Setting clear expectations for students’ blog writing is very important. This type of writing may be new to many students, so showing them examples of well written blog posts and comments will be an important step to showing them what you expect. In using a rubric like the one below, it is important to show students examples of what an on target, acceptable, and unacceptable blog would look like in your classroom. Students could even use the rubric to score a blog and justify their choices. This would give the students a better understanding of how their work will be assessed.
In creating my rubric to assess student blogs, I visited a number of different sites. Two that helped me were Blogging Rubric and Rubrics for Assessing Blogs. Both of these sites helped me to decide on the language I would use to describe on target, acceptable, and unacceptable blog writing.
In my own classroom I would introduce blogging much like Richardson (2010) suggests with students commenting on others’ blogs before writing their own in order to give them a taste of what it is like to converse online. At that point students could use the rubric to self-assess on target, acceptable, and unacceptable comments. A small group of students, such as my section leaders could then begin blogging with the members of their sections leaving comments. Finally, all students could create their own blogs and begin building their own blogging skills using the rubric, peer comments, and teacher feedback to help them assess whether they are on target.
Horgan, T. Blogging Rubric. Retrieved on January 26, 2014, from
http://timhorgan.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/blogging-rubric.pdf
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for
Classrooms. (3rd ed.). Thousand Oak, California: Corwin.
Schachle, L. (2013). Rubrics for Assessing Blogs. Retrieved January 26, 2014, from
https://wiki.elon.edu/display/TECH/Rubrics+for+assessing+blogs