Add an OU Blog Activity to a CLE Course

February 07, 2024 21:19

Overview

OU blogs work like a standard web blog and can be created within a CLE course using the Open University (OU) blog activity module. OU blogs can be individual blogs, group blogs, or course-wide blogs, where everyone in the class posts to the same blog.

For your course, you might want two different kinds of blogs: one that is a reflective blog for each student that only the student and the instructor can see, and another that is a group blog where all of the students can post and comment on each other's posts.

When to use

Use blogs to spark discussion and/or reflection among your students. Give students clear guidelines on what is expected of them and select a level of privacy that is appropriate for your specific blogging exercise.

Benefits

You can use the OU blog feature to create user blogs (one for each individual user) and course blogs (shared by all students in a course, or in a group). These have the following advantages:

Comments can be disabled for a specific blog or post, but people can leave comments in both user and course blogs. Instructors can edit or delete posts and comments, but deleted or previous text remains available to administrator users.
There are several levels of access control for blogging: private (user only), course members, logged-in users, and worldwide.
Blog-specific tags can be added that are not linked to the CLE tag system. Click on a tag to see all posts in the current blog that have that tag. A full text search of blog posts is also possible.
Students can change the name of their blog and personalize it with a description.
You can manually create a grade item in the Gradebook to make student OU blogs assessable if you wish.
Individual OU blogs, accessible only by the individual student and the instructor, can be used to encourage student reflection.

Create an OU Blog

To create a course-specific Open University blog:

On the course home page, click turn Edit mode on, then click Add an activity or resource and select OU blog from the menu.
Enter a Blog name and, if necessary, an Intro on the Adding a new OU blog page. The introduction is a good place to describe the blog's requirements.
Select whether to Allow comments and who can leave them.
Select whether you will use Individual blogs in this case, e.g., select Separate individual blogs if you want a student to only be able to view or post to their own blog. (Click the Help icon for further information).
If applicable, select the level of Maximum visibility for this blog (click the Help icon for further information).
-Select whether you want to Show the intro when posting.
Select the Maximum attachment size and Maximum number of attachments for this blog.
Select the Number of posts per page that you want to appear on the page.
Under Advanced options, select whether to Show blog usage statistics.
Select an Alternate activity name if desired. This will replace the default name 'blog'.
Choose whether you wish to allow users to import blog posts from other blogs by checking/unchecking Enable post import.
In the Tags field type in any predefined tags you wish students to have access to. It will be beneficial to provide students with a starting set of tags rather than having them create their own. Select "Allow pre-defined Tags only" if you want students to use only the tags you define here.
Under the Grade options, choose whether this blog will be graded by the instructor or using ratings. If grading is required, choose the scale, or point system and the gradebook category that the grade should go under.
Under Common module settings, decide whether you will make the blog Visible, and whether you will use Group mode for this blog. This makes sense if the blog is part of a group project. Select Visible groups if you want students to be able to see the blogs of other groups, or Separate groups if they are only allowed to see their own blog.
Complete the remaining sections of the page as needed, then click Save and display.

Add an OU blog entry

To add an entry to an OU blog:

On the course home page, click the blog name.
On the blog home page, click New blog post.

On the blog New blog post page:

Enter a Title if necessary.
Type your Message and add any necessary Tags. (Tags apply only within the blog. Click a tag to see all posts in the current blog with that tag.)
Choose whether you will Allow comments on this entry.
Add any necessary Attachments.
Click Add blog post.

The new post displays on the main blog page, where you can Edit or Delete it if you wish.

Add or delete an OU blog comment

Once you have added a comment to an OU blog post, you cannot edit it; you can only delete it. You can remove your own comments from any OU blog article, and the blog post's author can remove any comments that have been posted to it.

To post a comment on an OU blog post:

On the blog home page, for the relevant post, click Add your comment.
On the New blog comment page:

Enter a Title—this is optional.
Type your comment in the Message
Click Add comment. The new comment displays on a page with the relevant post, under the heading Comments. Use the breadcrumbs to navigate to other blog posts.

To delete a comment from an OU blog post:

On the blog's home page, click [number of comments] comments for the appropriate post. The post and all its comments display.
For the relevant comment, click Delete.
Click Continue on the confirmation page. The post and all of its comments are displayed. The message "Deleted by [you], [day, date, time]" appears alongside the comment you deleted. This message is only visible to you and the system administrator, not to others.

View and grade participation in an OU blog

To view student participation in a blog:

Click the link to the blog on the course home page.
Click Participation by user on the blog's main page.
On the User participation page, a table displays the number of Posts and Comments made by each user. To view all of the user's posts and comments, click Details next to their name.
To give the user a grade for their participation, go to the User grade tab, choose a grade from the Grades drop-down list in their row, and then click Save Changes. This grade will be entered into the Gradebook.
On the User participation page, there is another option to grade or edit participant’s Grade under the Grade tab.
On the User participation page, click on the drop-down menu next to Download table data as to download a spreadsheet with the number of posts, comments, and final grade for each student listed.

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