UBC Blogs provide an interactive website platform where instructors and students can create content individually or collaboratively, resulting in outcomes like a course website, a group blog, a peer review space, or a personal portfolio or blog—all built on a flexible WordPress foundation.
How do I get started?
Planning starts with considering the kind of learning you want to support. Consider:
- How might blogs support my goals for student learning?
- What lasting benefit might students derive from their use of a blog?
- What will they/ I need in the way of support to get started?
Blogs are particularly good at supporting:
- Reflection: students may be encouraged to reflect on readings, experiences or their own learning as part of a course or program. Posts can be protected (for only the instructor or group to view) or shared publicly.
- Portfolios: students can maintain their own blogs as spaces to publish, share and review their work over time. Since blogs can handle a variety of media (either via uploads or embeds), they are useful as a way to assemble work from a variety of online sources (video, slides, docs, etc). Online portfolios can help students build a scholarly digital presence.
- Community building: Connecting student blogs via a course "hub" blog, allows students to see what others are thinking about, working on. Encouraging comments, feedback helps students learn from their peers and others, including experts from the community (if desired).
- Digital/web literacies: Because blogs are essentially personal publishing platforms that are highly customizable, students can develop them as they do/build/create online. Mozilla has done some great work at defining entry level web literacies associated with so-called 21st century skills.
- Open courses and resources: UBC Blogs can be used to create resources that are open and available to anyone on the web.
We have highlighted 2 different blog options so that you can compare functionality according to your needs. Bring your questions about any aspect of functionality to the Learning Technology Hub - we are happy to consult with you about your project and your needs.
|Version Control (Revision History)|
|Clone/Export and Import blogs|
|adding users to blogs|
|embedding feeds/student content|
|grade book integration|
|Network enabled plugins for extra functionality|
UBC Blogs has its own website, which has detailed documentation on getting up and running with a blog.
What tools can I use with this?
Content from other UBC platforms can be embedded into your blog, including:
Using UBC Blogs with Canvas
Faculty and staff can create a new UBC Blog directly through Canvas. UBC Blogs can be made accessible through the side navigation bar or in a Module.
- Log in to your Canvas course.
- Go to Settings.
- Select the Navigation tab
- Scroll down until you find UBC Blogs.
- Click the gear and select Enable.
Step One: Generate an LTI Integration token in the blog
- Navigate to your UBC Blogs Dashboard.
- Go to Plugins.
- Find and activate the LTI Connector Token 1.0.0 tool.
- Refresh the page.
- Under the Tools menu, select LTI Token.
- On this page, copy the LTI Integration token for the blog.
Step Two: Create an "External Tool" item in a Canvas Module
- Navigate to Modules in a Canvas course.
- Click the [+] button.
- In the drop down menu, select External Tool.
- Select UBC Blogs in the list of tools. In the URL field, you will see the following link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/
- Add ?custom_wplticonnectortoken= so that you obtain the following link: =
- Remove the square brackets and replace the content in the brackets as outlined below:
- =[LTI CONNECTOR TOKEN]&custom_existingurlpath=[NAME OF BLOG]
- Your LTI CONNECTOR TOKEN was generated in Step One.