3 Unconventional Ways Academic Advisors Can Use Blogs with Advisees

Exploration and Documentation

In the past, many educators have used blogs to assist students in creating portfolios of their work whether it be throughout a course or a semester. I propose that advisors have their freshman students begin blogging when initial contact is made for course scheduling the summer prior to their arrival. Advisors could send out prompts to get the student started and then periodically require posting throughout their undergraduate experience. Since I work with undecided students, perhaps this could help them work through the process of finding what they love and excel at. Criticisms that I can think of right off the bat might be that students will not follow through with the assignments or that it would be difficult for advisors to read through all of those blog entries. My response to this is to consider the type of work that we currently undergo to help students select best-fit majors and then assist them in researching them. Blogs might just allow us to do this more efficiently, create a portfolio of student work and allow us to refer other students back to these blogs in the future for reference. That seems pretty efficient to me. 

 Workshop Archive 

Blogging is a collaborative medium and as such allows for groups of students to interact with each other easily. Many centers offer workshops throughout the semester on topics such as grades, time management, choosing a major and other like topics. Perhaps if the resources that we use to put on these workshops were created within one large "workshop"  blog, students would be able to access this information anytime they wanted to. This method would also eliminate the need to reinvent the wheel everytime a new semester rolls around. Whenever possible, a simple edit of the materials would do. Students could also collaborate with each other and contribute to the discussion. 

     A Repository of Knowledge

 Create one centralized blog for all of your personal advisee's as opposed to the main blog for your center. This may seem like duplicating work that's already been done, but think of it this way... how often do you send out emails which reiterate what's already been stated many times before elsewhere? A centralized blog could keep all of your students updated with one post. Emails could be sent out everytime you update without any additional work on your part. You could also post pre-appointment assignments that you would like students to complete, add important websites, etc. 

Academic Advisors Can Use Blogs with Advisees