Capella Blogs
Friday, March 24th, 2006Capella is always looking for ways to give people an inside look at what it’s like to take classes online. At a traditional University, students often get a chance to visit the campus and talk to current students. For Capella, a blog is one of the next best ways to accomplish the same thing. Our first blog, Carol’s Marathon, is written by Carol Young who is a PhD graduate. She often blogs about various marathons she’s running, and some of the challenges that she has faced along the way. More recently we have created blogs for an IT developer, and several different Armed Forces members.
Having already worked with WordPress, it seemed natural to use that as our blogging engine. I proposed that we use Dreamhost as their basic hosting package has unlimited domains. That has allowed us to setup new blogs with unique url’s in a matter of minutes.
When designing these blogs I wanted each one to be unique, but recognizable as part of the same family. So the layout is the same, but the use of color and photography give each blog a distinct look. I used the Kubrick theme, one of WordPress’ default looks, as the starting point, and together with the help of Kevin Davis created several versions of typographic headings, calendar designs, and photograph backgrounds. This approach has made it easy to design new blogs each with a personal touch.
These blogs are the first step in the right direction. We have seen that when promoted, they can spark quite a bit of healthy discussion (this post on One Marine’s Journey has 50 comments). The next phase will be to aggregate existing learner blogs, following the model of Uthink at the University of Minnesota.
Blogs featured above:
Other Capella Blogs:
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