DWRL Lesson Plans - Pathos

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Writing Process

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

This class activity came out of several grading sessions, wherein I realized my students were having a hard time subordinating an author's points during a summary. They seemed to give each of the author's statements equal weight, without differentiating between which ideas were primary and which were more supporting details. So while this activity is meant to reinforce the skills of summary and syntehsis, it's foremost an thought-exercise, which I hoped would help them give themselves permission to fairly emphasize certain statements over others.

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

This activity will go more smoothly if each student can efficiently take notes. I allow them to take digital notes on a laptop or tablet, but this isn't strictly necessary. The project does require that the instructor have a media console and projector.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

Ask students to sit in groups of three. These groups will be informal, and they shouldn't get too hung up on them. Most of their work will be individual, but asking them to share with a tiny group before discussing with the entire class can make them feel more confident.

Screen a clip from a popular comedian's standup special. I chose Louis CK, Aziz Ansari, and Bill Burr, to get a range of comedic styles. Each clip should last no more than 3-4 minutes, although the length will of course be based on the amount of time devoted to a single topic within the special. I also chose clips that I felt addressed primary controversies circulating in the news, and ones I felt my students would probably be familiar with.

Ask students to take notes on the clip and to identify the comedian's main point. Then ask them to fill in the supporting details.

Students should share their breakdown of the clip with their miniature group.

Once they have had a chance to discuss (this should only take two minutes or so), get a class consensus about what the comedian is "really" talking about, and what lines are there for effect or support. This is an opportunity to point out which points may seem like they're geting a lot of focus but are actually in the clip for a laugh or for emphasis.

Students should be able to summarize the clip in one statement. Encourage them to write an informal thesis as a class. For example, "In this bit, Aziz Ansari pokes fun at gender conventions by highlighting the arbitrariness of marriage rituals." This statement bridges a summary understanding of the text and an introduction to basic analysis. The extent to which the dicussion veers toward how the comedian's performance and language are affecting the humor is flexible; depending on how far the instructor would like to introduce or foreshadow Unit 2, this activity could stick to summary, or it could invite students to begin considering ethos, logos, pathos, and so on.

Repeat the exercise two or three times, time permitting, and debrief with students. They should feel more confident identifying primary and secondary points, especially with such a flexible genre.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

I recommend converting the YouTube videos to an MP4 file that can be embedded in a Prezi or PowerPoint. This avoids the mid-class confusion of watching ads, finding the right clips, and so on.

Instructions For Students:

1. Watch the following comedy clip.

2. Take notes on what is being said.

3. When the clip is finished, re-read your notes and organize the bit based on its primary argument and its supporting subpoints.

4. Discuss with your group: compare your own breakdown of the primary and secondary claims with the others. Be prepared to report your organization to the class.

Repeat with three different clips, time allowing.

Homework:

1. Find your own clip.

2. Take notes on the content and revise your notes into some kind of outline that separates the main ideas from the subpoints.

3. Write up a short paragraph summarizing and synthesizing the comedian's argument.

4. Post both the paragraph and a link to the clip on the Canvas discussion board.

Evaluation Suggestions:

I ask students to share their choice/phrasing of the comedian's main argument and subpoints with the class. This is an informal evaluation, but it allows me to both determine their comfort with pulling out the major threads of an argument and to encourage them to make those distinctions between which ideas are emphasized and which are supplemental.

I also ask students to do one more summary/synthesis on a Canvas discussion board. They find their own set of clips, summarize them and synthesize their relationship to one another, and post their writing with the clip link on Canvas. I grade it for completion, but it can be a good, efficient way to guage whether students can differentiate between main ideas and subpoints.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

My PowerPoint didn't actually work, but I did have the separate downloaded clips, so it went relatively smoothly. Despite the technical glitch, I got a lot of positive feedback on this assignment. I think my students liked the project simply for content--it made a nice vacation from reading arguments about marijuana legalization--but they did also seemed to really enjoy applying their summary skills to less-conventional media. After we discussed the major/minor points, they enjoyed very briefly discussing how the rhetorical turns worked, which was what made me think this assignment worked well as a pseudo-bridge between Unit 1 (research/summary) and Unit 2 (analysis).

Course Type:

Course Description:

Rhetoric 306 is a course designed to introduce students to the fundamentals of research and argumentation. They are asked to research a controversy, summarize and analyze the arguments of the major stakeholders in that controversy, and then develop their own arguments.

Tags:

Performance

Bridging Summary and Analysis with Standup Clips

Plourde — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 18:51:15 +0000

Author:

Aubrey Plourde

Image Credit:

Image Credit: Cory Schmitz

Brief Assignment Overview:

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Writing Process

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

Ask students to take notes on the clip and to identify the comedian's main point. Then ask them to fill in the supporting details.

Students should share their breakdown of the clip with their miniature group.

Repeat the exercise two or three times, time permitting, and debrief with students. They should feel more confident identifying primary and secondary points, especially with such a flexible genre.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

I recommend converting the YouTube videos to an MP4 file that can be embedded in a Prezi or PowerPoint. This avoids the mid-class confusion of watching ads, finding the right clips, and so on.

Instructions For Students:

1. Watch the following comedy clip.

2. Take notes on what is being said.

3. When the clip is finished, re-read your notes and organize the bit based on its primary argument and its supporting subpoints.

4. Discuss with your group: compare your own breakdown of the primary and secondary claims with the others. Be prepared to report your organization to the class.

Repeat with three different clips, time allowing.

Homework:

1. Find your own clip.

2. Take notes on the content and revise your notes into some kind of outline that separates the main ideas from the subpoints.

