Science blogging as a teaching tool

I’m teaching a seminar course in Behavioral Ecology for undergrads this semester – my first course at Harvey Mudd. Inspired by my SciFund science communication and outreach training class, I decided that one of my goals for the course should be to get students started in communicating about science through social media. Over the summer, I had my research students blog about their research project, and they seemed to have a lot of fun doing it and we got a great response (around 1,500 pageviews)! So, as a kind of follow-up to that, I decided to have each of the students in my class write a blog post about a recent research article in behavioral ecology. They’re responsible for finding the article, reading it, and writing about the research and in particular why it is interesting. So, over the next couple of months, you’ll see a series of posts here, guest authored by my students, featuring awesome new research they found in behavioral ecology.

I am including the assignment here. You’ll see that another part of the experiment is using a Zotero group library to share both journal articles and news or blog posts with one another. Profs & teachers, if all this sounds like fun, feel free to adopt and modify as you see fit! I would love to hear from you if you already do something like this, or if you decide to try it. I would also love to hear any suggestions you have for improvement.

Science blogging assignment

In this assignment, you’ll be writing a guest blog post about recent research in behavioral ecology. There are five steps to the assignment. The first step—finding examples of blog posts to inspire you—you will all do at the same time. The rest of the steps you’ll do at different times: each person will sign up to author a guest blog post in a different week.

Step 1: Find and share an example of a blog post about a recent behavioral ecology article. (Due by noon on Wed, Sept 10)

Check out some blogs about behavioral ecology research, for inspiration. To find them, you can always use Google (of course!) but it is also useful to look at blog collections like Scientific American Blog Network or SciLogs, or aggregators like Research Blogging. You could try searching for “behavioral ecology” or “behavior” and “ecology” (beware that the British spelling of behavior is behaviour). Better yet, search for a subtopic, such as one of the categories we’ll discuss in the course (see the schedule).

In particular, try to find some examples of blog posts that are describing new research (i.e. published this year). Put one such example in the “New and interesting research” folder on Zotero. You should add the blog post itself as an entry (use item type “Blog Post”), and also find and add the related paper(s) it discusses. Attach a note with your name, so I know who contributed each item. You can then link the two items easily, by adding one as a related item: click on the “Related” tab for one of the items, then add the other. Note that this automatically links both items to each other.

Step 2: Find and share a new research article that you want to write about. (Due by noon the Friday before the week you sign up for)

This article should have appeared in a scientific journal within the past year, and be about behavioral ecology. It should not be something we have read in class. Some ways to find new research in the field:

a.    Browse field-specific journals like Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology or Behavioral Ecology. Any research article you find in these journals will be appropriate – but be sure that you can make a good argument that it is interesting to a fairly broad audience.

b.    Browse broader, higher-impact journals like The American Naturalist, Animal Behavior, and Ecology. Note that American Naturalist also blogs about forthcoming papers coming out. In these journals, you will have to identify which articles are relevant to behavioral ecology, but they are written to appeal to a somewhat broader audience. Still, you need to be able to make the argument that they are broadly interesting.

c.     Browse top-tier, very high impact journals like Nature and Science. These journals only rarely feature articles on behavioral ecology; however they will sometimes highlight relevant articles that have been published recently in other journals (e.g. in Nature, see “Research Highlights”, or in Science, see “Editor’s Choice”). These highlights will give you a clue that at least these editors thought the research was broadly interesting, and why.

d.    Follow scientists and science journalists on Twitter. If you are already active on twitter, you can look at the people I follow to get ideas (@MatinaDonaldson) – and follow me, as well, if you like. But if you’re not already signed up, you don’t need to do so just for this course.

e.    Read science news in popular newspapers and magazines, like NYT Science or Scientific American. This may require a little more effort to actually find the actual research article, because they generally don’t include citations.

Once you’ve found an article you’re interested in, put it in the “New and Interesting Research” folder in our Zotero group. Attach a note with your name and a sentence (and link, if appropriate) describing how you found the article. Send me an email to let me know you’ve done this, so I can make sure the article is a good fit.

Step 3: Write a draft of your blog post (Due by noon on Monday in the week you sign up for).

Write your post for a fairly general audience—educated people that are interested in science, but not necessarily specialists in any particular area of science. Think of your peers, perhaps some of your family or friends from high school. Try to communicate in clear, engaging language (and pictures) exactly why the research is interesting. Don’t focus so much on what was done exactly, but why we should care. You can draw on the whole set of blog posts contributed by everyone in step 1 as inspiration. Some ground rules:

• Come up with a catchy, intriguing title
• Your post should be between 500-1000 words
• Your post should include at least one image, preferably more
• You should have permission to use that image, and give credit as appropriate (Flickr and Wikimedia Commons include licensing information for their images – look for Creative Commons)
• If possible, your post should also include a link to a video (youtube)
• Be sure to include the complete reference for the article you’re writing about, and any others you mention
• Avoid using jargon
• Try to write in a casual, distinctive “voice” which emphasizes your opinion, and feel free to make jokes (if that’s your style) 

Email me your draft blog post as a Word document by noon on the Monday of the week it’s due. I’ll read it and make suggestions for improvement.

Step 4: Post your revised blog post (Due by noon on Wednesday in the week you sign up for).

I will invite you to be a guest author on my blog. Please let me know what email address you would like me to use for this. If it is your gmail account and you use Google Plus, you can choose to post as that person; however, you can also choose to post under a pseudonym using a limited blogger profile, not linked to your Google Plus account.

Once you’ve revised your blog post, you should create a new post on my blog (“HMC Bee Lab” – follow links in the invitation email). You should be able to copy and paste from Word while retaining all your links, images and so on. Be sure to preview the results before you publish it.

Once you’ve posted it, I encourage you to share it on facebook, twitter, Google Plus, and/or any other social media sites you use.

Step 5: Comment on your classmates’ posts, and respond to comments on your own post (every week, as new posts appear)

Blogging is a great way to connect with other scientists in completely different places. To create a conversation, I would like you to read and comment on at least four of your classmates’ blog posts, in the week that they come out. This should be fun and easy. You might ask a question about some aspect of the research that interests you, or point out some related media you saw (and what you think about it), or offer an opinion about why the research is interesting or relevant—these are just suggestions. Feel free to be critical of the research, but not negative—be polite! Authors, you should respond to every comment you get (this will be easier to keep track of if you sign up for email alerts).