When is my blog done?

flickr-alamodestuff, creative commons licensed

As I continue this effort to teach students research blogging, I am running into the very natural and somewhat frustrating question, "When is my blog done?" I'm not referring to the practical question related to the course my students are taking (which is really, "At what point and just how will my blog be graded?" which I will come to). No, the issue here is when has a blog reached a point at which it is "finished"-- not in the sense of being "complete" or "done with" but in the sense of being refined. When is my academic blog at a point where it has demonstrable value?

This is a key question for academic bloggers, since the very nature of blogs is continuous, yet schooling or scholarly publishing are not. Semesters end. Manuscripts are published. There is tremendous clarity that comes with academic evaluating: a grade doesn't just signal how well one did; it signals that something is done. A manuscript that's published means a project is completed. Sure, one can always take another course or publish another book, but we see these as separate, subsequent endeavors.

So when is my blog "done"?



There may be a clue to the answer in the image at the top of my blog. "I blog, therefore I am" adapts Descartes' famous cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am." What I'm getting at here is that blogging, unlike a typical academic research paper, is always in the business of constructing the identity of the blogger, as much as it is serving a given subject. So, the short answer is that you are done with your blog when you are done with yourself.

Now that is a very impractical thing to say, and even a bit silly. Yet there is some truth to this. A blog has not "arrived" or come into its own until there is a discernible personality that animates and sustains it. It can't just be a blog about Midsummer Night's Dream; it has to be a blog about Peter or Megan encountering that play or whatever else. This goes to the criterion of personality (related to the rhetorical concept of ethos).

And maybe using negative criteria might be easier than positive ones. I do think it is possible to say when a blog hasn't arrived more easily than the reverse. So, to restate my earlier question, An academic blog is not yet at a point where it has demonstrable value until the following criteria are met:


Update 3-30-11
As promised, I have simplified these criteria under four headings.  (Thanks to those who gave feedback!). More details about these can be found at a new page of evaluation criteria.

• Posts
• Quantity
• Content
• Format
• Research
• Thematic Focus
• Thesis & Cohesion
• Sources
• Personal & Social
• Author identity
• Documentation of Process
• Interactions
• Design
• Appropriate to Theme
• Side content

For my students to be "done" this semester, they must

1. Hub Post (due April 4th)
   Create a final "hub post," as I've previously taught, that includes a clear thesis and appropriate links to supporting blog posts 
2. Peer Evaluation (due April 6th)
   Evaluate another student's blog, as assigned, creating a blog post in which they go through these criteria 
3. Self Evaluation (due April 13th)
   Write a self-evaluation post using the criteria above and responding to the peer evaluation (Additional posts and even revisions to the hub post are acceptable up through April 13th)