If you use Blogs/personal reflections in your module, there are 2 options available as outlined below. 


1. Discussions

The best solution is to use the Discussions forums to set up Blog areas for students. This seems to be a common solution in other Universities.

To create private one-on-one blogs between instructors and student, you must first set up a new Group category where you create a group for each student on your module – each student will be in an individual group. We then set up a discussion forum called Blogs which can be accessed via the Discussions tool. You can then set up a page in the content area (e.g. under Week 1) and add a quick link to the blog with instructions for what you’d like them to blog about this week.

Each student gets their own topic area, they can’t see each other’s, but you as an instructor can see all the topics. Students can start a new thread for each blog post, and title it by week or theme. They can then add whatever content they like (text, audio, video, images) or upload documents.

Instructions for Instructors:

Visit this step by step tutorial for instructors https://www.iorad.com/player/2125658/Instructors--How-to-set-up-blogs-for-students-in-Brightspace?#viewsteps

Includes:

  • Setting up individual groups with one student in each group
  • Setting up the Blogs forum with a topic for each student
  • Navigating to the Blogs forum
  • Adding a quicklink to the Blogs in your content



Instructions for Students:

Visit this step by step tutorial for students https://www.iorad.com/player/2125722/Students--How-to-add-a-Blog-Post-in-Brightspace?#trysteps-1

Includes:

  • Navigating to Blogs
  • Starting a new thread for each Blog post
  • Creating and uploading content to your blog
  • Publishing your blog
  • Editing or deleting your blog
  • Organising your blog posts


2. Microsoft Sway

Microsoft Sway is included in our Office 365 subscription for staff and students at UL.

It is an Office 365 app where you can add multimedia content, get creative with how you style the layout, and emphasise the most important images and text to focus the reader's attention.

See here for guidance on using Sway as a blog tool. https://sway.office.com/kQZrUaWapkCZXZhx?ref=Link

If you have custom requirements, please contact your faculty learning technologist.