3. Write up a short paragraph summarizing and synthesizing the comedian's argument.

4. Post both the paragraph and a link to the clip on the Canvas discussion board.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Course Type:

Course Description:

Tags:

Performance

Introducing Ideology with HSBC Advertisements

Cate Blouke — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 02:16:11 +0000

Author:

Cate Blouke

Image Credit:

HSBC advertisement

Brief Assignment Overview:

This in-class activity uses the popular HSBC ad campaign (a tryptich of the same image with different value labels) to introduce students to visual rhetoric and ideology. After discussing the ads, students create their own version.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

No Classroom Technology Required

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Visualization

Media Requirements:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

A computer-enabled classroom will allow for the full activity, in which students create their own version of the ad campaign. This could easily be adapted to an activity without technology.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

First Day/Week

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

A relatively straightforward exercise, this in-class activity serves as a fruitful introduction to talk about commonplaces, ideology, and visual rhetoric. The ads themselves address the issue of values through their captions, such as "The more you look at the world the more you realize that people value the same things but in different ways."

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

If adapting for use wihtout technology, you might make up some handouts with three unlabeled images and ask students to come up with labels. Similarly, if you don't want to take up the full class period, you could pre-select images to provide students.

Instructions For Students:

As your reading from Picturing Texts discussed, we learn how to se the world in particular ways. As the authors argue, "we construct our realities as we learn to see."

While this has certainly been a theme throughout the course, today's exercise addresses how the way that we see/read texts tends to reflect our own values or ideology. Ho we interpret an image can sometimes say more about us than the image itself.

The international banking firm, HSBC, has an ad campaign that reflects this multi-faceted approach to people and reality.

The triptych above labels the same image with three very different value judgments, illustrating quite explicitly how the same object can retain radically different meanings depending on the viewer.

One of the goals of this course (and an essential element of visual analysis) is for you to learn to consider multiple readings of the same image. As such, and as a handy segue into our unit on advertising, for today's exercise you'll create your own version of the HSBC ads.

With a partner (or two), find an image/object that you can label with at least three different meanings - being careful to use an image that is licensed for adaptive reuse. You can find these images by either using the google advanced image search functions or the filters in a Flickr search (both of which I will demonstrate in class). We'll be talking more about Fair Use and Creative Commons as we move into our final unit, so this is good practice to get you started.

After finding an appropriate image, using either photoshop or an image editing platform of your choice, compile the three images into a tryptich and label them with your different value readings (just as in the HSBC ads).

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

My students had a great time with this exercise and came up with some nice examples. During the discussion, we also talked about design and parallellism.

Course Type:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Course Description:

In this course we will explore the ways in which images can be read, analyzed, constructed, and manipulated. We will interrogate how images inform our reading of historical and political events, of personal identity, of public and private spaces. We will think through issues of self-presentation: how our stylistic choices convey messages to the world around us, and how we interpret the choices of others. We will look at the spaces we frequent and consider the rhetorical effects of everything from the architecture to the furniture to lighting. In short, we will investigate how the visual (non-linguistic, non-textual) world conveys its messages.

Tags:

Facilitating Multimedia Composition

RMazique — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 06:33:14 +0000

Author:

Rachel Mazique

Image Credit:

Rachel Mazique's "Disability in Pop Culture" Class YouTube Channel

Brief Assignment Overview:

This lesson helped students begin composing their final rhetoric assignment: a Multimedia Argument Project (MAP). I encouraged students to work with each other during the planning process and to collaborate with one another as they developed their digital literacy skills.

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

Multiple Class Periods

Course Unit

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

In addition to the goals above, students were to:

-become familiar with the range of digital resources available for multimedia composition projects

-practice composing in multiple modes (visual, aural, alphanumeric)

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

--Please Note: all of the links below were organized onto appropriately titled pages in a folder titled "Final Project Help" on our class wiki--

1. samples of student-authored multimedia projects:

either from The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP) or past student work from my class YouTube channel,

2. KeepVid website (best run on Safari),

3. a Google Doc for class brainstorming on “Beginning the Final Project,” (stored on a class PBworks wiki page)

4. Internet Archives,

5. Creative Commons for songs,

6. Disability song list,

7. Animoto website, instructions for Animoto video production, More Animoto Help,

(beneficial, though not required):

8. Digital Writing and Research Lab (DWRL) rental equipment,

9. our class PBworks wiki Homework page

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Dr. Rodrigue's Digital Writing Resource Page

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Adapted from Justin Hodgson’s Multimedia Research-Argument Creation

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Multimodal Argument Project Prompt:

Using your prior knowledge, that of your peers’, and the skills you will gain during this unit, you will create a multimodal researched-based argumentative "document." These multimodal arguments should demonstrate a significant research effort as well as showcase your abilities to write, think, and express yourselves via the integration of multiple media. This research will include the time you spend with “how-to” guides/tutorials with the aim of improving your digital literacy skills. But, unlike the common approach to this type of "writing," where students/researchers write a traditional paper and then try to remediate that into multimedia forms, these projects will be "born digital." Composing digitally requires you to think, draft, design, and revise in multimedia, not engage in a text-to-multimedia practice.

The multimodal project is fairly open, but its breadth is necessary as each project will be different and take a different shape depending on the intent, skills, and risk-taking strategies of each student-author. I am open to your creative input and ideas!

Your controversy or the pop culture source that you’ve analyzed should shape your creations and the varying rhetorical strategies that you employ. For example, if you’ve analyzed a cartoon or comic in Paper 2.1, you may want to create your own. If you analyzed a documentary, consider creating your own documentary. We will more fully discuss the flexibility of this project in-class, both on the day this project is assigned and throughout the unit, to ensure that you have a solid grasp of how to navigate these guidelines.

That said, here are some concrete guidelines.

