Student Journal or Blog Feature

[anthonem]

In the past, I designed courses that allowed individual students to keep their own blogs as a journal/log assignment. Is there a way to include a blog feature for individual students (like a journal assignment). This could be set to allow only instructors to see the students' individual blogs OR allow all students to see the blogs but each student can only edit their own. I thought of using "pages" but those can only be made editable by all students or none. Perhaps a slight modification to allow teachers to select individual students to enable editing would suffice.

Ideally, this feature would also allow for multi-part assignments, where the student is graded at certain "checkpoints" as they compose and edit portions of a cumulative assignment.

Originally posted by Robert Anderson: Student Journal or Blog Feature : Help Center

  Response from Instructure

October 2016 update from Chris Ward
There are a lot of blogging solutions out there that have excellent solutions in this space. Because of this, we'll be archiving this feature idea. Thanks for voting and participating in the community!

[Cindy_Masek]

Same here!  I am looking through the Community right now for this same reason for nursing courses used to having discussions that could be used as personal journals. I tried a work around of making student groups of 1 for discussion, but the system won't let me make a group for just one.

[peytoncraighill]

Unfortunately, this is a component that's not likely to get built within the next year, as the use case is relatively specific and the work required is to satisfy it is significant. There are several potential workarounds mentioned in this thread, and while they aren't ideal for this particular use case, hopefully they will suffice. I have attached this thread to the story in our backlog, so if you have additional thoughts/comments/complaints/interjections, feel free to continue posting here.

[buellj]

This is rather disappointing. I've been watching the suggestion threads as implemented in the new Canvas communities and it seems like all that is happening to feature requests regardless of number of votes, is that Instructure continues to work on whatever is on the roadmap and archives any suggestion that is not. I was under the impression that features requests would actually get incorporated into the product or rejected outright. It seems like just about everything is getting round filed... I mean archived.

[BKINNEY]

I don't think it is quite that bad. The good news is that when a decision is made not to move forward with a particular suggestion, they tell us. That's way better than being strung along for 3 years with a suggestion that has hundreds of likes. I'd rather know for sure that something isn't going to happen, and clearly they can't honor all requests.

I assume that a response like  @peytoncraighill  means 'not anytime soon' as opposed to 'no way, ever'. Knowing that much gives us clear choices. We can find alternatives, or we can wait a long time. If the former, the effort won't be wasted. That's good enough for me.

[kmeeusen]

John:

When I move through my inbox, I see lots of feature requests marked "In Development" or "Completed".

To be fair, I think that Instructure has to fit feature requests into their Road Map based on development time and resources, and their impact on other areas of Canvas. And, they have to judge based on the core vision of what Canvas should be. There are many of us who left other LMSs for Canvas, because we desired a simpler and less bloated UI. Furthermore, what might seem a simple request for most of us, could be a huge challenge for the software engineers in the vast code that is Canvas.

As  @BKINNEY  pointed out,  they do tells us when an idea has been shelved, and ofter they tell us why.

[anthonem]

Hi  @peytoncraighill ​ thanks for updating us on this request, I appreciate it. Of course, it's too bad there aren't plans to work on this feature, I could see it satisfying a real pedagogical need (efficiently administering assessments and feedback on an assignment that has sequence of milemarkers -- without a bloated gradebook). I'll continue to think of better ways to accomplish this using Canvas and external tools as appropriate. Maybe others in the community will come up with an ingenious workflow.

[vrs07nl]

I like this elaboration - similar to my my post at https://community.canvaslms.com/people/vrs07nl/status/3537#comment-15900

For me one solution would be to have a true blog or journal tool that can be public or private that sits in a course and not the eportfolio.

[vrs07nl]

i agree.. see https://community.canvaslms.com/people/vrs07nl/status/3537#comment-15900 

[vrs07nl]

I recently requested two feature ideas on the back of this and other discussions - one for a wiki and one for blog/ journaling tool. Latter archived for reasons I understand  - So for now I am going to look at campus pack as offers all the tools we need for group and individual work.  It should integrate with Canvas - see Campus pack and canvas - if you have any thoughts or tips..

see also  (please vote!) and

[Jeff_F]

Be mindful certain elements are less than optimal: no rubric or Speedgrader integration exists for these tools.  And so faculty will need to have two windows open: one for the journal/blog/wiki/etc. and the other for the Canvas Grades.

