A WordPress blog, which has website capability, can provide students an opportunity to go in depth into one topic. When designing through a public discourse lens, students contributing to the blog are asked to produce a final result that is palatable and engaging to a public audience, from writing style to multimedia elements.
Methods
Blogs can be designed on a multitude of models, from a basic platform for class posts and discussion to a presentation-style final product. The public discourse-style blog pushes students toward the latter format, asking them to envision their audience and be aware of its needs, to write in an engaging and jargon-free public style, and to incorporate images, audio, and/or video that grab attention and clarify the topic.
ITS’s WordPress experts can set up your blog or site with an interface that works for you. These experts also provide in-class training workshops to assist students in learning how to post to the blog, how to add multimedia, how to distinguish usage rights when posting others’ online multimedia, and other technical elements of blog management.
Smith’s WordPress sites can be configured to be private to the class, to be open only to the Smith community (those with Smith email accounts), or to be open to the public. As with all public discourse, if more public options are selected, ethical considerations related to exposure to and impact on a broad audience should be discussed (see ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS).
Students should be encouraged to consider how their blog writing will attract public interest. Basic concepts of newsworthiness can help them assess their approach. How does this topic relate to contemporary events and themes? How can the students connect the material to questions and concerns currently in the news? Might pop culture references freshen and enliven the material? Students should also be encouraged to carefully assess audience. Because blogs often focus on specific topics, these platforms can successfully reach and influence niche audiences who are searching for specific information.
The blogger Kate Farrell, who writes the blog Woven about the heroine’s journey, notes that blogs are most successful when designed around a targeted topic and updated at least once a week. However, as shown in the student examples below, a WordPress blog can be designed as a finished, polished public-facing website rather than as ongoing posts, allowing the class to leave an enduring mark of their accumulated expertise on the online landscape.
Examples
Professional
The Oxford University Department of Experimental Psychology maintains a public-facing psychology blog focused on ongoing research and projects with an eye toward public edification. Faculty and graduate students contribute to the blog, making it an excellent example of public-facing scholarly writing. Before starting their own class blog, students might be asked to compare different articles from a blog like this one to determine which authors are most successful in their aims.
To find example blogs in your discipline, simply type your desired field followed by “blogs” into Google: e.g. “literature blogs” or “mathematics blogs.”
Besides WordPress, several online blogging platforms allow anyone to sign up and post material on a public, free subscription, or paid subscription basis.
- Medium allows users to create a blog and connect to an ecosystem of other bloggers, as well as take advantage of the platform’s findability tools that elevate and feature popular posts. Environmental Science and Policy faculty member Alex Barron’s Medium posts about climate change (https://medium.com/@abarron) are an example of public blogging on an academic subject.
- Substack is an increasingly popular blogging platform where writers from a broad range of backgrounds and foci present writing to the public. While much of Substack is by subscription, a substantial amount of the content is free to read. Alongside Kate Farrell’s Woven mentioned above, a good example of a Substack blog is Volts by David Roberts, also focused on climate change. (On Substack blogs, choose options variously listed as “bypass subscription” or “just gimme that content” to bypass the subscription screen).
Student
Of Note, maintained by the Jacobson Center, collects public-facing class projects at Smith College, many of which are constructed on the WordPress blog model. A few examples follow. Faculty interested in such projects are highly encouraged to peruse the many additional projects featured on Of Note.
- The Plath Conservatory. A WordPress powered website produced by a 2023 anthropology course taught by Colin Hoag. Student essays each examine one plant species that features in Plath’s work, accounting for its ecology, geography, and taxonomy; the symbolic work it does in Plath’s writing; and the historical context in which Plath came to know it. The site’s gorgeous front page shows the power of carefully targeted, though simple, visual imagery in producing an attractive public result.
- My Music: Writing Musical Lives. Students in FYS 100, taught by Margaret Sarkissian, created a capstone oral history project telling the musical life story of a chosen individual, usually a parent, grandparent, or equivalent. The students gathered their data through one-on-one interviews and then created a narrative by weaving their interlocutor’s words together with their own interpretations. Accessible only via Smith credentials.
- The Art of the Steal. Students in ENG 118, taught by Jonathan Ruseski, explored the concept of remixing as a necessary tool for cultural transformation, creating digital multimedia projects and writing academic essays on the topic.
- The Coltrane Elegies. Rick Millington’s 2018 class ENG 199: Methods of Literary Study, as a final project, constructed a WordPress website “dedicated to interpretation and analysis of the Coltrane Elegies, a series of poems by African-American poets inspired by the life and music of jazz saxophonist, John Coltrane….Our analyses focus on figurative language, composition, format, and literary devices, as well as historical and cultural references, such as religion, civil rights, free jazz, and the Black Arts Movement.” The projects, done in groups, are written reports coupled with multimedia such as photographs, video excerpts of Coltrane performances, and videos of jazz-inspired spoken-word performances of the elegies by their authors. (Accessible only via Smith credentials. If you get a ‘Page Not Found’ error, choose the “Welcome” link at the top of the page.)
Professionally-published student blog posts
Marcela Rodrigues Guimaraes ‘20J in the Ms. magazine blog
Carrie Baker and Emily Bellanca, “The Racist Roots of Rape Culture”
Learning Goals
- Regular opportunity for students to engage with class readings and share their thoughts with each other, enhancing class discussions.
- Option to engage with multimedia presentation of information.
- Platform for discussion of online audiences.
- Public discourse opportunity to share knowledge with others beyond the classroom.
Multimedia Expansion
A DIGITAL COURSE provides a model for a more extensive integration of blogging practice into a course. Text-first broadcasts (view module here), or Instagram (view module here) can serve to encapsulate and bring attention to a public class blog or blog entry.
