Blogging To Learn More About Women And Gender Studies

Dear Class:

Welcome to the class blog for Women and Gender Studies. As a way of encouraging the students in WGS 1900-01 to (A) become more informed about this field, (B) to start researching an area of women's studies that s/he finds intriguing, (C) engage in writing for an audience aside from the teacher and (D) to practice valuable multi-modal writing skills, I am requiring that each student create and maintain a blog for the next 10 weeks.

Unlike other college courses in which the professor creates a single blog, provides specific questions or topics for students to comment upon via posts to the blog, in this class students will create their own individual blogs using Blogger.com. The format and topic of each individual blog will be determined by the student; however, the blog must cover some area related to women, sexuality, gender, masculinity, reproduction, identity, etc.

Over the course of the semester, students will update their blog weekly. The weekly blogs (ten in total) must be academic in nature, discuss timely matters, and make intellectual reference to an article/ another blog/ or a media site. If you quote or paraphrase from another source in your post, you are expected to provide the proper citation at the end of the post and use quotation marks within the post to alert the reader to the sections being quoted or paraphrased. The recommended blog post length is between 200-300 words.

At the end of the semester, individuals will give a brief presentation on their blog and discuss what they have learned about their chosen topic through blogging and the value of blogging.

We will use one class period to set up Blogger accounts and start blogging! Your weekly blog posts will be done as homework and due each Friday by 10 pm. 

Best,

JM

(This post is 297 words not counting the greeting or closing.)