By: Yana Weinstein and Jennifer McCabe

A few months into our blog, we received an e-mail from Dr. Jennifer McCabe at Goucher College telling us about an assignment she had implemented for her upper-level seminar on the topic of "Cognition, Teaching, and Learning." We were very flattered to learn that Dr. McCabe was using our blog as the basis of the assignment! Since then, I (Yana) adapted that assignment and also gave it to students in my Advanced Seminar in Cognitive Psychology class.

This got us thinking that the assignments we created might actually be a useful template for any teacher or professor who wants to incorporate a blog-writing assignment for their students. This assignment could be set in a psychology or education class (lower or upper level), a more general writing class, or a class on virtually any topic. The instructions below describe how we created a blog-writing assignment around “The Learning Scientists” blog. Feel free to use them if this blog is relevant to your class, or simply adapt the guidelines to fit a different blog!

All you need before you can get started on creating the assignment is a relevant, high-quality blog. Optional bonus: if this is a blog you run, you could offer publication of the best pieces to your students. If not, you could write to the blog owner and ask them if they might consider guest post submissions. In our case, we welcome submissions for guest posts from exceptional student writers. In fact, two of Dr. McCabe’s students’ final blog projects are in the process of being edited for publication in the blog – look out for them over the next couple of weeks!

Step 1: Students Read Blog Posts