Blogging in Universities

Oliver Wrede noted that there are three major universities with weblog initiatives, as of May 2004:

• Harvard University: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/
• Stanford University: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/itss/projects/blog/
• University of Minnesota: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/

From my own research, I can say that there are many more, even if we only consider U.S.-based University weblog sites (and not counting individual staff, student, or faculty blogs).

Wrede also quotes Peter Baumgartner's weblog from a post that asks why German universities haven't embraced the weblog phenomenon:

... one can observe a general reluctance to introducing weblogs in education and teaching. From my personal point of view a fundamentally wrong conception of education is the main reason for the absence of weblogs in education. Under the still common assumption knowledge should be transferred by teachers/professors to students. [...] If weblogs are used in education on a large scale, they won't be just an add-on but they will change radically our way of teaching. But the mentioned "if" is of major importance as the blogosphere will attack the interests of traditional teaching institutions - at least at university or postgraduate level.

Dave Winer has also posted on How you get weblogs started at a major university:

Here's how you get weblogs started at a university like Harvard or Dartmouth. First, know that universities thrive on having their experts visible outside the university. Not just publishing in academic journals, which most alumni don't read, but being called in as experts on radio talk shows, esp NPR. That's how you reach into their wallets, show them why they should be proud of their alma mater. Pride gets the money flowing.

Henry Farrell keeps a list of 93 scholar-bloggers all over the world, as reported about a year ago in the Chronicle of Higher Education (see Henry's response to the article.)