Evaluative Feedback

In addition to fostering a sense of community, the academic blogs I have followed have fostered the exchange of ideas, and the evaluation of scholarly work, a fact that suggests the genre's antecdents can be found in academic journals and conferences. Both have allowed scholars to share their work with others. In a profession where careers are decided by the quality of one’s scholarship, the ability to receive evaluative feedback from one's peers is imperative. Although the authors whose blogs I have followed have not faced such high stakes, they have often used their blogs to improve the quality of their work.

In an entry entitled “How to Skim,” the author of “Mode for Caleb” presented a document he used to teach students in an undergraduate history class to skim read articles more efficiently. His intention in doing so was to equip them with strategies they could use to address the heavy reading loads they faced. I found his decision to publish the entire document interesting for a number of reasons. First, it attested to the role blogs can play in fostering the exchange of ideas. It also underscored the extent to which writers use their blogs to have their work critiqued. In the opening paragraph of the post he wrote:

Below is something I wrote last fall for students in a course I was teaching. I thought I’d reproduced it here for comments and suggestions. I got the idea for doing it from Timothy Burke’s very helpful essay “How to Read in College.” If others of you have suggestions you give your students for dealing with high reading loads, let me know. (emphasis added)

This blog initiated a conversation of sorts, one that united the author with his audience, and allowed him to have his work critiqued. That he was successful in doing so was evident in the feedback he received. The post received four comments, each of which evaluated his work (though to varying degrees) and offered advice. One reader, for example, wrote:

As for primary sources, don't you think you would have to tailor it to each type? Skimming a novel for a history class would be very different from skimming letters, which would be different from skimming edited diaries, an autobiography, legal documents and so on. And I might not suggest skimming at all depending on the length of the assignment of a primary source.

To what extent the author made use of this feedback cannot be known. That he at least considered it, however, was evident in a follow-up response he offered:

You're right to point out that students need to learn not just how to skim but whether to skim; I would want to stress in future iterations of this that not all kinds of reading assignments are susceptible to the method outlined here.

Like “Mode for Caleb,” the author of “Jenny D." has used her blog to facilitate the exchange of ideas, and to solicit constructive criticism from her readers. As was noted yesterday, for example, a recent post entitled “Teaching, Learning, and Other Odds and Ends” explored the author’s ideas concerning the extent to which sound pedagogical practices influenced a student’s performance in the classroom. It provoked a number of responses, and led to the construction of further arguments and debates. Of still greater interest was the writer's decision to publish a portion of her dissertation proposal, a text that had the potential to influence her future academic life considerably. As was the case with the post published on “Mode for Caleb,” the author received a number of responses, each of which offered constructive criticism and pinpointed areas of the proposal that could be improved. One comment read:

You really should investigate putting the majority of this text "below the fold."

This seemingly simple comment provoked a response from another writer, a fact that suggests the discourse initiated on blogs can be ongoing:

I agree entirely. Structure is anything from a haiku to a persuasive essay. Absolutely. It's the response to literature in a journal, in which kids write with no structure or goal or form that doesn't seem to help.

The author of “Coffee Grounds” published a post that addressed the challenges graduate students face in their efforts to have their work published. In “Articles From My Past,” he shared advice regarding the nature of the publishing process, and provided suggestions he found useful in overcoming the obstacles it presented. He wrote:

You might not have the time now to get that paper done, but never let the motivation to get it published die entirely. Just because it is a couple of years since you worked on something, doesn’t mean you can’t pick it up and take it somewhere…The dissertation needs the most attention, but tell yourself that you will publish the other stuff later.

Although this post does not represent a direct attempt to solicit feedback, it does attest to an effort on the writer's behalf to share with others the wisdom he gained as a result of his experiences in graduate school. It also shed light on his perceptions of the audience for whom he was writing. His use of the inclusive “you,” coupled with the assumption that his readers would be interested in having their work published, suggest that he intended the blog for fellow graduate students.

In the past, “Coffee Grounds” has proved problematic, particularly where my ability to draw generalizations about academic blogs has been concerned. To some extent this proved to be the case once again. Unlike the other blogs I have followed, this writer neither solicited feedback from his readers, nor presented his own scholarship. Visiting his “About Me” page did reveal a number of links that led to articles he had published, a syllabus he had used, and a copy of his curriculum vitae, an instrument the writer of “Mode for Caleb” also provided. In the end, it would appear that this particular blog simply did not belong to the subgenre, a fact that suggests that blogs maintained by graduate students are not necessarily “academic.”

As has been shown, academic blogs, like academic journals and conferences, represent forums in which ideas are shared and scholarly work evaluated. They are used to construct communities of like-minded individual united by shared interests and similar experiences, and address issues relevant to life in the academy. In composing this analysis, I focused on blogs maintained by graduate students. A search of the Internet, however, turned up an array of similar blogs, many of which were maintained by university professors. This raises an interesting question. What, if any, similarities (and discrepancies) characterize the blogs maintained by professors and graduate students? Conducting a comparative analysis may show that the subgenre I have labeled “academic” can be pared down even further.