Mr Alex Mitchell: Yes, I make them blog for homework

•

Mr Alex MitchellAs far as tutorials go, Alex Mitchell's classes are quite unorthodox. His students are made to play games during class. Yet, these games are very much a part of the lessons.

Alex is an Instructor with the Communications and New Media Programme at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He teaches NM3216 Game Design 1 (formerly Gaming Culture 1), which is about games and what makes them engaging. "Thinking and talking about it only gets you so far," Alex observes, "to really understand about how we can design a fun game, the best thing is to actually design a game and play it."

Game Design students engage in rapid prototyping during tutorials. They create board games - or card games - with pieces of paper and coins for playing pieces, exploring different aspects of game design theory by putting them into practice. His students work in small groups to create these games and then play each others' games.

While play may not be normally associated with learning in a tertiary institution, Alex's class is unusual in another way: he makes them blog for homework.

This constructivist learning approach engages students by actively encouraging them to reflect on their learning.

"Rather than getting them to do the readings, come to class and ask them if they have any comments, I give them a couple of questions [on the module blog] to get them thinking about the readings and have them post responses on their blogs. I also encouraged them to post the results of the play-testing that they were doing in class to try to keep me updated on what's going on. I go through the entries, print out the good ones and use them as starting points for discussion," explains Alex.

The Game Design module blog is the place Alex posts his blog exercises. These weekly assignments constitute half of the 20% participation component of the students' Continual Assessment grade. The navigation column of the blog consists of links to his students' blogs - a blogroll, in blogging parlance - and links to previous posts and an archive.

NM3216 Game Design tutorial montage. Click for larger screenshot.
NM3216 Game Design tutorial montage.
Click for a larger screenshot.

Despite the fact that many of Alex's students were first time bloggers, which he found somewhat surprising, they caught on quickly. He notes that several students wrote thousands of words, an equivalent of a mini-essay, almost every week. While Alex considers some of the entries unnecessarily lengthy, he reveals that others were quite insightful.

Alex related, "Just reading their responses, I learn something, which is nice. The really keen ones will link to other sites on the web, and they've come up with things I hadn't thought of. Sometimes I incorporate these into the following lecture. I would bring in points that my students had brought up, and they were quite happy as well, as they realized I had actually read their blogs."

Similarly, comments on the students' posts motivated them to learn. Alex made it a point to actively read their blog entries and to leave comments. He encouraged students to comment on each others' blogs too. However, only the more active students seemed to do so. While he is thinking of allocating participation marks for commenting, Alex realizes that may be a stretch for the students.

"The problem is workload," Alex ventures, "the ones who complained about the blogs said that they have to write something on top of doing the readings. And there are assignments. And there's an exam. But at the same time, I had comments where they said that it was good they had to do this every week because it forced them to keep up with the readings."

60 to 70 percent of the students managed to keep up with the weekly blog assignments. Alex considered not allowing late posts, but he would rather have his students complete the blog assignments. He points out that several students who left the blogging assignments until the end of the semester found that completing these was a good review for the exam.

Alex believes that the blogging assignments went well, and he will continue to use blogs as part of his lessons. He is among a small but growing number of academics worldwide who recognize the multi-faceted value of blogs for teaching and learning.

These are early days yet for blogging in an academic context. Even students find it revolutionary. As one of Alex's students titled his blog: Can't believe I'm blogging for homework!

The same student who expressed surprise at the use of blogs in the classroom has posted an entry even after the end of semester. Perhaps that is a blog's greatest value. Like a good game, it thoroughly engages its user.

Related articles