Minimum Requirements:

Must take a stance with relation to your controversy and attempt to persuade readers/viewers;

Must clearly be framed as an argument of conjecture, definition, ethics, value, or policy

Must engage your analyses of representations in pop culture by either supporting certain representations, subverting stereotypical representations and/or transforming an argument made in pop culture.
Must integrate and/or utilize multiple media (both the visual and alphanumeric modes are required) for rhetorical purpose (audio is encouraged, but optional—depending on your medium);

The video is not the only medium open to you; you can also compose a comic, be creative and innovative with PowerPoint, create a website, a video game, etc.
Feel free to run an original project idea by me for approval.

Must rebut/refute at least one counterargument/position with the presentation or production of counter-images, words, and/or voices.
Must include at least 5 quality sources and "Works Cited" details (in MLA format) within the MAP--not in a separate document:

At least 2 must come from scholarly resources (you should use the research you gathered for your Annotated Bibliography; you may also use the scholarly class readings)
If your project is nearing the maximum length, you may go over the limit (if you need more time/space to add in the Works Cited and make it readable). Note, this exception to the length requirement applies only for the Works Cited. If you want to discuss another exception, please see me. See the length requirement below.

Length requirement:

Create a 2-3 minute video if you’re working alone.

If you’re working with a partner or two, the video's length requirement increases based on the number of people involved: 4-6 minutes, or 6-9 minutes, respectively.
Group size max: 3 people
If you’re not composing a video, the length requirement still applies with relation to an in-class final presentation of your project. So, if you’re using PowerPoint, it should run 2-3 minutes long in a presentation.
If you’re making a comic strip, the strip should be about 2 pages long--or however long you need to make your argument and be able to present it to the class in 2-3 minutes.

Accessibility requirement:

Make your project accessible to a deaf audience (captions/a transcript)

I can work with you on captioning your video in the Open Lab (PAR 102) on Wednesdays from 5pm-8pm.
I can also point you to some guidelines I created and work with you during class.
Fyi: if your submission to TheJUMP is accepted for publication, you will also need to make your project accessible to a blind audience (descriptions of visual features). If you did this work in advance of publication in TheJUMP, I would consider this evidence of going above and beyond in the argumentation/digital literacy course strands.

For a variety of digital resources, see the link below:

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Plan for at least five weeks of in-class time to work on this multimedia argument project. Students need in-class time to familiarize themselves with the various technologies available to them and to learn how to compose in a digital medium besides the alphanumeric programs they are used to composing in (i.e. Microsoft Word).

If feasible within your department, sign up for at least a "plus" account with Animoto. Here in the Digital Writing and Research Lab (DWRL), instructors are fortunate that the lab will renew or subscribe to digital services like Animoto--as long as they serve a pedagogical function. I communicated with the supervisor in the DWRL, who renewed our plus account so students could create a video up to nine minutes long, which was what I required if a group had three students working together.

Below are the major steps I used for this day's lesson plan on "Facilitating Multimedia Composition":

Review vocabulary important to beginning students' composing process: topic, controversy, position and stakeholder. Ask students: what do these terms mean? What is the difference between a topic and a controversy? Explain how students should organize their arguments.
Have students review what their classmates are doing (on a Google Doc students filled in at the start of today's class: “Beginning the Final Project”) and consider who they may want to collaborate with in a co-authorship of this final project.
Introduce students to KeepVid as a way to export videos from YouTube.
Discuss Copyright laws.
Introduce the Internet Archives and Creative Commons.
Point students to “Disability Songs” list.
Have students use the rest of class time to talk over ideas with classmates they want to work with, review samples of student-authored multimedia projects on TheJUMP/previous work from our class YouTube channel, plan their final project with a rough outline, and look for images, videos and/or songs they may want to use.
Remind students to not only look for images, videos and songs that they agree with or those that could support their argument but also images, videos, and/or songs that they disagree with and will refute/rebut in their final project.
Review the definitions of refutations and rebuttals.
Point students to instructions for Animoto (on the wiki) but also mention that I can help students with this program.

Instructions For Students:

As a starting point to today's class, I had students go to the “in-class activities” folder on our class PBworks wiki.

From there, they went to the Google Doc folder and clicked on the “Beginning the Final Project” page.

Here's what they needed to write out as a starting point to the composing process. (The page also functioned as a class resource that would allow students to determine who they might want to co-author a project with.)

Please write:

1. Your topic;

2. Your controversy;

3. The pop culture source you will remediate

4. At least three positions that stakeholders take with regards to your controversy

5. The position that you saw your pop culture source taking

6. The position that you yourself take. (I explained that for this final unit, students were invited to share their viewpoint and to tell us where they stood with regards to their controversy.)

7. Possible multimedia project ideas you are considering (website, comic, documentary, photoessay, stop motion animation, etc).

Evaluation Suggestions:

For information on how I assessed students' final projects, please see my blog post on the topic: "Multimodal Writing: How do we Assess New Media?" at the Digital Writing and Research Lab's Blogging Pedagogy website

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students had the choice to author a project alone or to work in groups of two or three. The number of students involved in a project affected the length requirement. Longer projects were expected of group-authored multimedia arguments.

Most students felt that their controversy was unique and would not merge well with fellow classmates' controversies or topics. (These final projects were the result of a semester-long process researching a single controversy). Those who did choose to co-author a project chose to work with only one partner rather than two (for logistical reasons apparently). One group started with three members, but one member eventually decided she wanted to work on her own due to creative differences. She had a specific argument she knew she wanted to pursue.

Students who were interested in co-authoring a project needed extra guidance from me on how to coherently weave together an argument on two distinct controversies. With these students, I encouraged the student groups to start from a broader standpoint--to work from our class topic "Disability in Pop Culture"--and to use research from their specific controversies to determine an argument they wanted to make about their particular topics within our class's "umbrella."

