Commenting as Critical Thinking: Blogging in a Black Studies History of Jazz Course

• In Event: 16.056 - Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: 16.056-1 - African American Students Reminagining Their Roles and Identities

Abstract

This study is an ethnographically grounded discourse analysis of an undergraduate Black Studies History of Jazz course where students engaged in the practice of blogging as one type of assessment to evaluate their understandings and writing skills. This study specifically examines students’ commenting practices. By reading and responding to students’ blogs over time, some students developed a more sophisticated way to peer assess others’ writing skills and what students were claiming as factors that contributed to the history of jazz. As part of a disciplinary concentration, blogging afforded students opportunities to construct and revisit multiple perspectives on the same content, while enhancing their literacies of multiculturalism, digital technologies, and writing to learn.

Authors

• Anissa R. Stewart, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Jeffrey Stewart, University of California - Santa Barbara