[vrs07nl]

dear Jeff

are you sure .. i have yet to test in canvas but I can link canpus pack tools to assessments in BB and add a rubric

[Jeff_F]

Yes, Campus Pack tools are added as External Tools and as currently programmed a rubric cannot be added to the assignment.  Below is what you see when accessing Speedgrader for a Campus Pack Blog assignment.

http://community.campuspack.net/Groups/Documentation/Campus_Pack_User_Guide#/page/265071229" style="...

[Jeff_F]

[vrs07nl]

 @Jeff_F ​

thanks for pointing this out to me... i will think of a work around

 @Jeff_F ​

I think my work around for now would be to simply upload a word or PDf completed rubric here AND in the campus pack tool

[adachung_ihub]

Hi Jeff,

I came across this error page when using the Canvas App for opening Campus Pack Journal. The browser version seems working ok, but not for the Apps. Any clue?

[vrs07nl]

 @Jeff_F ​

I have been testing campus pack functionality in canvas and have identified two function issues of note

1. Campus Pack does not recognise Canvas groups or sections ( and no work planned to resolve this) so cannot deploy directly to groups form CP
2. Campus Pack only seems to recognised two canvas default roles ( student and teacher)

Have you noticed this?  see Campus pack and canvas

[vrs07nl]

Update re blogs etc using Campus Pack

As mentioned earlier in this thread i ruled out ePortfolio tool. The only other option with Canvas is to put one student in a group and let them blog/ reflect using pages - not ideal as cannot turn off group menu items, there is no chat room and like ePortfolio you hace to add any instructions, templates for each set up

.

As I need to offer individual and group blogging, journalling and wiki options, have gone the Campus Pack route and finally got it to do the things I want it to (despite canvas groups not being recognised by Campus Pack) For full details of set up and workarounds see my posts at Campus pack and canvas

[Stef_retired]

I just watched a video--part of the Canvas FastTrack Series by  @lstark --that shows how to leverage Canvas Groups to create a graded journaling activity for students. It's a nifty and simple solution: have a look! Canvas FastTrack - Let’s Start a Journal - YouTube

[anthonem]

Thanks for linking this stefaniesanders​! I especially appreciate the nod toward grading with this setup.

The pushback I get from faculty, something I've mentioned before on this thread, is the inability to include multiple grading "checkpoints" in this one graded group discussion. Let's say that the journal assignment is worth 10% of the total grade for the course -- maybe 100 points. Let's say students are required to make 10 entries. That means they might have a score of 10/100 after they have completed the first entry. To the student, this looks like they are failing the assignment, when in fact they have a perfect score! An ideal solution would allow a 10 "checkpoints" in the graded group discussion, where the students receive 100% on the discussion even though they may have only been awarded 10 out of a possible 100 points.

I suppose the instructor could give students full credit on the discussion, and then merely subtract points as the term goes along. I'm not experienced with that method of grading, I wonder if anyone else on this thread can speak to this approach?

[Stef_retired]

 @anthonem ​, that's a good point. I've actually been on the other side of this scenario, as a student receiving cumulative points over the course of a semester, so I know how disconcerting this can be, unless it's well and thoroughly explained. I haven't yet employed this journal/group strategy from a teaching standpoint. I wonder if it would be feasible, assuming a weighted gradebook, to keep the weight at 0% (within a total of 90%) until the due date for the last of the 10 entries to the journal assignment passes, and at that point changing the weight to 10%--again, with lots of communication necessary, because students will not see an accurate cumulative grade until the weight for the journal is changed.

When I extrapolate the idea of giving full credit initially and then subtracting points into a student's mind, my first concern would be that a less-attentive student, thinking that the assignment is complete, wouldn't come back to the journal in Week 2.

I'd love to hear about how other who are employing the student groups approach to journals are handling the grading aspect.