Incorporating Visual With Text
An art appreciation graduate teaching assistant, leading two sections of a large gen ed course used a single class blog for most of the semester. In this blog, her students expressed ideas about the concept of identity and self in contemporary art expression. Her students were required to post each week and make quality comments. She found that the blog was much better than a text-based approach because the format allows for more personal contact and more visuals, that the less gifted writers can express themselves without concern for the more rigorus standards of a formal essay, and that the blog allowed students with different learning styles to come to knowledge differently.
For this instructor, the blog is more appropriate tool than discussion forums or webboards because it is more appealing to look at. Entertainment, she said, is all around us and having a more attractive tool to teach with is an advantage. She feels that the blog fosters participation as well, because it is seen as a non-competitive environment – a safe place to bring ideas.
