Now my three week introductory module at Högskolan Väst in Sweden is over it is time to have a brief look at using an open access blog (Roddy’s Courses) as the main supporting device for presenting course material. This was the first time I have used a blog that is open to anyone and it is interesting to see what response it gained from the students taking the course and from those who also visited.
Here’s the table of visitors (from the Clustrmaps widget) and you can see they are overwhelmingly from Sweden – naturally. Then there are visits from myself (South Africa) and probably from my students here as well. After that is a tail of 14 other country visitors. Two of them became followers of the course so it must have been interesting but I haven’t been in touch with them at all, maybe that’s a breach of netiquette?
My Swedish students were a pleasure to teach and interact with in class. They were very responsive and gave positive feedback about using the course. You can read what they said here. Perhaps the course went well because the material was easily accessible via the blog and also attractively presented? In my opinion the course looks inviting in the blog. If you use a conventional web based learning platform, such as Moodle, you tend to end up with something like this screen shot.
It is a similar course that I teach at Rhodes. Furthermore it is behind a fire wall so no-one else can gain access.
Sun Downer Blogs 