I am going into my third round of teaching a knowledge management class in Northwestern's Masters of Learning and Organizational Change program. The course is focused on knowledge management from a tactical perspective: an introduction to tools and techniques that address aspects of knowledge management. Obviously, I can't cover everything in ten weeks. I try to provide enough background that the students understand what is out there, and when it makes sense to explore a given technique.
I've talked about blogs before, but I think one of the struggles with talking about blogs is that you don't get a good feel for what they are or how they are related to knowledge management. So, I am going to have the students set up and run personal blogs over the quarter. I'll have them react to other class readings and build up to reading and commenting and writing about one another's blogs as well. There will be several points through the quarter where we highlight aspects of the blogging: reading, comments, trackbacks, community.
I'm looking for suggestions and guidance on this topic: what works well, where do I need to tread carefully. This class is not a technology class, and the students are not required to have any programming skilz, so I am looking for guidance on using blogs in an educational setting with Knowledge Management as the context.
The university has a blogging platform set up (WordPress, I believe), so that question should be handled.
I've got a few thus far, but I'd like to make sure I cover my bases. A former student (and blogger) pointed me to Dennis Jerz and Will Richardson. And I am planning to talk to Jim McGee, who introduced blogs in a class at Kellogg several years ago. I believe Liz Lawley's used blogs in her classroom as well (pinged).