Using scholarly blogging as an assessment tool, Dr Isabel Fischer encourages students to tailor their writing to specific audiences. Dr Fischer uses blogging as part of a two-part assessment in which students are tasked with writing a public-facing blog and internal board papers on the same topic. This encourages students to think about how to communicate to different audiences. For the blogging assessment, students are tasked with writing a 2,000 word blog on the relevance of academic literature to a specific area of digital marketing with a focus on a particular technology.

Dr Fischer uses scholarly blogging rather than the essay format, because this helps students think about strengthening their online profile as well as how to communicate externally. In addition to improving employability, the blogging assignment is also a form of authentic assessment because it prepares students for challenges they might face in the workplace and equips them with the necessary skills to tackle these challenges. Additionally, giving students less structure and greater freedom in their assessments encourages ‘post-course consciousness’.