SDCA Student Research Journal

Abstract

Academic blogs give a decent environment for literacy cycles of different sorts. However, since teachers are new to this kind of platform. There is still no available rubric nor guideline in assessing academic blogs, the way teachers use blogs in English language classes and how do teachers use blogs as a writing assessment. With this research, it is hoped that the researchers can develop a guideline for academic blogging as a writing assessment to provide evidence that a guideline can help teachers to have a basis in creating a systematic lesson plan leading to better develop the writing skills of the students. The researcher utilized the qualitative research method as research design. The researcher also utilized thematic analysis to interpret the given data by 20 teacher respondents. The findings show that most of the teacher respondents have been using blogs in their English classes and seem to identify guidelines in giving blogging as a writing activity. However, most of the teachers do not follow guidelines appropriate to the practice of evaluating “blogging,” which involves online considerations. Since the researchers assume that most teachers have no specific guidelines in using blog as a writing assessment method, the researchers therefore, formulate a guideline that will serve as a reference for the teachers in using blog to effectively evaluate the writing skills of the students. The researchers believe that this guideline is an essential assessment tool that all teachers should have, especially during the time of pandemic, when most teachers ask students to write, research, and publish their work online.

Keywords: Guidelines; Blogging; Writing assessment.