There’s been some discussion of this issue on Blogs discussion list. Generally speaking, I think the sentiment is to encourage public blogs. I am not entirely sure what a "private" blog would mean. On Typepad, private means they do not list your blog in their recently updated list. However, it doesn’t mean that a blog is password-protected or anything like that. I suppose one could create a password-protected blog, but what would be the point? One might as well use WebCT or some other CMS.
Some have raised the issue of FERPA (the federal law that, among other things, establishes a degree of confidentiality between faculty and students). Because of FERPA, a professor cannot discuss a student’s grades or work with a parent (without written permission from the student) and cannot leave graded material in a public place (e.g. outside an office door) for a student to pick up. However, FERPA doesn’t protect students from making in-class presentations or sharing their writing in a workshop or participating in an online discussion in Web CT. It would protect them from having such work graded publicly, but sharing work in public is not prohibited by FERPA (which would make the law fairly idiotic, wouldn’t it?)
More interesting is the issue of copyright. A student’s post to a blog or WebCT is copyright protected. I would presume that the student retains all rights to whatever they publish. However, if I have a blog that I pay for and I require my students to post there, who owns the posts when the course ends? I assume they do, but I assume I have the right to delete messages. Ultimately the issue is a minor one as there is little commerical interest involved.
In any case, I am in agreement with the majority on the list. For me, the educational value of blogging, particularly for aspiring professional writers, is its status as public writing. One of the primary purposes of writing is to engage in a conversation with the world. Even if few read it, imagining an audience has a significant effect on writing…or at least it should!
I’ve had students blogging for a couple years now. Blogging collectively on a course website and blogging individually on free sites like Blogger. Their Blogger sites can be fairly anonymous and usually I allow them to write on whatever they want as long as they post regularly. The purpose is simply for them to have the experience of blogging like the rest of us. On the course website they are identified by name and so there is more accountability.
I suppose a student might complain about sharing their work online. I have had colleagues who were reluctant to put their syllabi online out of fear someone would steal their work. I’ve had students who didn’t want to workshop their drafts because they suspected their peers might take their ideas. These are isolated cases, but I would tell them the same thing. The purpose of writing is to produce and communicate knowledge. Yes, there is a risk of theft and other risks as well, other consequences and judgments (see my recent post on academic blogging). That’s part of the deal. That’s what makes rhetoric interesting and important.
Writing has consequences.
Alex Reid, professor of digital rhetoric, Media & Artificial Intelligence 
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