Tag Archives: How to

Take 3: The Last Blog Period

So you’ve made it to the final blog period. You can finally breathe that sigh of relief. If you’re happy with one of the grades you received in a previous blog period, the good news is that you don’t have to frantically post any last minute blogs (which you shouldn’t be doing anyway, but I understand it’s a stressful time). For those of you that haven’t gotten satisfactory blog grades, you have this entire period to change that. Many of you are concerned with posting more blogs, but that’s only a small portion of what makes up your grade. You also want to make your final shot at blogging good.

So how, during that final stretch, do you write an A-worthy blog?

Andrew has posted plenty of examples of well-written, well-thought blogs that you can model your posts after. But it’s also essential to look back at the comments you received alongside your previous blog grades. Maybe your comments say you need to cite more sources. Or that you need a question at the end of your post. Putting those suggestions into action can highly affect your grade.

You may also want to look at your previous blogs and compare them to the grading rubric on ANGEL. Go through each category and try to look at your posts objectively. Your strengths could lie in the quantity section of the rubric, but if you’re lacking in the content section of the rubric, your whole grade will suffer. Look at your blogs from a professor’s eyes: Does this show that I put time and effort into my research, that I care about the topic?

As always, feel free to ask me or Ethan questions. I’m happy to look at drafts (if sent well in advance before the blog period ends) and send you back some feedback.

Good luck, and happy blogging! 😀

Ask Questions

Looking at your blogs, it seems that half of you are asking open questions at the end of your posts. Make sure that you ask in depth questions–a large portion of your blog grade comes from comments, so give your classmates a chance to respond to something concrete. Something other than a “yes” or “no” question is preferable.

In addition, while you guys are looking up very interesting articles and doing great research, try not to just present the facts. I mean, it’s easy enough to google the difference between organic and non-organic food, but your job is to take a certain angle on it. I’ve found that writing blogs from an “either/or” standpoint works best. So there may be a food that is good for our bodies, but has negative effects on the environment.

I know I’ve stressed human behavior blogs, but for those interested in psychology, those posts work great because we cannot reach a definitive decision about what motivates each individual. We can make close estimations, but there is a constant grey area. For instance, being in college, I’m sure many of you have thought about what it means to be successful and how we can motivate ourselves to keep pushing? This triggers the question: are we more likely to be successful from fear of failing (i.e. not being able to find a job/house/marriage) or from passion for a certain activity/the need to follow that career?

Food for thought. Maybe some of you can blog about it. It’s a question that has been bugging me for weeks.

Happy blogging! 🙂

Only 1 Week Left: How You can Aid Your Grade

Before I get to writing out my commentary on how I think you guys are doing as far as blogging goes so far, I have a simple FAQ to address

I’ve been getting emails from students asking me to look over their blogs to make sure that they didn’t plagiarize anything, which tells me a couple things. First, it means that Andrew did a proper job of scaring the living piss out of at least some of you guys in the class, which is good given that the consequences for plagiarizing are horrible and nobody should ever consider it. The second thing, however, is that exactly what counts as plagiarism may not have been made clear enough. So, just to make sure all is well regarding the topic…..
Plagiarism: The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as your own

Essentially what I’m getting at is that as long as you give credit to the original author of a publication you decide to pull some evidence or viewpoints from, you aren’t plagiarizing. I have yet to see any cases of anyone doing so in their blog post so far, and it would be great if we could keep it that way. So, if any of you guys are wondering if you may have accidentally crossed the line, ask yourself “am I presenting the original writers work in a way that people will think it is mine?” If the answer is no, then you’re probably good, but since it is such a horrible thing always feel free to double check with myself or Kira.
Now moving on…..
Since the first blogging period will end almost exactly one week away from whenever I post this, I figured it would be a good time to give my two cents on how I think you guys are doing so far
My first recommendation for you guys would be to start using more live links in your blogs posts. Most of the posts I have read have only one or two live links in them, which is almost never enough to be worthy of an A. You should aim to have at least 3-5 live links per blog post if you are going for an A on the blog period. In addition, you shouldn’t just give the link to a wikipedia page at the end of the post. Really leverage the ability to put the links exactly where they fit in your blog post, and try to get as much information from as many different, direct sources as you can. For example, if you read about a study in a certain article, try and actually find that study somewhere on the internet and reference it in your blog post. While you can’t always access such material, if you can it will be a lot more supportive as evidence for your argument than an editorial with little or no citations to back it up.
My second comment isn’t hard advice per say since it isn’t really a solid guideline, but the subject matter is arguably more important to your overall grade than any other aspect of your blog post. Whenever you guys are writing your future posts, really take the time to do critical analysis of the subject. I’ll put it you this way, if I can spend 15 minutes on Google researching your subject and get just as much out of it as reading your blog, you haven’t done enough analysis. After I read your blog post, I should not only have a good idea of what you’re topic is and why it’s relevant, my mind should also be completely blown because you presented a well thought out and supported argument on the subject that I have not seen in any other publication. Now this may sound confusing and maybe even extremely difficult, but trust me, once you get a grasp on what I’m getting at, the quality of your blog posts will improve.
As for actually gaining that understanding, this post, this post, and this post are all good examples from last year of people who exercised the above principles. In addition, feel free to find or email myself or Kira and just talk us through your topic. Odds are we can get you pointed in the right direction and help you get closer to an A, since that is what we are here for, after all.
Oh, and Happy Friday!
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