Several students were anxious about multimedia composition.

Several others were excited about this change of pace.

In the end, through in-class guidance and collaboration amongst peers, students who were anxious about composing in iMovie for the first time (for example) were eventually proud of their final product and the new digital literacy skills they gained throughout this composition process. Several students creatively went above and beyond the requirements to create a project they would be glad to publish in a public forum such as our class YouTube channel.

One student even composed an entirely original music video; another student drew and created an original stop-motion animated video; several others drew their own comics (either by hand on paper, or online with digital drawing tools/comic software).

Additional Resources:

Recommendations from Justin Hodgson:

Bump Halbritter's recent book Mics, Cameras, and Symbolic Action: Audio-Visual Rhetoric for Writing Teachers talks about audio and video work,

Sean Morey recently had his textbook The New Media Writer come out with Fountainhead Press,

and Kristin Arola, Jennifer Shepard, and Cheryl Ball recently published their Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects.

According to Professor Hodgson, those three texts provide a nice (but not comprehensive) avenue into conversations about multimedia composition and some particular strategies for writing (with) media.

Beyond that, he recommends that instructors peruse the Computers and Composition (and Computers and Composition Online) journals for works that might resonate with your class's particular focus.

And, as always, the Blogging Pedagogy site and TheJUMP are useful resources!

Course Type:

Course Description:

In this course, students focus on analyzing the relationship between pop culture and rhetoric. Their analyses examine public disagreements about various issues such as: How do popular (mis)representations of "the supercrip" convince us to make political decisions regarding accessibility, advocacy, education, and/or social policy? How can we evaluate arguments that not only depict (dis)abled people as "heroic" but also those that portray the converse: the "grotesque unfortunate" deserving of "pity" and "help"? How do these arguments address questions of basic human rights, needs, drives and "eugenics rhetoric"? Will children (and adults) make political decisions based on recurrent thematic representations of "disability" in pop culture, and, is that a good or bad influence?

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Ethos and Online Dating 2.0 - Incorporating Visuals

Cate Blouke — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 15:54:10 +0000

Author:

Cate Blouke

Image Credit:

Image from The Dating Game scene in Mallrats. Found on The Baltimore Chop website.

Brief Assignment Overview:

A remix of a previous lesson plan, this exercise asks students to analyze the ethos of an online dating profile and then pair it with an appropriate image - drawing on the relationship between written and visual rhetoric.

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Social Media

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

This works as a great introduction to the concepts of ethos, audience, and/or visual rhetoric.

Media Requirements:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

In theory, you could do this assignment without classroom technology, though an internet connection and projector would be ideal.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

#A - twocentsworth. "Studious." Flickr.com. 3 June 2008.

Full Assignment Description:

This is an update on a previous lesson plan: Teaching Ethos Using Online Dating Profiles, which relies strictly on textual analysis. As I explain in that plan, "Perhaps more so than any other piece of writing, and even more so than my students' facebook pages, the self-summaries presented in online dating profiles are fundamentally arguments of ethos. Regardless of specific rhetorical aim (a casual hook up, a future spouse, or something in between), at heart, each of these texts is saying to readers, 'this is who I am, accept me.' So they seemed like a great source text to get my students really thinking about how and why they evaluate people: what sort of snap judgements they make, how they read into things without even realizing it."

In this version (re-designed for my Introduction to Visual Rhetoric course this semester), I ask students to draw connections between written ethos/self-presentation and pieces of visual rhetoric. I offer them a written profile alongside a series of pictures of eligible "bachelors" to choose from. They then had to make the case for why they thought a particular image fit the written profile.

For this specific class, we had just begun a unit on style, and my students had been reading excerpts from Barry Brummett's A Rhetoric of Style and Stuart Ewan's All Consuming Images. Our discussion, therefore, focused a lot on the stylistic choices in the images and how those might be read as reflections of particular values indicated in the written profile. While those readings and that framework aren't necessary for this exercise, they did help to get my students grounded in the way they read people's visual style. Without this kind of foregrounding, you may end up having to do a fair bit of extra wrangling to get students to articulate why they draw the conclusions they do (i.e. how they connect mustaches with driving a Vespa). But that can be a great discussion - forcing them to confront/explain the assumptions they make.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

I spent a fair bit of time compiling a set of "bachelor" photos from creative commons liscenced images that I found on the web, rather than using people's actual OKCupid profile pictures. I'd recommend just using the ones I've put together (see below), though you're welcome to make your own. The idea of using actual images from OKCupid profiles didn't sit well with me, even if they are publicly available. It seems like an invasion of privacy (in a way), or at least a kind of appropriation that I'm not comfortable with. The written profile I excerpted was previously a public page but has since been taken down/made private - which means if you have students do this as a homework assignment or on computers, they can't just google some key phrases to find the actual profile (one of the downfalls of the previous lesson plan).

I tried to compile a diversity of styles that nevertheless might fit with the written profile, as well as some that I thought clearly didn't fit. However, I was surprised by my students' responses. There were multiple votes for five of the seven images - a much wider range than I anticipated.

Instructions For Students:

In our introduction to the concept of style, we also talked about the idea of "ethos" - the character, or sense of authority, that one presents to the world, either through writing (as you may have addressed in previous rhetoric courses) or (for our purposes) through style.

This unit is all about thinking through the assumptions we make about, or (more kindly) ways in which we read, both the styles of others and our own styles. What we think of a particular style or clothing item isn't necessarily the same as how others view it.

There is, perhaps, no clearer instance of an argument based on character (and style) than online dating profiles. Each person's profile essentially makes the argument that "you should date me because of who I am." These arguments are paired with a selection of images, presumably chosen to cast the author in his or her most favorable light. On the free online dating site OkCupid, users combine images of themselves with written self-summaries in order to convince potential matches to give them a chance.

