TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Martin Weller:

So I would argue that the answer to the first question above, as to whether new approaches such as blogging constitute scholarly activity, is an emphatic yes. Which leads us to a more problematic question: How should we recognize it?

Weller argues that blogging should constitute scholarly activity for faculty at universities, but I have a different suggestion: blogging should count toward credit for students. Students should have every incentive to begin heavily researching something and writing about it, and if they do so well enough, it should absolutely count toward their degree. Odds are they will learn much more by doing their own self-directed work than they could in a classroom, the results of their research is public, and they can use it to tap into the community for their area of work.