- Evaluate web design information, practices, and techniques for currency, utility, and elegance
- Reflect on, critique, and (re)share new information, practices, and techniques
I think it’s important that web design students create and post to their own blog for several reasons:
- Exposure to blog as a platform. Even if blogging as we know it doesn’t persist as a popular form of web sites, the functionality of a blog is still fundamental to a lot of web systems, for reasons of themes, plug-ins, content management, permissions, syndication, etc.
- A place to showcase work. A blog makes a great portfolio, whether of your web design work, or of your thinking about web design.
- “I write so I know what I think.” I can’t say it any better than Eric Meyer, for anybody in any field.
The latter two reasons tie in to my belief the students need to assert their own digital identity. When a prospective employer searches your name on the web, what do they find? I’d like them to find your portfolio. I’d like them to find what you think about web design. I’d like them to find that you’re engaged in the field of web design, that you link to and comment on the blogs of your colleagues. Blogging provides the impetus for this kind of behavior, and the web keeps track of it for you.
So, I explain these objectives and benefits, then direct my students to some blogging platforms, including WordPress.com, Blogger.com, and the UVU WordPress instance that I spearheaded while Director of IDS.
(I have to say “Real Blogs” in the title because LMS are notorious for providing “blogs” that–there’s no nice way to put this–suck. Or that are not even related to blogs at all. Thankfully the designers of Canvas acknowledged this and provided, instead, some interesting tools to help teachers manage real-world, student-owned blogs.)
In this course, students’ weekly projects could be posted directly to our discussion forums, or can be posted to their blogs and referenced. I obviously encourage the latter, because it adds to the showcase of learning, and provides more opportunities for exposure and connection beyond the walls of the classroom.
Archiving Articles through Diigo
The official blogging assignment is to post at least 3 times during the semester on articles that they have read and found valuable. In the past I’d maintained a wiki page listing what I thought were useful articles, web sites, blogs, and magazines that they could choose from, but I’ve recently discovered that the class Diigo Group archive has become robust enough, and is a far more elegant repository for this purpose. So now, if they’ve reviewed an article that I’ve not read or I know is not on the Diigo Group list, I ask them to also bookmark it for the Group.
Encouraging Connections
In order to encourage interaction between students on their blogs, I first collect all the blog URLs, add those to by Google Reader, and then export an OPML file so students can download and subscribe to all of their peers’ blogs at once.

I also grab the Google Reader “bundle” RSS feed, and add that feed to the Canvas Announcements as another trigger to read, connect, and share their learning.
Blogging Beyond the Class
I, like many other web design and development practitioners, am self-taught–or, rather, taught only through the open web. This fact keeps me keenly aware of the potential to waste students’ time in a formal classroom environment seems to me always a risk. This is just one way I think I can force students to engage in some positive behaviors that may lead to meaningful habits and leverage their advantage as they move toward their careers. I would be lying if I said I didn’t care if students abandoned their blogs at the end of the semester, but I think even if they only maintain it for the term of 15 weeks, they’ve at least been exposed to the blogging phenomenon, and, perhaps, have begun to understand how this field operates as a connected community of professional practitioners.
I also hope that by encouraging them to read and comment on each other’s blogs in addition to the community-based activities we do behind digital classroom walls, they might build relationships with each other that are collegial and persist well into their careers.
And, I tell myself, if they leave their blogs up, they will at least have something out there for others to find. And, based on the typical work of these students on their blogs, that’s something they can be proud of. I certainly am.


