Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-26-2016

Abstract

International relations professors have sought to incorporate current events into their curriculum through various mechanisms. A traditional way to incorporate the news into the classroom is to have students either subscribe and read a particular newspaper, or watch the nightly news, and hold them responsible for that information. However, with the growing body of professional political science blogs available to the general public, we now have access to immediate current event updates framed through the lens of political science. This manuscript tests to see if having students regularly read professional political science blogs increases student achievement on multiple choice exams when compared to students that were not following blogs in introductory to international relations courses. While controlling for other factors, the regression models demonstrate a 5% increase in performance on later exams by blog-consuming students over those who were not required to read blog posts. These results indicate that, in addition to other factors, there are pedagogical reasons to encourage (rather than prohibit) political science scholars from blogging.

Comments

Date provided is the online early release publication date.

Copyright Statement

This is an author-produced, peer-reviewed version of this article. The final, definitive version of this document can be found online at Journal of Political Science Education, published by Routledge. Copyright restrictions may apply. doi: 10.1080/15512169.2015.1071264

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