Assignment Details & Rubric (for students)

by Professor Andrea White

Your short description can go here. To make it bold but smaller like this one, select it, then select "Minor heading" from the drop-down menu at the top. My name above is a "Subheading."

You will turn two of your assignments into blog posts that will be shared with the class and possibly be made public. The Neuroscience Department at Kenyon places emphasis on writing science for lay audiences. This assignment provides a mechanism to do this. The class blog should be a showcase of the best work of the class and be accessible to those who have an interest in the sciences of the brain and development, and yet not have taken the class.

Posts will:

• have a title, author and description at the top 
1. Up where it says Post in orange, put your title. Start the title with Position Paper: (if it is your position paper). If it is your Annotated Bibliography, just put a descriptive title.
2. The first line should be the author, "by Student Name, major or Kenyon College, class year". Make your name a subheading, as I have done above.
3. Put a short description/abstract & why you chose this topic at the top. Try to keep this under 50 words. It should say that your blog post is an annotated bibliography of (topic) or a position paper (state position briefly). This will help contextualize your post. Make the short description bolder, like I have done above.
• be at least 750 words. Maximum should be ~1,500, but you may go over 
• include at least 3 hyperlinks to relevant pages or articles. These should be embedded in your text.
• include a reference list at the end, with each reference hyperlinked to the original article.
• have at least 2 illustrative pictures or figures, with the source indicated. At least one picture should be of a brain structure or process that you are talking about.
• have appropriate labels (aka tags). To add a label while you are in editing mode, look to the upper right under Post settings. Existing labels can be selected, or you can create new ones. You should have at least 4 labels, as follows: 
1. 1 assignment label: Annotated Bibliography or Position Paper 
2. at least 1 topic label. These should be the primary topic of your paper, a major theory that you use, psychological or neuroscience concept(s) that you give a lot of attention to.
3. 1 or more brain structure labels. These are brain structures that you cite in your writing that exhibit developmental change during adolescence, as evidenced by the science you cite. 
• be in Helvetica or Trebuchet font, normal font size 
• while you are editing your blog post, select COMPOSE (upper left), then 
• SELECT ALL, then 
• Select Helvetica or Trebuchet from the pull-down menu under font (the fancy F at the top) 
• Select Normal from the pull-down menu under text size (the double-T next to the fancy F) 
• be legible. After you publish your post, check to be sure it is legible. Correct formatting mistakes. Make it pretty.