Correction Appended: An earlier version of this story misidentified the title of Mark Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the School of Management at the University's Flint campus.

The booming blogosphere is a world dominated by celebrity gossip, confessionals and radical opinions. But blogs are increasingly hosting a new breed of user: university professors.

In recent years, academics across the country have started using blogs to relay information and ideas. Many are now incorporating the medium into their classes, asking students to take to their keyboards and post thoughts or resources on course material.

“It’s been extraordinarily successful,” said Brian Porter-Szucs, an associate history professor, who has students blog their responses to class readings. He has them search for other relevant material on the Internet and post it on the class blog.

Porter-Szucs said he decided to include blogging in his classes after reading one of his 15-year-old daughter’s homework assignments. Porter-Szucs was alarmed to see his daughter’s writing suffer as she tried to mimic what she perceived as an academic style. He suspected his own students might be writing poorly for the same reason and decided to use a class blog to test the theory.

“My suspicions were confirmed,” he said. “Part of the problem wasn’t necessarily that the students didn’t know how to write, it’s that they hadn’t been taught how to write effectively in a variety of settings. If I could just break through the sense of artificiality that came with the term paper, I could actually get good writing.”

Communications Studies Prof. Fara Warner, who uses blogging in her classes, said the medium allows students to write quickly with relaxed prose. The class blog also serves as a single space in which to archive links or ideas and facilitate class communication. Warner’s personal blog is called “The Power of the Purse,” though she doesn’t update it consistently because of the amount of time it takes to write posts.

“Blogging, for me, is a piece of journalism,” said Warner. “That, for me, makes it a bigger task to blog than to just throw my opinion out there. I still struggle with the immediacy of blogging and wanting to be ethical as a journalist and do right by sources and do right by myself as well.”

The time commitment means professors need to prioritize when it comes to blogging. Those who write personal blogs do so outside of their teaching requirements, but as blogs become more popular, the question of their role in academic research and publishing becomes more complex.

Mark Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University’s Flint campus, is a self-described “slave” to his economics blog, “Carpe Diem.” Perry said he spends up to five hours a day making various posts to his blog and thinks there is a place for blogging in the duties of a university professor, albeit an evolving one.

“It’s so new that (universities) haven’t quite incorporated it yet into the three areas that we’re responsible for — teaching, research and service,” Perry said. “But it really kind of overlaps in all those areas.”

Perry said he believes that blogging could be considered applied research.

But in an interview, University Provost Teresa Sullivan said that blogging lacks an important element, which generally elevates the credibility of a publication: peer review.

“Peer review is an important quality marker,” said Sullivan. “With electronic media now, anybody can publish anything.”

While the University doesn’t view blogs as a form of official research or publishing, Sullivan said she encourages professors to use them, even if they express controversial opinions or ideas.

“That’s what universities are about,” Sullivan said.