DWRL Lesson Plans - No Classroom Technology Required

Assignment Length:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Annotation

Peer Review

Revision

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Multimedia

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

This plan lasts for multiple class periods and uses a number of different, though readily accessible, technologies. At different points, the students will need to: (1) Bring hardcopy versions of a paper they’ve written into class; (2) Have at-home access to virtual classroom technology like Canvas or Blackboard; (3) Have a set-up a personal account for a class-associated blog. While none of the particular lesson plans require classroom technology, students will need to have regular access to the Internet to fully participate.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

There are a lot of reasons that peer review can be helpful, for students and for their instructor both, not least of which is the way that peer review can shift responsibility for stronger, sharper writing from a vertical and hierarchical model to a more horizontal and democratic one. This set of assignments allows students to not only participate in and benefit from peer review exercises, but begin to think critically about the value and process of social revision while increasing their skill set with digital technology. What follows are instructions for peer review for three different papers, which could be written back-to-back or spread across an entire semester. By no means do the papers need to be of any particular genre (research, advocacy, etc.) or any specific length or even have any particular relationship to one another; rather, what matters for the purposes of this plan is that the writing would benefit from peer review, whether that be in terms of grammar or rhetoric or what have you.

The first peer review exercise is the most traditional: Students should bring in their finished papers the day the essays are due (or perhaps just before). In self-selected pairs or trios, students should pass the papers around, in the margins attempting to answer whatever specific goals the instructor might set, for brief face-to-face discussion at the end of class. These might include:

Correcting any/all mechanical errors
Summarizing the basic argument in 3–4 sentences
Noting the strongest/weakest passage and articulating why it is so strong/weak

In the second exercise, students will utilize the peer review functionality of some virtual classroom software — say, Canvas or Blackboard — to read through and comment on the papers of a couple of their classmates, this time grouped randomly. Such software offer a range of different markup tools, including line-by-line annotations and multicolor highlighters, that suggest a number of inventive possibilities: Perhaps all spelling errors can be highlighted blue and all run-ons red; or, if the students have completed a typical rhetorical analysis, whatever sections deal with pathos might be in green and those with ethos in yellow. The instructor might even encourage students to explore possibilities only afforded by digital technology, such as using reaction gifs at points in the marginalia.
For the final exercise, students will upload an abbreviated version of their paper to a class-associated blog; once every essay is online, students will leave their feedback as comments on (at least two) individual posts. To maintain anonymity while still being able to tell who is who, you might want to allow students to use their initials in place of their actual names — or have a little more fun with it and allow students to create their own username. Leaving specific feedback will no doubt be more difficult at this stage, so the comments will likely be general if left to their own impulses, but for the purposes of experimentation students might be encouraged to devise their own way to note particularly jarring typos or specific points of interest.

Once the whole set of exercises have been explored, the class should discuss the benefits and failures of each type of technology, in effect reviewing their own peer reviewing: Which did they find easiest to use? Which was most helpful?

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Aside from carefully considering and directly stating the peer review goals for each assignment, instructors should themselves be able to help students should they have any questions on how to use the technology — and trust me, they will. Hence it is useful to spend some time in class walking through the functionality of a virtual classroom or how to post a paper directly to a blog. As such, the instructor should have the blog as ready as possible well before the time those papers will be due, so that students have an idea of how their work will look online.

Instructions For Students:

Peer review is most productive when students have explicit goals and questions to strive for and answer. What students should look for and comment on depends, of course, on the type of assignment and the person of the instructor; it might be interesting, however, if the same goals are set for each type of review, so that students have a fuller sense of how the differing technologies affect their ability to read and review, to comment and correct. They might note how the anonymity of a blog sometimes encourages less tactful criticism and fewer line edits — which raises the point that students, when doing peer review, should always be mindful of their classmates’ feelings and respectful of differing opinions or skill levels.

Evaluation Suggestions:

It can be somewhat of a headache to evaluate someone else ability to evaluate, so I would suggest grading on participation or including the peer review as part of a paper’s final grade.

Course Type:

Course Description:

This assignment was originally designed for a class on the rhetoric of the digital divide, and the various peer reviews were spread across an entire semester.

Fostering a Feminist Classroom Climate

Wise — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 18:35:40 +0000

Author:

Beck Wise

Image Credit:

Beck Wise.

Brief Assignment Overview:

In this icebreaking activity, students think-pair-share on the question "What makes a class a success?" This gives them the opportunity to meet a new classmate and contribute to setting the classroom tone for the semester ahead.

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

Partial Class Period

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

The primary goal of this assignment is to open the class, both literally -- it's a Day One icebreaker -- and figuratively, by disrupting the traditional power structures of the classroom, inviting student voices in developing a class structure and code of behaviour, and privileging multiple perspectives.

