Dean Christian Brady approached ETS wanting to determine the effectiveness of using the Blogs@PSU platform as an advising tool while also having students learn to relate their everyday lives to the mission of the Schreyer Honors College.
Dean Brady wanted to get things moving by getting the students comfortable with blogging before adding the advisers to the project. He posted an initial blog entry and nine students (seven freshman and two upperclassmen) volunteered to take part in the project. We held an initial "getting started" meeting two weeks into the semester and followed up a month later to see how things were progressing now that they were settled. We then held bi-weekly "what's on your mind" meetings for the rest of the semester.
I had some initial trouble contacting some of the students and trying to get them to feel connected with one another. I solved this by creating a Facebook group just for them and other key players (Dean Brady, Associate Dean Judy Ozment, Allan Gyorke, and myself). The students love the fact that they can interact with each other and get event invitations, meeting reminders, etc. all in one place. I think it also made them feel more personally connected to the staff involved and maybe even part of something more concrete since other people on Facebook can read about it.
One of the biggest issues students have discussed is having trouble choosing topics to write posts about. They have a set of six predetermined tags (academic excellence, civic engagement, global perspective, honor, integrity, and leadership) and just aren't sure of how to start posts that pertain. Dean Brady told them to just write, write, write, and then see if any tags pertain. The students still seem to want more. We are going to test giving the students subject prompts for a while to determine if this solves the problem.
Next Semester:
Dean Brady plans to hold an initial meeting with advisers from across the campus toward the end of January. We'll then gauge interest from the group as well as set up adviser/student meetings with those advisers that have students currently taking part in the pilot program. The advisers would read the student's blog before their advising meetings in order to get a better picture of who the student is, their interests, and where they could use help. Building schedules and suggesting instructors based on common interest/learning styles are foreseeable benefits.
Dean Brady is also trying to determine if he'd like all incoming freshmen to blog. The issue is that he doesn't know how he'd be able to make it mandatory and enforce it.
Student posts can be viewed view the Blog Search Tool with the PSUHonors tag.
Dean Brady wanted to get things moving by getting the students comfortable with blogging before adding the advisers to the project. He posted an initial blog entry and nine students (seven freshman and two upperclassmen) volunteered to take part in the project. We held an initial "getting started" meeting two weeks into the semester and followed up a month later to see how things were progressing now that they were settled. We then held bi-weekly "what's on your mind" meetings for the rest of the semester.
I had some initial trouble contacting some of the students and trying to get them to feel connected with one another. I solved this by creating a Facebook group just for them and other key players (Dean Brady, Associate Dean Judy Ozment, Allan Gyorke, and myself). The students love the fact that they can interact with each other and get event invitations, meeting reminders, etc. all in one place. I think it also made them feel more personally connected to the staff involved and maybe even part of something more concrete since other people on Facebook can read about it.
One of the biggest issues students have discussed is having trouble choosing topics to write posts about. They have a set of six predetermined tags (academic excellence, civic engagement, global perspective, honor, integrity, and leadership) and just aren't sure of how to start posts that pertain. Dean Brady told them to just write, write, write, and then see if any tags pertain. The students still seem to want more. We are going to test giving the students subject prompts for a while to determine if this solves the problem.
Next Semester:
Dean Brady plans to hold an initial meeting with advisers from across the campus toward the end of January. We'll then gauge interest from the group as well as set up adviser/student meetings with those advisers that have students currently taking part in the pilot program. The advisers would read the student's blog before their advising meetings in order to get a better picture of who the student is, their interests, and where they could use help. Building schedules and suggesting instructors based on common interest/learning styles are foreseeable benefits.
Dean Brady is also trying to determine if he'd like all incoming freshmen to blog. The issue is that he doesn't know how he'd be able to make it mandatory and enforce it.
Student posts can be viewed view the Blog Search Tool with the PSUHonors tag.
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