In my experience students need a conceptual map to how the course is laid out and what the expectations are each week. By having too many different “activities” that are not logically laid out e.g., step one, step two, step 3 etc then there is often confusion. i’ve found weekly organizer boxes help with this (e.g., all requirements for week 1 are in one individual folder). I’ve also found that students get confused when you have discussion boards built into a learning module that you are expecting them to comment on in ADDITION to having a blog outside of Bb that people are expected to post on. Also, by discussing the online content in small groups after they have completed an online module really helps to foster discussion on the content rather than just having them move through it independently. Thanks for posting the article – it was informative.
Blogs may be one of the more recent ways to conduct a dialog, but I rarely have patience to read them. And I’m old! Possibly blogging with only a couple of your immediate cohorts or group members would be more interesting to students; keeping the posts relatively short and concise, limiting the amount of “links” to other sites, and not clogging up the system by having a blog site, a discussion board, etc. all at the same time. Just because you set up an arena for discussions does not mean the discussions will be engaging or meaningful. I’m assuming that the challenge is to get students truly excited about whatever the topic may be.