Warwick Univerity Encourages Students to Blog

Posted on May 7, 2005

The Guardian reports that some universities are embracing blogging and encouraging their students to blog. Warwick Univerity is one of the pro-blogging universities and they have set up a Warwick Blog hosting service for their students.

Warwick University is playing a pioneering role with its Warwick Blogs project, which is available to all students, teachers and staff. The idea behind it, says John Dale, head of IT services at Warwick, was "self-publishing for all". Students were allowed to create homepages on the university's network, he says, but few bothered because it was too difficult. In contrast, setting up a Warwick Blog is easy. The hope is that once students start blogging, says Dale, it could build a community, foster collaboration and perhaps help with the personal development planning that students and tutors have to work on.

3,000 of the Warwick's 15,000 students have already set up blogs on the site. Overall reaction to the blogs has been positive but one professor was critical of the university's blogging policy:

Max Hammond, a chemistry PhD student, says that blogs are a useful social tool, but that the service's acceptable usage policy is draconian. "The blogs admin appears to suspend student blogs on some very shaky reasons."

In the U.S. some parents and school administrators are concerned that blogs may reveal too much personal information about the teen bloggers.