Why Comments Didn't Work in Our Class

Part of the class's syllabus requirement this semester was to continually comment on each others' blogs. We were supposed to do four per week, totaling 48 all together. I've been a mediocre commenter at best, and was excited to hear in our last class that commenting would no longer be graded. With the way my finals week is looking, it was going to be quite a feat to pull off...ahem...30 comments?

So anyway, our commenting was dropped because of the fact that a large portion of the students in the class haven't even activated the commenting system yet. This, I was admittedly a little shocked at. I mean, I am glad I don't have to do it anymore, but it got me thinking why there wasn't enough commenting participation in a class of 40 students. Hell, why didn't I participate more?

I believe the problem stems from a poor design of the system which houses the Penn State blogs. I am not sure whether this is a Movable Type (which I have heard decent reviews about) issue, or Penn State gunking up another IT system. At the beginning of the semester, the class had many various problems setting up blogs. I am just going to list a few examples for organizations' sake:

• A classmate and I had to go through some permission setting alterations in our PASS space.

• Blog widgets were cumbersome and had to be spoon-fed to most of the class by our TA.

• The blogs that the system produced weren't very customizable:
• The blog backgrounds were about the only thing you could change, and the layout remained the same in all of them.
• Students still have blog widgets that remain abandoned and inactive (I am assuming because they don't know how to take them off.

• How the hell do you put code into your blog, and what is up with that shady “<a>” button HTML editor? I think I still haven't figured out how to center a Youtube video on here. Layout LAYOUT LAYOUT.

Wow I guess I had more to complain about than I thought. Hypothesis: a poor blog system leads to a poor commenting system:

• The commenting function wasn't enabled until a few weeks into semester, and even then you had to take the initiative to activate them.

• Students weren't commenting because it was often a pain to do so. Just going by 40 text names on the side of everyone's blog made it difficult to establish relationships between authors. I couldn't tell whose blog was whose, or keep track where I commented and what I commented on.

• I often had trouble posting comments, as movable type would give me errors now and again.

• You had to click a link to see comments on articles, which would redirect you to an entirely different page.

• Our professor never gave us an incentive to post comments on our own blog as a response to comments we received.

• It may have just come down to content. Not everyone is destined to be a great blogger or be able to create articles that generate interest. If it is a dull posting, I am not going to have much to say about it.

So...there you go in a nut shell. In my “expert” opinion, these are the reasons that commenting didn't work. I am sure at least one of my unsupported assumptions are true, but hey, its a blog, not a research article.

Too bad this posting won't get commented on....