For this exercise, read over the written dating profile below, and then review the potential images. Your task will be to pair the written profile with one of the possible images. We'll assume that all elements of the image were carefully crafted/selected for this particular purpose/venue.

Questions to consider in making your choice: What kind of person does this profile describe? What does he value/care about? Which image do you think best reflects those values or that style?

Write a few sentences explaining your choice. Be sure to offer evidence for your analysis. Why does this image/person seem most fitting to you? What kinds of things about the man's style do you infer from the image? How, specifically, does that connect with the written description? You might also include your rationale for eliminating other potential options.

Keep in mind that you want to think about the "big picture" of this profile. While one or two aspects of the written part might point toward a particular image, is that image wholly congruent with the rest of the profile?

The Written Profile:

I have a yearning to explore different territory. To frolic in a refreshing mist atop the Yellow Mountains of Mainland China. To play with other great musicians. To watch shows in the opera house of Lyon, with an intermission of French kids break dancing outside the hall. To cook my own recipe in a Paul Bocuse culinary. These are things that most of my homies won't touch. Lest we forget, I am an abnormal guy; and I am looking for an extraordinary girl.

I want a girl who can be fun and adventurous. The kind of girl who isn't too afraid to suddenly break out of a three-day isolation and take a road trip across the country on a 1987 Vespa which I am convinced can take at least another hundred thousand miles.

Interestingly, my most passionate relationships involved completely contradictory personalities. Speaking of character--unfortunately, not all of us can be satisfied with pixellated photos and interview format autobiographies. Call me old-school, but coffee and a heated intellectual conversation beats the hell out of a 9 day back and forth email chat marathon. If you want to get to know me, call me. Tell me about yourself. Talk to me about politics. What is really important to you? I never get tired of meeting new and inherently good people.

The Potential Bachelors:

Bachelors.jpg

Image Credits:

#B - Mosborne01. "Ashs-student-playing-guitar." Wikimedia Commons. 1 July 2010.

#C - torbakhopper. "Cool Dude." Wikimedia Commons. 10 Nov 2011.

#D - Chris Hunkeler. "Running with Music." Flickr.com. 5 May 2013.

#E - siuhonglo. "Singapore Flyer." Flickr.com. Aug 27 2011.

#F - connerdowney. "7 - Meditation." Flickr.com. 08 Jan 2009.

#G - sadly, I have lost the citation information for this one. I know it was CC licensed, though. I will post citation if I can find it again.

Evaluation Suggestions:

This was in in-class exercise, so it wasn't evaluated.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

My students really enjoyed the exercise, and I was surprised by the arguments they made for one image over another. It fostered a lively conversation about stereotypes and assumptions (particularly the way they read the image of bachelor #C).

Course Type:

http://nypost.com/2014/02/09/sugar-daddy-website-has-coeds-rationalizing...

Course Description:

RHE 315 - Introduction to Visual Rhetoric

With the rise of new media and network television, Americans are exposed to thousands upon thousands of images on a daily basis. From our facebook streams to our television viewing choices to our personal email accounts, we are bombarded with images: of celebrities, of politicians, of consumer goods, of natural disasters, of… cats. And we must filter through it all in order to make sense of our world.

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Rhetorical Analysis of "Sugar Dating" Ads and Audience(s)

Wiedner — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 19:59:46 +0000

Author:

James B. Wiedner

Image Credit:

Brief Assignment Overview:

Students work on argumentation techniques, rhetorical fallacies, and other concepts via reading a heavily-biased article from the New York Post discussing the relatively new but quickly growing phenomenon known as "sugar dating," which consists of web sites that pair older men (sugar daddies) who are willing to pay money for the company of young girls ("sugar babies"). The amount that any potential sugar daddy can range from several hundred to several thousand dollars.

While sugar dating sites seem to be happy to recruit young girls of all stripes, they are clearly most interested in attracting students, as evidenced in part by the fact that membership fees are waived for any potential sugar baby who registers with a .edu email address. The banner ad above is illustrative of most common underlying technique found on these sites. That is appealing to the fact that the typical undergraduate student is cash-strapped, and that being a sugar baby is an easy way to solve the problem. The titillating subject matter and the fact that half of the classroom are part of the demographic being so narrowly marketed towards caught everyone's attention from the get-go.

After they finish reading the article, displaying and bouncing through one of the sites on a projetor is great in a classroom that is equipped to do so, but it is by no means necessary.

The class is divided into two groups who assemble their respective arguments as to the propriety of selling such a product using the rhetorical appeals employed and the audience to which they are marketing (primary and otherwise); a loosely-moderated class debate/discussion ensues.

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Collaboration

Social Media

Visualization

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Increasing Classroom Participation, Building Rapport Between Students, Building Rapport Between Instructor and Individual Students, Building Rapport Between Instructor and Class as a Whole

Media Requirements:

No Classroom Technology Required

Required Materials:

Nothing other than copies of the article distributed by the instructor at the beginning of class.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

The instructor distributes copies of an article taken from the web site of what is generally regarded as a reputable source for news. The class has no access to the article beforehand. The instructor asks the class if any of them are familiar with “Sugar Dating;” calling on student(s) with raised hands to explain what sugar dating generally refers to. The instructor then elaborates on the definition provided, paraphrasing points that might have been lost in the student’s explanation, adding any aspects of the concept that were not mentioned in the process. (5 minutes)

Students read the article individually. (5-10 minutes) phenomenon

The class then divides into two equally-sized groups, and discuss positive and negative aspects of the concept of sugar dating in general, along with the article’s presentation of the concept. One group is identified as the “pro” group, with the other identified as the “con.” However, the instructor does not articulate a specific question upon which they are taking sides. The two groups each work to flush out and organize what they believe to be their most salient points. (10-15 minutes)

