit of putting down my views in writing.'

Computer engineering student Eva Yustina, 21, who had no blogging experience before her project supervisor, Prof Cheok, introduced it, found it a 'time-saver'.

Copyright © 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.