While currently teaching a course on Shakespeare and Film, I asked students to keep a regular course journal in a single subject notebook rather than use the online tools (Blackboard’s blog or discussion board function).  Part of my justification for this assignment was to encourage regular writing and reflection on the material because it was a once-weekly evening course.  Rather than have all posts available for other students to read on the Discussion Board, I opted for the relative privacy of a single notebook.

I was impressed that a number of students who found typing more comfortable felt free to ask about an alternative medium, but I continue to wonder if there would be a way to allow a wider range of writing media for an assignment like this that would fit more closely with the ideals of universal design but avoid fragmentation of the assignment/task itself.  The privacy of the written journal in particular seems to have improved the quality of many posts above my colleagues’ similar assignments.  I also suspect that an unexamined, subconscious assumption about the personal nature of the written word over the printed word may have cut down on the number of directly plagiarized entries that I might have otherwise received.  The fact that not all students have the same facility in handwriting and the practical inconveniences of asking 50-80 students to hand in a physical journal, however, might still give us pause.