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BELLINGHAM – Not only did fall quarter mark the beginning of a new school year, it was also the inauguration of the First Year Blog, an online outlet for Western Washington University freshmen to make connections with each other in hopes of making the college transition less stressful and their first year more rewarding. Sponsored by WWU’s Center for Instructional Innovation (CII) and the First-year Interest Groups program, the blog has four Western freshmen as its authors: Stephanie Battershell, Sabrina Combs, Caitlin Sinkewicz and Zach Wilmott. “We’re the guinea pigs this time around, but that’s OK,” Wilmott said. The four students write posts about day-to-day life during their first year of college. The Web site, http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/figsblog/, is primarily intended for Western freshmen, but anyone with a WWU account can post a comment and anyone with Internet access can read the blog. Justina Brown, CII instructional and multimedia designer, said all incoming freshmen were e-mailed about the First Year Blog two weeks before the quarter began and invited to apply to be a blog author. “About 50 students tried out to be bloggers” Brown said. “We asked them to post a sample blog entry regarding their hopes for college, what makes them remarkable, what their biggest challenge will be, or why they chose Western.” James Baird, a student employee in the CII, created the First Year Blog. “It was important for us to ensure the blog would work on a WWU server and connect to the standard campus login system,” said Karen Casto, director of the CII. A committee of first-year instructors selected the four blog authors. “The goal for this project is to provide a medium for entering students to make connections with each other in hopes that this will foster a sense of community early in their college career and ultimately contribute to the success of all first-year students,” Brown said. There are currently only a few comments being posted, but statistics indicate a larger viewing audience, including numerous returning readers, she said. According to the CII’s statistics, the blog has received approximately a dozen hits throughout Europe and another dozen from the Far East, India, South America, Australia and Canada, Brown said. In the United States, there are approximately 750 unique visitors from Washington. Internet users in California, Texas and New York have visited the Web site as well. Approximately half of the people coming to the blog are returning visitors and in less than three weeks the actual number of page views was about 3,600, Brown said. “As increasing numbers of first-year students read the posts and identify with them or even disagree with them, perhaps the blog will increasingly achieve its goal: Fostering a sense of community among first-year students,” she said. Read the blog at http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/figsblog/. For more information, e-mail cii@wwu.edu. |
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