An open discussion in a point/counterpoint format is the conducted, with the instructor keeping the discussion from straying to far afield, while casually interjecting to emphasize and elaborate upon the concepts that are relevant to rhetoric and/or law as they arise during the discussion. It is important that the instructor is as unobtrusive as possible throughout the ensuing discussing, to the extent that the collective “personality” of a particular class will allow. (30 minutes for a class meeting twice a week)

The instructor wraps up the debate and the class by highlighting some of the most important substantive points and the most effective argumentation techniques from each side of the discussion. Students are informed that there is a discussion prompt related to the day’s discussion; each student must submit one original posting, along with at least one response to another student’s original posting before the next class meeting. (5-10 minutes)

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

To prepare for the class, the instructor should spend time analyzing the specific article to be distributed to the class, composing a rough outline of considerations such as (1) the arguments (and counterarguments) most likely to be made by students, (2) the rhetorical concepts the instructor is most interested in covering, (3) questions that the class discussion might not touch upon.

The instructor should also do their due diligence in researching the subject in general. Visiting the actual sugar dating web sites is especially important. Students will have varying degrees of knowledge on the subject. Given the fact that these sites specifically target female college students, there is a strong likelihood that at least a couple of students will be well-versed on the subject; the instructor does not want to be learning about nuances of the sugar dating process, etc. from one of their students.

Instructions For Students:

As indicated above, instructions to be given to students are minimal (intentionally so). They're instructed to take about 10 minutes reading the article being contemporaneously distributed, with particular attention to tone, word choice, authorial bias, context, and visual rhetoric. They are then divided into two groups with opposing viewpoints, and are instructed to construct the most persuasive argument that they can, taking rough notes (to be submitted at the end of class) outlining the same.

They're reminded to consider likely arguments from the other side, and the best way to address/respond to them. Students then partake in a debate wherein the instructor guides them back on track if they are getting off-topic, overly emotional, or missing each other entirely (from a stasis theory standpoint).

At the end of the class, the students are given instructions to make a substanive blog posting responding to an instructor-provided prompt; the will seek to continue aspect(s) of the in-class discussion. Along with one original blog posting, students are instructed to post at least one response to the original posting of a classmate.

There is not any reading students are instructed to do in preparation for the class.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

The article’s author has a clear bias from the title onward, so I ask for a show of hands as to who agrees with the author’s…unflattering…representation of sugar dating and their advertisement and recruitment techniques. To my surprise, about 18 of my 22 students said that they agreed with the author. To keep the group numbers equal, I (somewhat lightheartedly) pointed out that the pinnacle of achievement for any rhetorician is to be able to effectively argue a point with which they wholly disagree. As my class is entitled “Rhetoric of Law,” I pointed out that this skill is of particular importance to attorneys, given that they take an oath to be “zealous advocates” for their clients in court, even if those clients are individuals whom they might find repugnant on a personal level. I then split the class roughly in half, based only upon where they happened to be sitting (or standing) at that moment, and then moving individual students towards one of two camps in order to arrive at numerical parity. I did not give consideration as to what side any particular student chose during our initial show of hands.

This lesson plan is well-suited for developing familiarity between students, increasing student participation, and establishing rapport between the instructor and his students- both individually and as a class. For these reasons, the lesson plan might be particularly useful at the beginning of the semester, or later on if class participation begins lagging.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Tags:

The (Selling) Powers of a Good Cry

lazhu — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 05:31:18 +0000

Author:

Lily Zhu

Image Credit:

A popular meme

Brief Assignment Overview:

Students will look at a series of popular, “sad” advertisements and discuss the ways in which certain commercials have successfully tapped into elements of rhetoric specific to viral videos. Through this, students will expand their understanding of argumentation to include the very relatable perspective of consumerism.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

Assignment Length:

Partial Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Citation

Writing Process

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Audio

Multimedia

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

This assignment acts as a transition point from Unit 1 (summary) to Unit 2 (analysis), ideally introduced the day Paper 1.2 is turned in. Since this activity functions primarily as an introduction to Unit 2, students will be expected to apply Unit 1 concepts – such as summary and kairos – with an additional, analytical dimension. Though not all students studied rhetorical analysis in high school, a brief overview of ethos, logos, and pathos will suffice for this assignment. They will be paying particular attention to intended audience and the ways that it might impact choices in rhetorical strategies.

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

As long as the instructor has access to a console/projector, that should be enough.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

This can be both an informal or formal exercise depending on the instructor’s preference.

I split the students into two groups and showed students two video advertisements with vastly different strategies. Half of the class focused on visual rhetoric and the other half focused on verbal, written, and aural rhetoric. Each student was given a table where they would cite a piece of evidence from the text and then explain, in detail, how it contributed to the company’s persuasive effectiveness based on intended audience. Students presented their findings in a back-and-forth fashion between groups and eventually came to understand that rhetorical strategies often work as a cohesive unit rather than measurable, separated components (whether that’s ethos, pathos, and logos working together, or visual, verbal, and aural interactions).

The first advertisement was Chipotle’s high-budget “The Scarecrow.” The ensuing discussion included not just the ad itself, but Chipotle’s situated brand, its parent company, and the smartphone game app associated with the video. In addition, there is an edited version of this same advertisement,“Chipotle Scarecrow (Honest version),” which critiques the hypocrisy and consumerist qualities of the original; this commentary is a nice complement and is a good example of the analytical thinking necessary to writing Paper 2.1.

