Each week in Professor McCoy’s English 203 class we are often divided into smaller discussion groups to confer on various questions and activities. I thoroughly enjoy being with these smaller groups because I am able to converse with my classmates and listen to their interpretations on the information we read, watch, and discuss in class. These discussions are my favorite part of the class because I can never anticipate what we are going to be advised to talk about and what is going to be brought up as a result of the given assignment.
On Wednesday, the class was divided into discussion groups and asked to complete various activities that day. As one of our final assignments before departing class, we were asked to read the GLOBE, Geneseo Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education, aloud to our groups. As a group, we each took a turn in reading aloud one of the eight learning outcomes and discussed each of them after it was read. When our group reached the fifth learning outcome, Creativity and Creative Thinking, my group began to discuss how, as class, we have been practicing this learning outcome all semester. The fifth learning outcome of Creativity and Creative Thinking is “to produce scholarly or artistic work, independently or collaboratively, that makes inventive connections among existing forms and ideas;…” As a class we have been practicing this learning outcome through our writing and posting on the blog. This realization led me to these two questions, “What is the purpose of blogging?” and “Why do we blog?”
After thinking about these questions while walking out of class, I had come up with a few answers. In my opinion, the purpose behind writing and posting on the blog is to reflect on the material we discuss in class. It allows us to use the information we learn in class and relate or connect it to our personal life. For instance, in a previous blog I connected a scene in I Am Not Sidney Poitier and The Defiant Ones to my personal expectations I had for the novel. In addition, I believe we blog because it is so different from conventional writing in other classes and it helps us improve as writers. In other words, when students are asked to write an essay, for example, there is usually a certain structure and prompt that a they are supposed to follow and answer. Writing blog posts enables students to disregard certain structures or formats and use their voice more freely. However, I must make it clear that I am in no way saying that students aren’t capable of using their voices in more conventional writing styles.
Furthermore, there have been various occasions where I have left a class and thought to myself, “When will I ever use that information again?” While writing this blog I had come to the realization that another reason why we write and post blogs is to use and reinforce that information outside of the classroom. The practice of writing and posting blogs illustrates how we can incorporate the knowledge we learn in class into our daily lives rather than just viewing that material as information that is only relevant to a specific class or discipline.
References:
“Geneseo Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education.” SUNY Geneseo, www.geneseo.edu/provost/globe-geneseo-learning-outcomes-baccalaureate-education.