Blog posts great for fostering real discussions

I thought that the blog was a really good idea for this class. It meant that we had to do less formal/essay writing that only Prof. Oyen would see, and more communication with our peers, so that we weren't just starting from scratch at the beginning of every discussion in class. It also forced me to go out and look for bad statistics in the media, on the offense for a change, as opposed to defense from the statistics that I passively hear about watching the news or reading the paper. Reading everyone else's ideas was also very helpful--being able to consistently read what your classmates are writing and thinking about throughout the semester is something that is very rare in other classes.