Pushing the Message: Using Blogs to Advocate and Engage

What good is all the knowledge in the world, if no one understands or knows about it? How can we use blogs to build bridges to the communities where academic and professional expertise are put into practice? Instead of papers or presentations that showcase mastery within the classroom, a series of writing assignments shared broadly through individual blogs can foster student engagement by encouraging synthesis of classroom content with personal experience in a creative platform. In addition, students learn the basics of public-facing outreach for their professional lives. Using blog posts, students can make expertise accessible to the community by engaging the public with evidence-based and understandable information.