Weblogs as a Personal Knowledge Publishing Tool for Scholars and Practitioners: Some Final Thoughts

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Weblogs as a Personal Knowledge Publishing Tool for Scholars and Practitioners Some Final Thoughts

  • Can be fun, engaging, addicting.
  • On the other hand, if the writer intends to build an audience and become a part of the online discourse, weblogs require a commitment that is not for everyone.
  • Making more writing public online opens up the teacher/researcher to more criticism which may certainly affect tenure review and promotion. An alternative way of looking at this, though, is to consider that bloggers have less freedom than might at first be imagined: they must make professional audience considerations when blogging, just as whenever writing publicly.
  • I hope that some people attending this presentation will take the opportunity made possible by blogging this text and continue the discussion, either here or on their own weblogs.
  • See what other academics have to say about why they blog over at Crooked Timber.
  • See also the other presentations from this panel session at 4C's, Clancy Ratliff's Whose Voices Get Heard? Gender Politics in the Blogosphere and Terra Williams' Community and Individual Weblogs: the 'Write' Combination for Composition Classes
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re tenure and promotion

Posted by Anonymous on Sat, 03/20/2004 - 19:20

Charlie,

You may have already seen this, but PB references an email from a dean at Villanova who offers a pretty balanced perspective on the relationship b/w blogging and T&P issues...

http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2004/01/academic_credit.html

"8. Bottom line: While no replacement for writing articles and books, and no one is going to get tenured or promoted through blogging (at least not today); but what I've called a serious blogger would get a big plus on the positive side on the ledger from me when it gets to merit review time! Failing to reward it would be failing to recognize that blogging is not just another new communication medium; it is a new way to do scholarship."

Good luck w/ the presentation--I'm hoping to make it to your session on Friday...

Collin Brooke

re tenure and promotion

Posted by cel4145 on Mon, 03/22/2004 - 11:31

Thanks! I had not seen that post and its good to hear that at least one dean recognizes the value of blogging. Also, one of the interesting things is the recommendation within that email:

Blogging or, more precisely, interaction among bloggers and their readers, strikes me as something very useful to people doing more conventional scholarship. Most realize, I think that scholarship is not done in a vacuum, and that the ability to test one's ideas, and to get ideas from others, would help in writing articles and books. Blogging helps with all that tremendously and in novel ways. In fact, I'm advising my junior colleagues to start following the blogs in their fields, and to think about contributing where appropriate.

And hope to see you at the presentation!