For many Northwestern students, papers are often procrastinated, written quickly, handed in and – it is hoped – never thought about again. But Prof. John Bresland has raised the stakes for students in his Reading and Writing Creative Non-Fiction class by requiring them to post their weekly writing assignments on a Web log called “The 208.”
Bresland developed the blog last quarter and named it after the class course number in the English department.
“The blog gives a larger audience to the students’ work,” he said. “Writing has a goal beyond the grade.”
Anyone can read the posts, although only Bresland and the students from this year’s fall and winter non-fiction classes can contribute.
Although students currently enrolled in the class are required to post, almost half of the students from Fall Quarter have continued to participate in the blog, Bresland said.
“As opposed to a Blackboard discussion board, the knowledge that it was open space that anyone in the world could access gave it a greater sense of reality,” said Nick Johnson, who took the class in the fall and has posted once since Fall Quarter.
“It was also a shared space, more so than a discussion board,” the Weinberg senior said. “Having that space made it seem so much more communal. It was our space.”
Students are required to comment on at least two of their classmates’ posts in addition to posting their own work. Bresland said this was intended to develop a sense of community in the class.
“It is personalizing and depersonalizing at the same time,” said Liz Thiers, a Weinberg senior from the Fall Quarter class. “There is a propriety that exists in class, and blogging has a different feel … It created a different dialogue than normally exists in a classroom.”
Bresland said he started the blog to help his students establish the habit of writing regularly and to familiarize students with using the Web as a medium.
“I think it might in some ways be superior to a print form of writing because it is low pressure, and it is in that atmosphere that people produce good writing,” said Alex Bergstrom, a Weinberg sophomore currently taking the class.
The Web’s potential to let writers use photos, video and music clips to supplement their writing allows them additional means of expression, Bresland said.
Another appealing aspect for Bresland is the Internet’s capacity to reach a wide audience for a longer length of time than traditional media outlets.
“Literary magazines might publish 2,000 copies in print and go to 2,000 libraries and no one sees them,” he said. “But being in an online library, work can be archived. Students need to understand that their work can be seen, and it is no longer just a scholastic activity.”
Since blogging is still a relatively new activity for his classes, Bresland said he’s still learning.
“It is a trade-off; if you are asking a student to write an experimental work, how can you ask them to write an experimental work in a place where everyone can see it?” he said. “I haven’t seen why it might be a terrible idea yet, and I haven’t seen why anyone wasn’t doing it five years ago.”
