This project gives you the opportunity to write three well-crafted blog posts, receive feedback and comments from classmates, learn from reading others’ posts, and revise your own posts if you wish. In addition to writing and designing blog posts, you will also build auxiliary web pages that will serve an audience of not only your classmates, but also others in your field.
One of our goals with this project is to create a blogging and learning community. Each time you write a blog post, you will also respond to at least one of your classmates’ posts. In this way, we’ll ensure that you have an audience for your writing and we’ll create a community readers and thinkers focused around the issues discussed in the blogs.
Weblogs as a genre are more informal and immediate than most other forms of technical writing. The purpose of this assignment is to use that informality, as well as the capacity for linking to a variety of online media, to encourage you to think reflectively about the topics being discussed in the class, but also to engage more thoroughly with your own disciplines and the role writing will have in your professional lives.
You have some degree of latitude with the blogging assignment. You’ll be asked to choose a topic within a framework that relates to the topic we are studying in class (see prompts on tabs below).
Length for each Blog Post: Aim for at least 500 words.
Grading Criteria: You may want to take into account the issues discussed in this grading rubric as you draft your entries.
Step 1: Create a website using sites.psu.edu, Weebly.com, or Wix.com (or some other platform that you I approve). Send me the URL to your website.
Additional Steps: Then see due dates on the syllabus for when the remaining elements of the blog website must be completed, and use the blog prompts and other website page instructions below to guide you.
Student Sample Blog-Websites
Examining some successful student blogs from past Tech Writing classes may help you decide how to craft your own:
- Julia Meyer’s Technical Writing Blog (Mechanical Engineering)
- Drew Quigley’s Technical Writing Blog (Bioengineering)
- Kelsi McKinley Lester’s Technical Writing Blog (Chemical Engineering)
- The Code Corner: Mike Fitz’s personal blog for ENGL 202C (Computer Science)
- Keegan Shoch’s Blog (Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering)
- Katherine Brennan: Technical Writing with a Focus on Nutrition
- Josephine’s Biological Sciences Blog