Academic "blogging"? Inside Higher Ed reports today about UPenn's student blogging initiative. The idea is to have incoming students write in a blog that is shared only with their academic advisor and other administrators. They write about their academic interests, their strengths and weaknesses, and other issues related to their intellectual life at the University. The idea is that these "blog posts" will be shared with their academic advisors who will then have a better overall picture of their advisees and can provide better advice for them for their academic career.

This definitely sounds like an interesting idea and as the article states, has evolved out of the popularity of sites like Facebook and MySpace. The biggest difference is that the UPenn initiative is not public. Further, none of these sites are really blogs. Facebook and MySpace are really social networking sites though MySpace does have a blog component (often not used). And the UPenn initiative, by not being public, drops it out of the blog category as well. Though I certainly understand not wanting to make such sites public, one of the benefits of public blogging is the feedback one gets. I wondered (and commented to this effect) if it might not be beneficial to allow the students to make certain parts public, perhaps sharing it only with other students in their class. It would seem that would be a good way to build a community and to provide support for each other as they pursue their academic careers. Yes, having an electronic journal that the academic advisor can see anytime anywhere is a nice idea, but it doesn't take full advantage of the medium. ¶ 10:04 AM, posted by Laura