Blogging for Professional Purposes: A Curricular and Pedagogical Approach

Technical writing curricula and pedagogy have traditionally emphasized blogging's practical and supplemental role in technical writing contexts. In contrast to such disciplinary conceptions, this paper examines how blogging offers technical writing curricula and pedagogy a more advantageous rhetorical and social genre of workplace writing. Following social media's influence on industry writing conventions and contexts, this paper first describes how blogging emphasizes the social and rhetorical purposes of technical writing. It then outlines and describes a curricular implementation and pedagogical example of a professional blogging course at a regional American university. The paper concludes by analyzing best practices for teaching professional blogging skills and suggesting areas for future curricular research and practice.