18.1 – What is a blog?

A blog contains several blog posts, which are shorter texts on a specific topic. The idea of a blog is that the key essence of a certain topic is emphasized in short form. Blog posts are usually written in a non-technical language for readers that are not experts in the topic. Blog posts contain the following characteristics:

• Catchy title
• Short introductory section (~50 words)
• Main text (~500 words) divided in different subtexts with suitable subtitles
• Highlighted key arguments
• Illustrative pictures, graphics and tables or links to other helpful websites (if necessary)

18.2 – Strengths

By asking the students to rewrite a topic in their own words and focusing on the main aspects of this topics, they are automatically carrying out a knowledge transfer. Therefore the learning success of this technique is quite high. Furthermore by reading each other’s blog posts the students can profit from their colleagues knowledge.

18.3 – Examples

• This is part of a Blog Article from the Polybook “The un sustainable development goals in context” from the class “Education, Gender and Inequality”

18.4 –  Further Comments

Writing and reading blog posts can be especially interesting in fields where the students can make up their own opinion and bring in own ideas and thoughts.

To increase the learning effect for the students it could be a good idea to conduct peer reviews on the different blog posts.

Not every subject area is suitable for this kind of learning. In some fields, where for examples many calculations need to be done, writing texts may not bring the desired learning progress.