This learning strategy is all about ways to encourage use of the course blog. I comment often and try to stimulate interest. Students are required to comment as part of their blog mark, but I find this often happens at the end of the course as task that has to be done to complete the course. I would like it if student’s looked at other blog posts more. In particular, the blogs are all about their independent research project and it can be hard to develop your own project as an undergraduate student and here is this blog with lots of other great posts!
I think the main way for me to encourage blog use is in my direct interactions with individual students. I often have emails back and forth when it comes to the research project aspect of the course and this is my ‘in’ to encourage looking at the blog. I am familiar with most of the student’s research topics and so I can even point them toward specific student’s posts that might be of interest. Having more students reading different students posts along with my comments that try to stimulate discussions, perhaps I will be able to get some group discussions going.