involving students in writing summaries of class

This semester, I wrote summaries of what we did in each class and posted these as word documents, "Today in class..." in the Academic Reading and Writing Moodle course. These were intended to help students who had missed class to catch up easily, so they didn't fall behind, without taking up a lot of teacher time. I thought students who attended class, but wanted to go over things again, might also find the summaries helpful.

I found the summaries time consuming to write, and they are not 'reusable' beyond this semester. Initially, I delegated a couple of students to help draft the summaries and send these to me. I thought this would be another good way for me to see their writing skills and gave them an authentic purpose for writing. However, I let this slip by the wayside and took over writing the summaries myself. On the one hand this meant the summaries were much fuller and probably more useful to students who had missed the class. On the other hand, I had taken away an opportunity for students to use their developing writing skills for a real purpose.

I'll try to get some student feedback about this activity before deciding on my approach for next semester.