Creating a Blog Topic

  Creating and Editing a Blog Entry

You must create blog topics before students can add their entries. A blog topic helps keep entries organized around a central theme. You can create more than one blog topic for students to add entries about different subjects.

1. Go to Control Panel > Course Tools > Blogs.

2. Select Create Blog.

3. Type a name and optional instructions. Make the blog available to students.

4. Select the Display After and Display Until checkboxes to enable the date and time selections. Display restrictions don’t affect the blog availability, only when it appears.

5. In the Blog Participation section, decide if the blog is for individuals or the course. You may also allow some anonymous posting.

6. In the Blog Settings section, select Monthly or Weekly Index Entries. Optionally, select checkboxes to allow users to edit and delete entries, or delete comments.

7. In the Grade Settings section, select No grading or the Grade option and type the number of Points possible. Points possible will apply to one or more entries made by a user to the blog topic. After you enable grading, a column is created automatically in the Grade Center. The blog is permanently gradable, and you can’t change the setting to No grading.

8. If you want, select the checkbox for Show participants in needs grading status and select the number of entries required. If you apply this setting, the Needs Grading icon will show in the Grade Center. The entries will appear in the queue on the Needs Grading page after student activity meets this threshold.

9. Select Submit.

Editing and managing blogs

1. You can edit the basic properties of a blog topic, including the name, instructions, availability, and other settings. You can edit any user’s blog entries and delete blog topics and comments.
2. After you designate a blog topic for individuals or the course, you can’t change it. Also, after you designate a blog as graded, you can’t change a blog back to upgraded.
3. On the Blogs page, access a blog’s menu and select Edit. Make your changes and select Submit.