There are several reasons, some of which are really just restatements of one of our other FAQs, "What can I do with a blog?":-

• Blogs are more community-focussed than ordinary web sites, because it's possible to share blog entries with specific people, and to build up collections of entries about a particular subject, or of interest to a particular group. So over time, we hope that there will be blog pages which collect together all the posts about (say) java programming, or football, or the films of Bill Murray. It's another way to identify people with interests that reflect your own, and it can start working even before students arrive on campus, and carry on working right through academic life. As Warwick's blogs collection accumulates over time, we hope that there will be information to be found there that new students, and others interested in Warwick, find informative and thought-provoking.
• Having a place to write which can be published to whoever you want can encourage creativity and the development of a personal prose style. Not everyone who arrives at Warwick has already had the chance to develop their own authorial voice, and not every subject studied at Warwick has a large prose-writing requirement. Blogging is another way to develop this particular, very useful skill.
• Blogs may be a useful tool to support personal development. Warwick, like all UK universities, is required to show ways in which it is working to support its students in their personal development planning (PDP). Tools which support reflection and discussion as blogs can be a useful part of this.
• Keeping a blog may be useful when job-hunting time comes around. Blogs that contain reflective material about a course or project or piece of work may be interesting to prospective employers.
• A blog can provide a record and a sense of continuity throughout students' time at Warwick. It's easy to forget things that happened and decisions that had to be made during the first year of study by the time final exams arrive; a blog could be a mechanism for recording and reflecting on events and decisions for later reference.
• Blogs aren't just for personal writing. We expect that they will be useful for research groups wanting to keep a record of their work, for students doing project work on their courses, and for many other purposes we haven't thought of yet.
• Blogs make it simple for anyone at Warwick to have their own web presence. We've always offered students their own web home page, but only the small fraction of students who know how to make a web site from scratch use this facility. We'd like everyone who wants a web presence to be able to have one, regardless of technical expertise.