"Connection, I Just Can't Make No . . . " Week 3- Post 1
On Twitter a lot of our classmates are commenting that they are feeling more connected to their peers, more than in previous classes. For me, I think I’ve been getting more knowledge about the heavy Twitter and Instagram users, but I’m not so sure about the rest of the class. I’m also having trouble with the Blogging-discussion format of the class. While there is a discussion board, we are able to fulfill our participation requirement by commenting on blogs. The blogs have been wonderful, and I have enjoyed reading them very much. I do get a big sense of my classmate’s thoughts when they have been free to post about whatever they want, and not necessarily to answer a posted discussion board question. On the oher hand, I am missing the conversational aspect that arises from restricing the discussion to one discussion board. While I see some activity on certain blog posts, many of them do not get more than 1 or 2 comments. So far, I haven’t seen lots of the back and forth and building that can be generated when you can easily view on one page what everyone is saying. There are so many blogs, it’s a bit unfeasiable to read them all, and even moreso to backtrack to see if any of the comments I’ve left have merited a response. (I know many of these blogs have notification features to alert if you get a response, but I’m not sure if that will generate an alert if someone else replies to the blog post and not to your comment.) The conversation, being spread out amongst our individual silos, is not happening. I wonder if this is something that will develop more as the class progresses. More interactivity between the blogs. It will be really intersting if instead of the discussion occuring in the comments section, it starts occurring across blog posts. Maybe I should try that. Like here- Amy posted in her blog about getting over the feeling of writing like no one’s reading https://20journal.home.blog/2019/05/31/calling-all-readers/ Above I spoke more to the feeling of the conversation of a discussion board not really occurring yet amongst the comment sections of our blogs, but the feeling like what have written is going into the void is also a potential drawback of this type of blogging/discussion. At least on a discussion board, I would feel like everyone in class has to come to the same place, so people are at least seeing my post (even if it doesn’t geneate a response). When I check the analytics of my blog using Google Blogger, I see that I’m not even getting that many views on my posts, certainly not in a class of 24 other people. Whether I write something that someone wants to comment upon, that’s certainly on me. But putting it out there with the expectation that it will be seen?
I took a web analytics class with Prof Dennen last year, so looking at these numbers, I’m wondering what influences the viewership. I’m guessing that a lot of us do our “homework” on the weekends. So a post closer to the weekend might have a better chance at being read, as it will be higher on the RSS feeds (assuming the class sorts their feeds chronologically). A catchy title might do it, too.
There is so much potential to this blogging iteration of discussion, and most of us are new to it. I really want to see where the class takes us and how we develop and experiment with this type of format.
Although, the twitter feed and tag seems to be much better at creating a central hub for discussion. In the past, I’ve followed plenty of blogs and considered starting my own. THe research I did on how to create a successful blog focused on two things- consistency and marketing. Consistency in making sure you have regular content so that readers can expect to have content to enjoy; marketing in terms of getting the word out there about your blog, by mentioning it, linking it, posting on toher blogs, etc.
It seems that even for an educational purpose like this, some amount of pushing, marketing, is needed to make your blog relevant and stand out and generate discussion. I don’t think the RSS feed is enough (although certainly useful.)
You bring up a really great point here. I am guilty of not responding back to comments on my blog. Sometimes it just feels like just another thing to do. I will work on this because I do see value in the connects and interactions that could occur there. I guess I'm surprised too at how infrequently comments are coming in. I try to share my blog posts on my Twitter to increase visibility but it does not seem to be getting any traction. I've been checking out the analytics and they are very similar to yours.
ReplyDeleteI understand that we are a large class and that we can participate in so many different ways though I am beginning to wonder if all of this choice is a contributing factor for the lack of connectivity. I just cannot keep up with 20+ blogs (60+ posts) a week. I have found myself siloed with a group of classmates that are active on Twitter. Within that group, I feel like I have gotten to know them well. I am compelled to check their Twitter, their blogs and interact.
I really didn't think social media would be this hard to keep up with.
I've been guilty of not responding back to my comments. That's certainly the best way to generate a conversation on your blog- you have to be sort of the moderator of your own comments section, in a way.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, after I posted this I started to read other blogs and seeing some other posts that recommended across blogs, so maybe the cross-blog discussion format is occurring.
I was thinking about how my first week of blogging, it got away from me a little and I posted all my blogs that week on one day (spread out at least.). I thought this might've been a factor in why they had so little views, but I see now in my analytics that it was actually my best day in generating views! It seems counterintuitive that not spreading out the posts over the course of the week might diminish the page views.
I haven't participated in Prof. Dennen's blog challenge she posted on twitter, so I need to do that, too! Spread the love to other blogs.
Thanks for commenting!
I get what you mean about posting a blog and not feeling like there are any readers as well so you are not alone. I have started to look at it more of it being me learning how to organize and articulate my thoughts. If they get traction then it is because someone or some people saw them at the right time and it impacted them in the right way at that time. Great! But, if not, then oh well. I am learning and putting it out there. Who knows, maybe something you post now will not be noticed now, but be profound down the road and gain an interested following, contact, or even possible job.
ReplyDeleteThere are a number of factors at play here. First, not everyone has their comments set to unmoderated and that means that their comments don't show up (at least not right away). That cuts conversation. A few folks are still sorting out that they have comments in a moderation queue (i.e., they thought they didn't get comments, but they did!). Your reader stats won't show who is reading via RSS, so your readership is likely higher than you see on the blog stats. As for conversation .... well, that's why will still have a discussion board. I, too, am curious to see where this group of folks goes with it. It's really up to all of you, as a temporary community, to determine where and how the conversations will take place.
ReplyDeleteThe RSS reading stat is something I hadn't considered, thanks for that.
ReplyDeleteBeing about a week removed from my initial writing of this post, I do see lots more activity on the blog posts.
I try to correlate the discussion component of this class in terms of other classes (to compare and contrast the ways social media can improve or offer alternatives to general modes of online learning). It's not the same, but I'm interpreting the blogging component as when a discussion board tasks you to post your thoughts to a question or reading, then comment on a certain number of other posts. This is sort of the same thing, except the blog posts are spread out, and it takes more work to see other student's replies to blog posts.
Like, it would be awesome if RSS could somehow capture commenting as well. I can't begin to imagine how that would be organized or look, but that would certainly let the student see where interesting conversations are occurring.
Ah ... one thing I should add is that I would never advocate for replacing a class discussion with blogging. It's too dispersed. I would recommend considering blogging when the goal is to have students keep logs or journals of some sort, or to build their own platform/position on a topic. It's definitely a different feel from discussion.
ReplyDeleteThere is such a thing as RSS for comment feeds. I don't know if that's what you're thinking about, but it does exist. Over the years there have been various attempts at comment aggregators. One that comes to mind is cocomment. Info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoComment
However, these tools never really seem to take off.