Blogging Your Way to a Research Paper: The Benefits of a Semester-Long Blogging Assignment in the Political Science Classroom

Abstract

Although the benefits of undergraduate research for students are broadly understood, implementation of undergraduate research in the college classroom can be challenging. In this article, I explain how blogging assignments can be used to enable students to successfully complete course-long research projects and achieve many of the content and skill development benefits of undergraduate research, even in courses in which undergraduate research is less common—such as those with high enrollment numbers, those at earlier points in a political science major, or those with many non-major students. I draw on several forms of student feedback and assessment to identify the strengths and weaknesses of using blogs as a way to build a research paper. Additionally, I outline the components of one set of blogging assignments and provide suggestions for implementation of blogging research projects in other courses.

Keywords:

• Undergraduate research
• blogging
• online learning
• research-based learning

Notes

1 Full assignment details, blog post prompts, and related handouts are available in the Online Appendix here: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/1KH11Q.

2 In fact, by helping students connect “real world” events with scholarly knowledge from class materials, assignments like this can produce integrative learning, which in turn improves learning across the curriculum and students’ civic skills (Bernstein et al. 2018).

3 While this assignment could also be conducted in non-election years, the presence of concurrent campaigns seemed to increase student enthusiasm and enable them to more easily access some data through contemporary media reports and websites.

4 This assignment used publicly available blogs on the free WordPress platform. Given the public nature of these blogs, I encouraged students to use pseudonyms if they did not wish to post under their actual names. A similar set of assignments conducted using internal group discussion boards could potentially provide similar benefits for faculty concerned about student privacy or managing unfamiliar blogging platforms. To obtain the benefits discussed in this paper, assignments should include a central location where students post data and initial analyses on a regular (e.g., weekly or biweekly) basis, a sufficient audience of readers (e.g., at least five students up to the entire class) to encourage students to produce good work even on low-stakes assignments, and mechanisms and opportunities to provide regular peer feedback (e.g., a comment option on student discussion posts). Taking the assignment out of the public realm does diminish some potential benefits of this kind of assignment for broader civic engagement, but does not compromise most of the benefits emphasized here.

5 This importance can also be signaled in the final paper grading rubric provided to students at the start of the semester. See the Online Appendix for an example rubric.

6 A full list of blog post prompts and associated readings are available in the Online Appendix for other instructors to adopt.

7 For example, students could discuss data gathered about candidates’ experience levels in order to analyze whether the candidates in their races reflected Ehrenhalt’s (1991) discussion of “professional politicians,” to evaluate whether women running had higher qualifications than male opponents as Fox and Lawless’s (2014) research would suggest, and to evaluate the applicability of Herrnson’s (2016) key structural, institutional, and political context features to their chosen race in this election year.

8 For example, one student’s campaign finance blog post noted: “[Sanchez’s] campaign contrasts that of Harris’ in that she has loaned $200,000 to her campaign. As outlined by Herrnson (2016), self-financing is generally a strategy used by first-time and/or less viable candidates, who might struggle in the fight for resources. She faces an uphill battle in two of the three categories of donors named by Francia et al. (2003).

1. As she has never really threatened Harris’ lead in the polls, investors have little reason to donate to her campaign. Without a real shot at winning the election, this money would not be well spent for someone wanting access to the next California senator.

2. As the more moderate of two Democrats, she has few strong ideologues on her side. While she might get some support from Republicans on election day, these voters seem unlikely to take it a step further and donate money across party lines.

These issues clearly manifest themselves when looking at contributions for Sanchez’s campaign. Not only has she raised only one-quarter of what her opponent has managed, she is lagging behind in the percentage of individual contributions. Overall, only 1% of what her campaign has raised has been in small individual contributions (as opposed to Harris’ 13%).”

9 Examples of student posts are available in the Online Appendix, including all posts from one group responding to the election outcome prompt and all posts from a different group responding to the governance prompt.

10 Some examples of student comments can be seen in the election outcome posts in the Online Appendix.

11 This research has been found to be exempt from continuing HSIRB (Human Subjects Institutional Review Board) review by Davidson College Institutional Review Board, #2018117.

12 Specifically, the text of this assignment asked students to “offer a reflection of about 200–300 words discussing your experience blogging over the semester and commenting on your strengths, weaknesses, and areas of greatest improvement as a blog writer over the semester.”

13 Out of 23 students in the course, 21 completed course evaluations, and 19 responded to this open-ended question.

14 For example, students noted: “It has also shown me the positives of incremental journaling in following my congressional race, and referencing back to past ideas. … Though I believe that the blog posts most helped my scheduling ability. The frequency of blog post due dates required me to schedule out my semester for this class. In turn, better preparing me for the semester’s topics and connecting the different aspects of campaigns and elections,” and “The blogging process for this class has been a good way to keep informed on my congressional campaign. Without the blog posts, I would not have done any kind of research on what was happening in the campaign process, and I would not have achieved the same level of understanding that I have been able to get through the blog posts.”

15 A comparison of one of the first (candidate biographies) and one of the last (election outcome) sets of posts from one group in the Online Appendix highlights students’ progression on this skill over the semester.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Melody Crowder-Meyer

Melody Crowder-Meyer is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Davidson College, where she teaches courses in American political behavior and the politics of identity. Her substantive research investigates how gender, race, and ethnicity affect candidate emergence, campaigns, and voter behavior.