Web logs, or "blogs" as they are more popularly known, are often thought of in one of two ways — either as heart-on-your-sleeve online journals for adolescents or as new media outlets for technologically savvy political and social activists.

But blogs can, and do, serve other, more professional purposes. Ball State recently received national recognition for its innovative use of interactive student blogs as a recruiting tool. The student blogs — largely multimedia journals or diaries — demonstrate one way current technology can be used to disseminate information, generate discussion and create buzz on the Web. But the student blogs are just a part of the blog story at Ball State.

Professional blogs are becoming an important part of the academic landscape, and a handful of innovative Ball State faculty members are incorporating blogs into their courses and their research. Given the flexibility of blogs as a communication tool, the ways in which faculty use blogs are varied, but the general consensus among them is that blogs offer the easiest way to get the most information out to more people than any other currently available medium.

While many personal blogs are basically online diaries or journals, the focus of professional or academic blogs is on sharing knowledge. Therefore, an academic blog can be seen as a hub for sharing or distributing information, a forum for online discussion, a site for building community and an arena for the publication of original works.   

Portal to information

An example of a blog that serves as an information hub is George Elvin's blog "Nanotechnology and Design" (www.smallplans.blogspot.com). Elvin, a senior researcher at the Building Futures Institute and associate professor in the College of Architecture and Planning, created his blog in October as an information portal for those interested in the most recent research in his field. Since then the blog has attracted more than 1,000 visitors. Elvin said the blog was a complement to work he was already doing.

"The blog makes it easy to take the research I'm collecting and put it out there for others to use," he said. "In my area, speed is critical. In nanotechnology, the field is moving so fast, by the time you get a publication out, the information is dated."

Elvin's blog is largely a collection of links to articles that those interested in nanotechnology and related issues would find of value. It doesn't offer commentary or discussion of the articles, it merely serves as an information hub for like-minded researchers.

"It's of value to researchers because it consolidates the information in one place, but it's also accessible to a larger audience," Elvin said. "It adds a new dimension to the university's ability to share information with a general audience. Blogs appeal to students and to a younger audience who spend so much of their time on the Internet."

Fun with fuzziness

That appeal makes academic blogging a useful classroom tool. John Dailey, assistant professor of multimedia, uses his blog (http://jdailey.iweb.bsu.edu/weblog/351/default.htm) to keep the discussion going once the bell rings and the class officially ends. Because he teaches in telecommunications, Dailey finds blogging to be a great way to encourage his students to think creatively about the texts they are reading and the projects on which they are working.

"My field is really subject driven. If I was in a field that was about absolutes, I might not get a lot of action on the blog," he said. "But since it's about fuzziness, then we can have fun with that because the ideas are not fixed."

Dailey sees blogging as a way around some of the obstacles of using course management software, such as Blackboard, which students have to learn. He says students intuitively understand blogs because they spend so much time on the Internet already.

"They all know how to get to a Web page. I don't have to teach them anything new," he said. "I can send them to the blog, and they are ready to go."

Where they go is largely unlimited, as the Internet opens up opportunities for discussions that literally span the globe. Dailey's digital storytelling students are currently teamed up with German students studying some "forgotten places" in East Central Indiana and the former East Germany through a Global Media Network Grant. Dailey's German counterpart, Haarold Pulch, teaches at a design school in Mainz, Germany. His students participate in the blog alongside Dailey's students, comparing and documenting how and why industrial sites have been neglected in the two regions.

This international perspective opens up a whole new avenue of discussion, leading students to examine issues from new angles and to think in new ways, something Dailey encourages. He sees the use of blogs as a way of getting students involved in their own education.

"I like it that they are excited about it," he said. "My goal is to get them excited enough about learning that they won't need me, that at some point, they can teach themselves."

True collaborative community

The Center for Information and Communication Sciences (CICS) has what is perhaps the largest collective blog site at Ball State (www.cicsworld.org). Started in fall 2003 under the leadership of CICS researcher Joel Patrick, the site features blogs by CICS students, faculty and alumni. Together they contribute to a community of blogs managed by the center's Human Factors Institute (HFI). A featured blog on the site is Information Renaissance (www.cicsworld.org/blogs/renaissance), an example of what Jay Gillette, HFI director and professor of information and communication sciences, calls a "true collaborative community blog."

The goal of the HFI is to develop a collaborative community of researchers and to find the software that allows collaboration to happen most easily. Blogging creates a way for them to "walk the talk" of human-computer interaction on a daily basis as they test a variety of communications systems.

Gillette likes to point to the Renaissance as the historical period most like our own in terms of the amount of information being distributed and the destabilizing effect it has on established ways of thinking. He's working on a book that compares the two eras, hoping to instill confidence in our ability to manage the conflicts and clashes that come with the profound changes new information technologies bring to society.

"This era looks a lot like the last information revolution. We've encountered this before, we've been through a time when we made remarkable leaps forward," Gillette said. "If you study the European Renaissance, you can understand the new paradigm."

For Gillette and the HFI, that new paradigm includes the use of blogs to create communities of researchers working together, each contributing small bits of information to create a larger body of knowledge. Sharing information allows researchers to connect with each other and allows them to bypass the errors others have made. Research moves forward rather than getting bogged down, and researchers tend to collaborate rather than compete.

A place to publish

John Fillwalk, associate professor of art and artist-in-residence at the Center for Media Design, finds that the use of his art and technology blog (http://electronicart.blogspot.com/) gives him a space where he can share interesting links with other artists who work at the intersections of art and technology and a way to interject topical subjects into his classes.

But his academic blog also offers a place for students to publish works in progress, allowing for peer review and critique of not only written pieces but also for a variety of multimedia works. Blogs aren't only word-based, Fillwalk points out. Sound and video are also part of the blog-scape.  

The future of blogging will change as the technology changes, said Fillwalk.

"Since the introduction of HTML, you could do most of this, but before blogging software was available, the necessary coding would have had to be completed by hand," he said. "Now, it is more accessible, more participatory."

As more people get access to better technology, Fillwalk envisions more and different types of blogs in all our futures.

"Video blog sites and other demanding technologies will take off," he said. "As the resources get more robust, and the limitations become fewer, ultimately it becomes concept driven. What's really exciting in all of this are the ideas being incorporated into the technology and how that in turn leads the direction of its development."

Beginning to blog

Creating a usable, user friendly academic blog takes a little bit of research and, for those unwilling to go it alone, a little bit of training. Learn more about available campus resources in the second part of this series in the Dec. 12 issue of Update.