When Margaret Anderson, a psychology professor at the State University of New York at Cortland, began teaching online 12 years ago, she used an open-source communication tool to facilitate online discussions. She later moved to WebCT when the college decided to stop supporting the open-source product for security reasons. But WebCT did not provide her with the flexibility she needed, so she found a new open-source communication tool—LiveJournal.

LiveJournal is a blogging tool that has helped Anderson to work around several shortcomings of WebCT. WebCT’s discussion feature works well for discussions among those enrolled in a course, but Anderson wanted to open certain discussions to former students, interns’ site supervisors, and colleagues in similar departments at other institutions (including several overseas).

Anderson chose LiveJournal because it is free, easy to use, and allows users to change security settings to enable variable access. She takes full advantage of the ability to change security settings to provide different access—individual, instructor, class group, entire class, select individuals outside the class, and even the entire online community—to suit specific communication needs.

At the beginning of her courses, the class as a whole has access to LiveJournal to build a sense of community and discuss issues that are pertinent to all the students. Each of these discussions lasts for two weeks. Anderson posts a question in the first week, and students respond directly to the question. In the second week, students continue the discussion. (The discussion can extend beyond two weeks, but it is not required.)

For discussions that are relevant beyond the students in a particular course, Anderson may invite colleagues and students from similar courses at other institutions to participate. For example, a discussion on how states are implementing laws related to No Child Left Behind might benefit from the perspectives of education students in different states or even the perspectives of a broader group. (Anderson reserves interaction with the general public for the end of the term.)

Anderson has students use LiveJournal for group work as well. In these instances, she can easily set up groups by changing the security settings to restrict access to certain students.

She also conducts one-on-one communication with her students by creating groups consisting of herself and each individual student. She uses this mainly for student journal entries based on each class session. In the past, she would ask students to submit their journals every two weeks for her to review. The problem with that method was that often students would write several journal entries just before they were due rather than writing them after each class session. With LiveJournal, however, each entry is date stamped. In addition to journal entries to share with the instructor, Anderson encourages students to write entries that are accessible only to the individual student.

For students participating in internships, Anderson is able to do “virtual observations,” in which she can have students post artifacts of their work, such as audio or video files. Anderson also opens these intern blogs to the student’s site supervisor, which provides more insight into the student’s experiences.

The archives of these blogs provide students with a record of their learning, which they can use to create electronic portfolios, Anderson says. “I have students who have worked with me for three semesters, and they’ll look back at their first year’s journal and say, ‘Wow! I didn’t remember that.’ In that sense I do like it because it provides opportunities for reflection.”

Use of these blogs also benefits students after the class has ended, by providing them with experience using a tool that they might be able to adapt to the courses they teach in the future. “Most of my students are currently teachers, and they hear a lot about the use of technology but don’t necessarily see it in action. So for a lot of them this is modeling a tool that they can use in their own classes. One of the reasons I prefer this to something like WebCT or any of the proprietary course management systems is that if a high school or middle school teacher uses this system in my class, students can replicate it on their own because it’s free,” Anderson says.

When considering a tool such as LiveJournal or other blogging platforms, Anderson recommends that you carefully consider the needs of the course. “Pedagogy needs to drive the technology use. I love to look at new toys and new things out there, but I want to know what the needs of my course are, and what is the best technology to meet those needs?”

Before using a blogging platform, consider who will have access to each blog before the course begins, to avoid having to change security settings, which can be cumbersome. It also helps to adopt standard user name conventions to make it easier to grant access to specific forums. For example, for students enrolled in her Psychology 501 course, Anderson has students log in as 501lastname to enable her to easily sort users.

One of the disadvantages of using open-source tools is that you may not have on-campus technical support for them. However, in the case of LiveJournal, there are “excellent” user groups and FAQs to help with technical issues that arise, Anderson says.

Contact Margaret Anderson at AndersMD@cortland.edu.

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