The second advertisement (“Giving is the Best Communication”) is from Thailand, funded by a massive communications company (True Move H) and contains very little dialogue and text, but makes great use of lighting, music, camera angle, etc. Students have to think a little more creatively to truly analyze it. Many of the students enjoyed viewing and discussing this one and even offered suggestions for further videos to dissect, including “Silence of Love” – a Thai advertisement for life insurance. Life insurance is obviously a sensitive topic which makes this commercial even more interesting. Be warned, half of my class teared up/cried after viewing it.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Watch through all of the commercials so you have a sense of what overlapping strategies are used, how cultural relativism may tie in, etc. There are too many points to cover with these commercials, so be sure to prepare and pick out what you think is most important and relevant to your syllabus.

Instructions For Students:

Watch and take notes on each commercial.

Decide on the intended audience

The notes should be detailed and organized as follows:

Evidence from the commercial – corresponding analysis

Prepare for a discussion about the advertisements’ effectiveness based on audience/kairos

Evaluation Suggestions:

Participation and/or worksheet completion

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students really took to this, which is unsurprising. The advertisements chosen above went viral because they’re engaging to watch. This eventually grew into a larger conversation about advertisement tropes (in particular, those involved in car commercials).

Course Type:

Course Description:

Tags:

Teaching Rhetorical Pathos through Playlists

Streusand — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 22:06:14 +0000

Author:

Deb Streusand

Image Credit:

Deb Streusand -- Screenshot of Spotify

Brief Assignment Overview:

A fun way to teach students the power of rhetorical pathos using multiple media. Students create Spotify playlists to accompany a short persuasive essay on a topic of their choice.

Type of Assignment:

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pathos

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

Computers are required, but the lesson plan could be adapted for a non-computer classroom if students are able to bring in laptops.
Headphones are also required for the students to listen to the playlists.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

This lesson plan can be used to teach rhetorical pathos through the making of playlists. It was created for a computer-enabled classroom, but could also work for a conventional classroom if students were able to bring in laptops.

Students must first acquire accounts on Spotify.com, a free music streaming service. This can be done at the previous class meeting, or, with instructions, as part of homework.

To prepare for this class, students write short persuasive essays on a topic of their choice and create Spotify playlists to accompany them, with the purpose of inducing emotions that will help persuade the reader to agree with the writer of the essay.

In class, the students listen to the playlists. One could combine any activity that wasn't overly distracting with listening to the music. I let them listen while doing whatever they would typically do on the computer while they listen to music -- allowing Facebook, Twitter, etc. This activity provides a sort of neutral starting point for the students as the playlist works on them, while alleviating the boredom that might come with solely listening to the music. Next, the students read their partner's persuasive essay. They then write a brief response describing how the playlist made them feel and how the essay used those emotions to persuade them. They email this response to the partner and the professor.

For homework, the students revise their persuasive essays to incorporate more emotional language, playing on the same feelings as the playlist songs.

Students enjoy making and listening to the playlists, and they also absorb the idea of inducing emotion in an audience as a persuasive tactic.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Ahead of time:

Become familiar with Spotify, so as to be able to answer student questions about how to use it.

In the class before the pathos activity:

Allow students 5-10 minutes in class to acquire Spotify accounts, or in, a non-computer classroom where they will bring laptops the next time, send them home with instructions on how to do so.
Assign the following homework:

Write a one-page persuasive essay on a topic of your choice.
Make a fifteen-minute Spotify playlist intended to induce feelings that will make a partner agree with your opinion on the topic.

In class:

Allow students 15 minutes to listen to the Spotify playlists.
Allow students about 45 minutes to read and respond to their partner's essay.
Assign students to revise the essay for homework, using language that plays on the same emotions the partners mentioned as effective in their responses.

Instructions For Students:

Joining Spotify:

Go to https://www.spotify.com/us/signup/
Fill in the information to create a free account
Click on "Sign Up" at the bottom of the page.

Homework to prepare for this lesson:

Write a one-page persuasive essay on a topic of your choice.
Make a fifteen-minute Spotify playlist intended to induce feelings that will make a partner agree with your opinion on the topic. Think about things like the tempo of the music, the content of the lyrics, the instrumentation. How do you want the music to affect your partner?
Bring your headphones with you to class next time.
[Non-computer classroom] Bring your laptop with you to class next time.

In class:

Listen to your partner's Spotify playlist. During this time, you may do whatever you normally do on the computer whie listening to music.
After you are finished listening to the playlist, read your partner's essay. Think about how you felt listening to the playlist and consider how it affects the way you read the essay.
Write a response to your partner's essay, detailing how the playlist made you feel and how it affected your reading of the essay. Consider what emotions were or were not effective in persuading you. Give your partner feedback on this so that they know what emotions to use in revising the persuasive essay. This is not the place to critique their opinion; your job is to help them argue more effectively.

Homework:

Revise your persuasive essay to incorporate emotional language as part of your persuasive technique. Consider the feedback your partner gave you about the emotions your playlist evoked and how they did or did not help persuade your partner to agree with you.

Evaluation Suggestions:

I did not evaluate this assignment, because the grade percentages on my syllabus did not include points for in-class assignments or homework, but only major writing assignments. In a course where homework counted for points, I would probably give a completion grade and feedback on the revised essays.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students enjoyed making and listening to the playlists. They seemed to absorb the idea of using emotion to persuade, but sometimes struggled to incorporate the feelings evoked by the musical media into their text. If I were teaching this lesson again, I would spend part of the preceding lesson analyzing how one or two texts used pathos. That way, students could have a better understanding of how pathos operates in texts before trying to use it themselves.

Course Type:

Course Description:

Rhetoric & Writing is a course in argumentation that situates rhetoric as an art of civic discourse. It is designed to enhance students ability to analyze the various positions held in any public debate and to advocate their own positions effectively. Students' work in this course will help them advance the critical writing and reading skills they will need to succeed in courses for their majors and university degrees.

