For readers…
A few comment sense words of advice for readers are necessary, since teaching is often a very sensitive subject for professors, students, administrators, parents, and observers of higher education:
- A blogger’s online persona is often very different from her or his offline persona.
- Those portions of a blogger’s personal and professional life presented online are a narrow slice of the whole.
- Rough ideas regarding teaching that are sketched out in blogs may come to fruition offline; the fully developed versions of those rough ideas may not be posted online.
- Bloggers sometimes blow off steam on their blogs, but this does not mean they are constantly irritated or irritable offline.
- Anonymous bloggers often, but not always, exhibit more freedom in venting about irritations than those who blog under their real name.
- The practices of anonymous bloggers should not be conflated with the practices of those who blog under their real names.
- One blog entry by itself does not accurately represent a blogger’s personality.
- Most teaching experiences are not blogged.
- Most thoughts about teaching are not blogged.
- Most academics do not blog, so a selection of blog entries on teaching in higher education cannot be used to draw any useful, general conclusions about teaching in higher education.