Using Blogs in IB Business & Management

This year, I taught an IB (international baccalaureate) Business & Management course for the first time. This was my first experience with the IB program, and I was excited to have the opportunity. I felt that the year went well, but I am trying to devise new ways to improve my students' performance.

I am going to implement an interactive class website next year. The really unique thing I want to do with the website is include a blog where I post prompts related to something that was covered during the week, and students will be given a week to respond. I think requiring them to write weekly in this blog will give them more practice writing, which is essential for writing a long-term research paper called the Internal Assessment and passing the IB exam at the end of the year. Additionally, the components I've included in the rubric for the blog will require them to "dig deeper" in their writing, cite sources, and provide scholarly comments on the postings of their peers.

The components of the rubric were designed to push them toward a more collegiate level of writing. They will be graded on how completely they addressed the prompt, along with whether they referred to any real business issues in their entry. My hope is that the students begin to make more connections with current events or at least recognize that what they are learning in the textbook is more than just theoretical. I also am requiring them to include citations and hyperlinks to reliable sources because I want them to get more practice using the Internet as a research tool.