Thing 4 - How Can You Grade What I Say? (Evaluating Blogs)

Evaluating student blogs can be tricky.  The students are going to ask, "How can you grade what I say", and "Why did my thoughts and ideas not make an A?"  Preventing these types of questions can be done by having a plan that the students know in advance.  This can be accomplished by providing the students with a rubric or even having them help you make a rubric to show what the expectations are.  

Jeff McClurken and Julie Meloni provide some good tips for making the blog experience better in their article ‘How Are You Going To Grade This?: Evaluating Classroom Blogs.  The three main things they recommend are:

1.     Talk to students about what they think makes for a good blog post, 

2.     Provide feedback early on about their blogs, and

3.     Highlight particularly good blogs in class and/or on the class blog

As educators, we provide rubrics and expectations for writing, so it only makes sense to do the same for blogging. 

Criteria	Unacceptable	Acceptable	Target
Blog Posts by Students	No clear purpose; unorganized, no reference to what was being taught or learned.	Purpose is somewhat clear and organized with reference made to what was taught or learned.	Purpose is clear with an organized thought process and more than one reference is made to what is being taught or learned.
Comments or Responses that students leave on other student blogs	Comment or response makes no reference to content of post.	Comment or response is made to content of post.	Comment or response is made to  content of post and adds insight or questions.