Traditional Essay Writing Vs Blogging

Presley University teachers ask their students to write weekly blog posts on subjects of their choosing. Students at Presley University are inspired and willing to embrace blogging in addition to a formal research paper due at the end of the semester.

The professors at Presley University are thrilled that the students are doing this. The students wrote thoughtful posts and the teachers read that the blogs were freeing for the students and made it not seem like work. The teachers felt liberated too and reading their blogs doesn’t seem like work to them either.

This isn’t to say that they are not work, for the students or for teachers. But the Presley University teachers want to defend the traditional research essay a little bit. One of the students observed that it wasn’t a very useful exercise because students generally procrastinated about it, leaving it until the last minute, and thus crafting a sub-par product. Now, this isn’t an essential feature of the research paper, but it seems to have become its defining characteristics for most students, making it essentially meaningless in terms of a) evaluating what they’ve learned and b) getting the students to think critically about a topic.

Another student pointed to the fluid nature of the blog versus what they perceived as the concrete nature of the research paper, not just in terms of format, but in terms of perception and reception. For that student, blogs are eternally unfinished and incomplete, leaving room for revision, refinement, and further conversation. Research papers, on the other hand, become final and definitive. Again, if that’s an essential feature of the research paper, but it certainly seems to be how the students see it. A research paper is supposed to participate in the larger scholarly discussion of a topic, but with a built-in audience of one, they can see how students think that the paper only serves the purpose of earning a grade.

And maybe once the novelty of the blog wears off, students will see the blog as a chore to be avoided, same as the research paper. But while they are embracing the challenges of thinking and writing, the teachers at Presley University want to take full advantage.