What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in college—the term paper—and not necessarily intrinsic to a student's natural writing style or thought process?

Collaborative learning for the digital age, by Cathy Davidson.

Lots of interesting stuff for anyone who writes, or teaches, or blogs, or reads.

Research indicates that, at every age level, people take their writing more seriously when it will be evaluated by peers than when it is to be judged by teachers. Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers. Longitudinal studies of student writers conducted by Stanford University's Andrea Lunsford, a professor of English, assessed student writing at Stanford year after year. Lunsford surprised everyone with her findings that students were becoming more literate, rhetorically dexterous, and fluent—not less, as many feared. The Internet, she discovered, had allowed them to develop their writing.

Perhaps academic writing is so poor because we can't help but write poorly in that style. It would be amazing if it turns out that blogging is a better way to teach writing than the traditional academic methods.

The section on crowdsourcing grading is very interesting to me, in spite of the fact that I am skeptical - but interested.