Leveraging Student Interests through Social Bookmarking

I have a new guest post over on the CIRTL Network website: “Leveraging Student Interests through Social Bookmarking.” Here’s an excerpt:

As with the cryptography course, social bookmarking contributed to the students’ class participation grades, but I this time around, I didn’t think I would have much success by asking students to chip in ten bookmarks each over the course of the semester.  I decided that they would need a bit more structure for their social bookmarking, so I gave them an assignment every week or two.  Their first assignment was to find and bookmark an example of data visualization of some kind.  Their second assignment was to look through the bookmarks from the first assignment and comment on one with a few questions that the particular data visualization led them to ask.  This second assignment was my way of encouraging students not only to bookmark their own finds, but also to learn from their peers’ bookmarks.

CIRTL is an NSF-funded network of 25 universities (including mine) collaborating in the preparation of graduate students in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and math) for future faculty teaching roles. CIRTL is launching a set of new online learning communities, including one focused on effective use of technology in teaching. I’ve signed on as a regular contributor to this learning community, so I’ll be blogging there regularly throughout the year. If you’re interested in the intersection of technology and STEM teaching, I encourage you to check it out.

Image: “bookmarks galore,” FlickrJunkie, Flickr (CC)