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

For students:

Pen
Paper (or instructor can provide index cards)

For instructors:

Watch / stopwatch / phone / kitchen timer / perfect internal clock or ability to count at a steady pace (some way of policing time)
For optional extension of activity, instructors will need to display text to the class on a white- or blackboard, document camera, projector or similar.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

First Day/Week

Full Assignment Description:

This activity adapts Cathy Davidson's think-pair-share classroom flipping exercise into an icebreaker that introduces students to certain principles of feminist pedagogy and helps to set the tone for a feminist classroom. Students are asked to think individually about a question -- here, "What makes a class a success?", write their answers, then review them with a peer to identify the "best" listed answer. Optionally, the exercise can be extended to a classwide discussion of all the "best" answers provided by pairs.

The activity serves as an effective icebreaker simply because it gives some structure and relevance to the usual first-day let's-all-go-around-and-introduce-ourselves-maybe-with-a-weird-fact exercise.

As enacted in this lesson plan, it also introduces students to the idea that there are multiple values of "success" (and for that matter, "best") and that multiple perspectives are both legitimate and valuable. It encourages students to actively participate in setting the tone and style of the class, and decentres the teacher as a figure of authority -- all core principles of feminist pedagogy.

This activity can also be adapted for use at any point in the semester, for a variety of pedagogical goals -- the think-pair-share process is often useful for kickstarting discussion of texts, for example, simply by asking a different question.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Very little preparation is required on the instructor's end for this activity. I prefer to come to class with index cards to distribute to each student -- they're handy, and saves students rummaging for paper. The largest time commitment would be considering what question you want to ask your students, if you are not following the lesson plan precisely as written here.

When you are ready to begin the assignment, distribute cards and ask students to get out a pen (and paper, if you're not providing cards). Write your question on the board if it's not short and snappy.

Instructions For Students:

Instructor will set a timer for 90 seconds.

Students use those 90 seconds to write down three answers to the question "What makes a class a success?"

The instructor will then reset the timer, and students will have a further 90 seconds to work with a partner to identify the "best" of the six answers written on their two cards (where "best" may mean most important, most compelling, clearest, etc).

This activity may be extended by having each of the pairs share their "best" answer with the whole group (in this scenario, the instructor should write the answers on the board); instructors can then guide students through a discussion of what similarities and differences exist between the answers, or attempt to identify a "best of the best" answer.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Activity is not evaluated.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

This is an activity that's proved effective in a lot of contexts in a lot of courses for me, but this was the first time I'd used it to open a class and push on questions of classroom tone, student goals, the commitment of and between instructors and students, and so forth. It was definitely successful here -- students thought deeply about their answers and debated the best of the best hotly. In our classroom, we ultimately identified two answers which seemed to encompass most of the others: one process-driven ("willingness to engage and participate") and one outcome-driven ("changed perspectives or broader horizons").

I then asked students to reflect on these two answers as homework and close their introductory blog posts with a discussion of what we can do to make our class a success by these two measures; our discussion in the next class about those responses led to a commitment to producing the classroom as a safe space for discussion and to particular practices of engagement and reception within the classroom.

Course Type:

Literary Studies Course

Course Description:

This activity was designed for use in "Reading Literature in Context: Feminist Speculative Fictions", an intermediate literature course.

Tags:

Critical pedagogy

Ice breaker

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

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Visualization

Media Requirements:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Media Console/Projector

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:

Useful Anytime

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:

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:

Villains versus Villains: Writing Persuasive Dramatic Monologues

lazhu — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 06:09:01 +0000

Author:

Lily Zhu

Image Credit:

Movies and Candy

Brief Assignment Overview:

Students work in groups to compose persuasive, dramatic monologues from the perspectives of famous, fictional villains.

Their goal is to convince the audience that the fictional, villainous actions committed were justified or, at the very least, sympathetic. This assignment focuses on voice, audience, and ethos.

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

Partial Class Period

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Invention

Style

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Multimedia

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

In preparation for their final paper (in which students choose a particular written form and publication venue – with very specific styles – to “publish” their argumentative essay), students will practice developing a consistent persona, recognizing the importance of context and audience. Writing from the perspective of an “unlikable” or unsympathetic figure will force students to exercise more awareness when modulating tone and more precision when structuring their syllogisms.

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

No technology is required although the availibility of desktops/laptops would make this assignment easier for the students.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

Have your students watch or read an excerpt of a villainous speech you’ve found commendable or seductive. In my case, I showed a YouTube clip of Zorg’s (Gary Oldman’s) speech from The Fifth Element.
(As an added bonus, I later showed a clip of Al Pacino’s irreverent speech as John Milton from The Devil’s Advocate)

I also gave them a printed version of the monologue so that they could follow along

Priest Vito Cornelius: I try to serve life. But you only seem to want to destroy it.

Zorg: Oh, Father. You're so wrong. Let me explain.

