Hi all–Happy Tuesday! I’m betting you are working on your blogs this week, trying to make sure you’re up to par before the Period Two ends. If that’s stressing you out and you’re worried about the quality of your blogs, I hope that this checklist helps you evaluate that quality. Especially if you’re struggling to meet with a TA (because it’s the last week) or get an email reply from a TA (again, sorry, because it’s the last week), here’s a checklist that you can go through on your own to see if you’re on the right track. I know that some of it is open to opinion, but hopefully you’ll get the gist of what you need to do to get the grade you want.
- Do you have a topic that addresses some sort of controversy or mystery that can be examined from a scientific perspective?
- Are you examining and analyzing (so not just summarizing like a Wikipedia or WebMD article)?
- Is your topic broad enough that you can explore the topic from multiple points of view/thought patterns? Is it narrow enough that you’re not being too vague or too long-winded? (this is tough, but try your best judgement based on the TAs blogs from last year if you need a reference point)
- Do you have a thesis question of inquiry (i.e. does smoking cause lung cancer, are vaccines safe, what is the effect of music on cognitive performance, etc.)?
- Is it clear and easily identifiable to readers (succinct and preferably at the end of your intro paragraph)?
- Do you have clear two-way topic sentences? (That tie back to the thesis question and tie to the subject of that paragraph)
- Do you consider different demographics while talking about your topic (For example, when studying the effect of gatorade on athletic performance, do you consider gender, age, BMI and other health indicators, geographic location, type of athletic performance, amount of gatorade, length of athletic performance, etc.)
- A good rule is to look at how something affects different categories differently. Looking at age, ethnicity, geographic location, socio-economic status, gender, physical health, profession, etc. is a good idea if possible
- Do you look at credible sources? Do you have multiple credible sources that look at different subtopics of your thesis question (usually relates back to the demographics, i.e. under the question of does gatorade impact athletic performance, perhaps you look at studies about athletes from different sports, athletes from different age groups, different genders, etc. to inform your “answer” to your overall question)?
- Credible sources can be news articles, but the best ones are actual studies from research institutions (we’re talking observational and, better yet, experimental studies from academia).
- Do you include sources from multiple different perspectives and with different kinds of results? (sometimes you can compare/contrast dissenting studies, other times the studies look at different factors under the same question)
- Do you analyze your sources?
- Talk about the credibility of that source (study design: experiment/observation, size, randomized or not, controlled or not, p-value and confidence interval)
- Have you considered reverse causation, third variables, and false positives/negatives?
- Is the study relevant to your thesis question? Does it study what it says its studying?
- What do you think of the results and why? Are the results generalizable beyond the sample population in that study? Why/why no?
- Are you making the studies understandable (“so in other words…” etc.) so that they’re not too confusing because of technical jargon?
- Are you incorporating concepts from class? Are you making references/comparisons/metaphors/etc. to topics/principles we discussed in class?
- Do you have some sort of “so what” portion, a “take-away portion” to conclude your blog that considers Cost-Benefit analysis and Risk analysis on the topic?
- Do you have live likes that cite your sources in the midst of your blog? Do you at least cite your sources in the text and provide the link/bibliography at the bottom?
- Do you have some sort of visual appeal (bolds, italics, colors, pictures, graphs, charts, even gifs)?
Happy Blogging, folks. Remember: 
thank you so much!!!!!!! this was great help