Tags:

Teach Pathos through Politics -- the French Revolution

Moench — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 03:18:59 +0000

Author:

B.D. Moench

Image Credit:

Prise de la Bastille, by Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Houel

Brief Assignment Overview:

This assignment connects the rhetorical concepts pathos and logos with the critique of Enlightenment rationalism by classical conservative philosopher Edmund Burke.

Type of Assignment:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Assignment Length:

Partial Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Kairos

Logos

Pathos

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Cultural Context

Historical Context

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Multimedia

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

No specific materials required

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

Begin by reviewing the concepts pathos, logos, and kairos. After this review, provide a brief introduction to Burke's conservative philosophy, making sure to address that his most famous ideas were written in reaction to the French Revolution. Explain that in order for the class to truly understand Burke's philosophy they need to understand a little something about the events of the French Revolution. Today they will do something a little new--they will collaboratively learn history through their own online research. Together they are going to inform themselves, and each other, of the events and social movements Burke found so repugnant.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Instructors should come prepared to discuss Burke's philosophy, his history, as well as the ideas and the basic history surrounding the French Revolution, as well as, a brief timeline of key events.

Instructions For Students:

Organize your students in teams of three or four. Depending on class size, you should end up with four or five teams. Have each team member log-in to their nearest computer terminal. Assign team one the phrase "the Reign of Terror." Assign team two the name "Robespierre." Assign team three the term "Jacobin" (and, if you are feeling adventurous, the term "Girondin" as well). Assign team four the phrase "the Storming of the Bastille." Assign team five the term "guillotine." Give teams seven or eight minutes to research their respective terms online. After this initial period, ask groups to convene and elect a group member to present what they've discovered. Usually each team comes back with unique information but, also, a great many congruencies. Between all the information presented, after roughly ten or fifteen minutes of discussion, an approximate picture of the excesses of the French revolutionaries will begin to take shape.

Now, with the students feeling more ownership over these historical events, proceed to explain how Burke believed Enlightenment rationalism--overestimated the role of logic, or logos, in human decision-making; underplayed the role of emotion, or pathos, in human affairs; entirely misunderstood the time and opportunity costs, or kairos, involved in any rearrangement of culture or political governance. Making these rhetorical connections can sometimes be difficult, and, for this reason, I only suggest tackling this lesson mid semester once your students' understanding of these rhetorical concepts is solid and deeply rooted.

Evaluation Suggestions:

No evaluation necessary.

Additional Resources:

In order for your students to truly understand how rhetorical concepts relate to Burke's ideas, I suggest pairing this assignment with a short selection from Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. I recommend a chapter entitled "Society, Reverence, and the 'True Natural Aristocracy'" and another entitled "Appeal From the New to the Old Whigs."

Course Type:

Course Description:

I use this lesson plan in a 309K course, Rhetoric of Political Belief, whenever I introduce Burke. However, I believe it could be useful to any literary studies or intermediate course with any significant historical or political component.

Using Debates to Teach Rhetorical Analysis

Sloan — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 16:19:55 +0000

Author:

Casey Sloan

Image Credit:

Image Credit: Short Excursions Into Allyson's Mind

Brief Assignment Overview:

This assignment asks students to watch a debate and evaluate the participants' use of ethos, pathos and logos given their goals and their audience. It then asks students to select a debate “winner,” construct an argument justifying their position, and debate the issue with other students, incorporating concession, refutation and rebuttal.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Media Requirements:

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

This assignment has students evaluate speakers' use of ethos, logos and pathos, perform a rhetorical analysis on the effectiveness of that use, and debate their own conclusions with their classmates by relying on concession, refutation and rebuttal. Ideally, this assignment will help students solidify their understanding of rhetorical appeals and allow them to practice calling upon argumentative strategies to persuade a skeptical audience. The debate chosen can be a fantastic hook to catch student interest in rhetorical analysis. Presidential debates or heated public debates could be introduced for a class that seems particularly politically conscious, but I personally used a semi-humorous debate between comedian Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly, television host and social commentator. The debating then required of students should help them develop their own use of persuasive strategies.

Students will first watch a debate in class. A classroom equipped with a computer and screen is necessary for this assignment. While viewing the debate, students should take notes on both (or one, if you want to divide your students neatly into two camps) speakers' use of ethos, logos and pathos. Ask them also to think about the audience for this debate and whether or not the rhetorical moves made by the speakers would be received well by that audience. This should take up one class period.

For homework, have your students write up a brief report arguing why one speaker “won” the debate. They should use the notes taken during the debate and focus on the use and effectiveness of rhetorical appeals.

During the next class period, ask students to share their arguments. Go back and forth between the two camps, asking students to use various combinations of concession, refutation and rebuttal to answer one another.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Be sure to pick a debate video that will fit neatly in with your available class time. Decide whether you want to assign students to a single debater or offer them the option of picking their own side. If you assign students to a single speaker, you can ask them to focus solely on her while watching the debate video.

Instructions For Students:

Ideally, before performing this exercise students should already be familiar with rhetorical analysis and refutation, concession and rebuttal. I used this assignment as an end-of-semester wrap-up to synthesize various ideas and skills.

1) For the first class period, students should closely watch this debate video. They should focus on both speakers' (or a single speaker's) use of ethos, pathos and logos. Instruct them to take detailed notes, citing specific examples. Ask them to pay special attention to these questions: what kind of ethos do the speakers establish? How? When do they use pathos and why? When do they use logos and why? Also, define the audience for this debate.

2) For homework, students should write up a 1-2 page argument about why one debater "won" the argument by more effectively using rhetorical appeals to convince her audience.

3) For the next class period, ask a volunteer on each side summarize why her debater won. Then, ask opposing sides to use various combinatinos of refutation, rebuttal and concession to argue against one another.

Course Type: