New education site using FeedAPI

We recently created a community learning space for a web analytics class at BYU. We directed students to create individual blogs on commercial blogging platforms such as blogspot, wordpress, and elsewhere. We are then using FeedAPI to aggregate the student blogs and comments (see list of student feeds) into the community site. In addition, we're aggregating blogs from prominent web analytic experts (see list of expert feeds). A wiki and spot for announcements round out the list of features.

We choose to aggregate student blogs rather then have students write on Drupal as we wanted students to have a permanent record of their learning that they would take with them.

Design Principles

Our site design was guided by three learning principles.

Learning should be social

You learn best with friends. In a traditional classroom, it is difficult for a teacher to provide opportunities to their students to teach and learn from each other. Drupal made it easy to set up a place where students can share with each other what they're learning about web analytics.

Learn from experts

Learning is as much of learning to be something as learning about something. We wanted this class to be very practical and hands on. What better way to learn how to do web analytics then by looking over the shoulders of experts in the fields via their blogs.

Learning on demand

People learn in response to need. Its important not to force-feed learning but to encourage it by making available learning resources. As information is added to the site via blogs and the wiki, the site becomes an increasingly rich repository of information about web analytics. Students don't have to wait for class to learn but can learn directly from information on the site.

Results

The semester is still early but so far the results are looking promising. Blogging volume is growing and information from students and the expert bloggers are driving much of the conversation in the classroom.

URL to the site:
http://ebiz2.byu.edu/analytics

Also, a big thanks to the FeedAPI crew who made the site possible and to Bill Fitzgerald for providing the inspiration for aggregating student blogs (see here and here)

Thanks,
Kyle Mathews and Clint Rogers