clipped from blogsforlearning.msu.edu

Just as with smaller classes, there are a number of ways in which blogs may be deployed to help with the learning process in a large class. The most obvious example is the single teaching blog, something of a replacement for other forms of course management software. In this form, the blog acts as the central communications organ of the course, with links to the syllabus and schedule, and posts for assignments, handouts, news items, and course discussions.

This is, naturally, a fairly "low-intensity" use of blogging in a course. For small courses, instructors often make the students authors of the blog as well. This can work for large courses, but it can lead to a bit of a mess if you have students writing on a regular basis. If only a subset of the students write posts each week (and the remainder post comments), then things become a bit more manageable, but this sort of participation may lead to more administrative overhead than it is worth.