The Little FemBlog That Wasn’t

Ideas for Future Success

Was I naïve in thinking that ad hoc, point-free blogging would work? Not really. I have successfully assigned other point-free projects in the past. These have included, for example, impromptu writing assignments about controversial issues raised in class discussion or spontaneous collective action attempting to establish a women’s resource center on campus. (No points were given to students for their involvement in this latter example, and the administration rejected our efforts, but it was a worthwhile project nonetheless.) The difference this time was that successful blogging required an ongoing engagement with the process. This was not a one-shot effort like the ungraded projects I had assigned in the past.

In the future, I expect that three key items will invite greater success in using blogging as a pedagogical tool. First, providing points for posts is a fair exchange. In the context of college courses, where opinions and data are traded in the marketplace of ideas, and where grades are the currency, points are a legitimate form of feedback and reward.

Second, a successful classroom blog requires more structure—at least at the beginning of the process. The pedagogical technique most similar to blogging has been my use of the discussion feature on Blackboard, where I have posed highly structured sets of questions. Students were expected to log on during specifically allocated time periods. Within this more structured framework, online student dialogue was robust. It often took unexpected turns, veering off in fruitful directions. Students who were quiet in the physical classroom found their “voice” within the relative safety of these virtual discussions. In this regard, online posting met my established goals of increasing student participation and expanding the avenues of discussion, while also providing opportunities for me to redirect the discussion or provide correct information where appropriate. The drawback to Blackboard discussion, though, is that, as my student Dana put it in an email to me, “it’s a bit stuffy.” In contrast, blogging “is a pretty cool way to make our ideas public and be able to read everyone else’s thoughts—especially for quieter students, it’s an informal, less intimidating way to get your point across.”

Finally, the blogging process may benefit from forthright discussions about feminist pedagogy and Internet technology.¹ If feminist pedagogy includes the ability to question power dynamics within the classroom, then blogging opens possibilities for a democratic learning process. As a pedagogical strategy, blogging helps us achieve key feminist goals in the virtual world. Using blogging in the classroom means that a) we are committed to leaving no woman behind when it comes to Internet technology; b) that women and feminists are active agents in making sure information technologies are “directed towards enhancing human well-being rather than strengthening existing power monopolies”²; and c) that feminist classrooms encourage “greater freedom of spirit and of the experience to be creative.”³ Discussing these points in advance may have benefited my students and encouraged them to blog more actively.

In sum, the next time I use blogging as a supplement to classroom teaching, I will do things a bit differently: I will jump-start the online interactive process by providing extra credit or points toward class participation, and I may also assign pedagogical literature about technology and feminism. I will definitely provide structured guidelines and expectations for online discourse. Presenting students with sets of questions before logging on lets them know what to expect and provides the opportunity to mull over topical issues. Blogging does not require ongoing micromanagement, but providing initial structure helps. As simple as this sounds, this is a point I missed in my first pass using blogging as a classroom element.

Ideally, however, providing structured questions to stimulate blog responses is necessary only in the most limited sense. This is, after all, a medium distinguished by the possibilities for individuality and intellectual creativity. If I were to instruct my students with precise “what, when, where, and hows,” they would no longer be blogging; the exercise would have to be called something else.

When blogging works well, students quickly find their “sea legs.” Online discussions provide opportunities for students to find or expand their confidence in articulating the logic and implications of theory and politics. The safety and distance that online posting provides ensure that students who are shy or more methodical do not get talked over by more eager students whose hands easily shoot up in the air in the classroom setting. Understanding students’ fears of vulnerability on the Web will help bypass potential problems with blogging participation.

But, that said, perhaps a blog is not always the best way to go. Sure, blogging sounds like a cool idea. It is certainly the medium of the moment. But if my ultimate goal was to create a forum for the free and lively exchange of ideas, to push the students and myself to think more deeply, analytically, and critically about the material we were reading, then I know for sure this goal was met during our weekly face-to-face discussions, our impromptu meetings on campus, our panel presentation at a national conference, and our adventure at the “Sex Workers’ Art Show.” There’s nothing quite like human connection to get those feminist juices flowing.

Postscript

The good news is that when I last checked in on our blog, I discovered that a post had been made in October 2005. This was five months after the class had ended and the three members of my independent study had graduated. While there were only two posts during the semester, five more appeared after the class was officially over. This tells me that although our blog did not make the splash I had hoped for, the possibility remains that blogging can create a discussion forum with reach beyond the classroom walls. And, to this feminist professor, that is ultimately what education is all about.

The author sends many thanks to Emma Douglas, Sarah Morse, and Cara Peckens for their keen sense of intellectual adventure.

1. The literature on pedagogy and feminist blogging is still relatively new. For recent perspectives on blogging in feminist classrooms, see Tobias, “Blog This!”. Also see “Round-Up: Blogging Women’s Studies,” Feminist Collections 27, nos. 2-3 (Winter-Spring 2006): 15-21, http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/fc/BlogRoundup.pdf. For discussions about feminist pedagogy, the Internet, and cyberspace—if not about blogging per se—see Lucretia McCulley and Patricia Patterson, “Feminist Empowerment Through the Internet,” Feminist Collections 17, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 5-6, http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/fc/fcmccul.htm; Sara P. Pace, “Feminist Pedagogy and Daedalus Online: the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning,” Academic Exchange Quarterly 6, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 104-110; Pamela Whitehouse, “Women’s Studies Online: An Oxymoron?” Women’s Studies Quarterly 30, nos. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 2002): 209-225, http://www.uwsa.edu/ttt/articles/whitehouse.htm; Carol L. Winkelmann, “Women in the Integrated Circuit: Morphing the Academic/Community Divide,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 18, no. 1 (1997): 19-42. [↩]
2. Lourdes Arizpe, “Preface: Freedom to Create: Women’s Agenda for Cyberspace,” in Wendy Harcourt, ed., Women@Internet: Creating New Cultures in Cyberspace (New York: Zed Books, 1999), xv. [↩]
3. Ibid. [↩]