Creative Writing: The Blog Entry

Various writing assignments, from short essays to lengthy research-based term papers, have long been an important part of pedagogy and assessment in many disciplines, including economics.  While all writing assignments at some level should be considered ‘active learning’ they frequently involve little more than summarizing from various sources.  Traditionally writing assignments are completed individually and thus lack the concept of collaboration that is seen in most active learning strategies.  This presentation discusses the use of a web log (aka a ‘blog’) to build an interactive class writing assignment in a one-semester survey of economics course.  Each student writes an entry for the class blog which must apply a class concept to a personal experience, current event, etc.  Students are given the opportunity to revise the entry based on instructor feedback.  Entries are then posted on the web where other students comment on each.  The blog entry is a useful writing assignment for several reasons:

 

1. Students are actively involved in learning as they attempt to apply concepts to personal experiences
2. Other students are involved through comments and discussion on the entries
3. Students practice various writing and research skills (including creativity in attempting to make their blog entry not only informative, but also entertaining)
4. Students demonstrate high levels of recall for concepts after discussing their own and their classmates’ personal examples

The presentation will include details of the assignment, examples of student work, and data on learning outcomes related to various concepts.