[Puts an empty water glass on his desk]

Zorg: Life, which you so nobly serve, comes from destruction, disorder, and chaos. Now take this empty glass. Here it is: peaceful, serene, boring. But if it is destroyed -

[Pushes the glass off the table. It shatters on the floor, and several small machines come out to clean it up]

Zorg: Look at all these little things! So busy now! Notice how each one is useful. Why a lovely ballet ensues, so full of form and color. Now, think about all those people that created them. Technicians, engineers, hundreds of people, who will be able to feed their children tonight, so those children can grow up big and strong and have little teeny weeny children of their own, and so on and so forth. Thus, adding to the great chain of life. You see, father, by causing a little destruction, I am in fact encouraging life. In reality, you and I are in the same business.

Students are told to engage in a detailed analysis, breaking down rhetorical elements of the chosen monologue. How does the speaker twist his/her morally reprehensible actions/behaviors into positive ones?

Because Zorg’s speech was based on an 1850 essay by Frédéric Bastiat, I had my students read a portion of that text (That Which is Seen and That Which is Unseen) – “the parable of the broken window” - and discuss how Bastiat essentially deconstructs and points out the flaws of Zorg’s argument (and any like his).

Students are then divided into groups of threes. They must pick a tv show, film, book, comic, game, etc. with a clear villain/antagonist everyone in the group is familiar with (this ensures equal contribution).

Depending on the amount of time the instructor plans to spend on this assignment, the requirements can be adjusted. I told my students to

“Write a dramatic monologue of at least 2 paragraphs from that character’s perspective, justifying a major villainous action or story arc. Be sure to make use of ethos and pathos (e.g. The Tragic Back Story or The Misunderstood Misfit).

Be as serious as possible. You may use humor, satire, irony, etc. when appropriate, but that is no excuse for weak argumentation and sloppy writing. Style and voice matter! Stay in character.”

Students then posted their completed monologues to a discussion board and had the option of presenting their speeches in front of their classmates. I had a class of 14 and the major villains were: Lotso from Toy Story 3, Captain Hook from Peter Pan, Magneto from X-Men, and Scar from The Lion King.

Though we ran out of time, the final bonus round involved a villains versus villains debate. The groups were to compose brief arguments as to why each was the most ethically sound, or least morally problematic antagonist.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Find an interesting sample speech, and if possible, a complementing one that serves as a foil or rebuttal.

Instructions For Students:

1. Contribute to class discussion

2. Contribute to group work (analyzing and writing)

3. See assignment description

Evaluation Suggestions:

The interactive, creative component of this assignment – and making sure that the groups were small – helped motivate every student to go all in. This is more of a participation grade than anything else.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Many of the students were very excited about their final product and enjoyed looking at ethos and voice from this perspective.

Course Type:

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

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.

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:

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:

Required Materials:

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

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

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:

Tags:

Inventing Audience: Lessons from the Marketing Department

Wise — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 21:57:24 +0000

Author:

Beck Wise

Image Credit:

Image by marc f c, CC BY 2.0 (source).

Brief Assignment Overview:

Students work in groups to invent a person with a complete backstory, to whom they'll address an argument. This assists them to think about identifying a clear and specific ideal audience, as well as how they might tailor an argument to best address their reader.

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Audience

Invention

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Invention

Pre-Writing

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Presentations

Media Requirements:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Media Console/Projector

Required Materials:

Some way for students to write collaboratively and display their work to the class; I usually use big sheets of papers and markers, but you might also have students compose digitally and display their work using a projector at the front of the classroom.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

Students are asked to work in small groups to invent a single person to represent their ideal audience for some argument they wish to put forward. Their person should have a name and comprehensive backstory, and students should be able to identify which of their person's attributes make them a potentially receptive audience for their argument. They'll invent their person in groups of 3 to 5, then nominate one person to present to the class.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Identify an issue about which you want students to make (well, plan) their argument; this might be related to the course topic or a current local issue. I select and bring to class one or two short informational articles about the issue to ensure everyone is on the same page.

You should prepare one or two example 'people' in advance to offer students a model; I generally go with one fairly straightforward example and one that's a bit more off-beat.

Last semester, I did this exercise the week Google Fiber announced plans to expand into Austin, so I adopted that as my theme for the exercise. I invented two people who might be interested in Google Fiber and prepared dot-point summaries of their lives, which I presented to the class as informal narratives:

Stefan, aged 36, is a father of two and has recently returned to work after primarily working in the home for a couple of years while his kids were tiny; now that they're old enough to be in the less-expensive toddlers room at daycare, he's trying to get back into his old field as a web developer, but finding it a bit tough after only booking a couple of freelance gigs in the last five years. In the meantime, he's taken a 30-hour-a-week retail gig to bring in some extra cash and is taking online courses (maybe a MOOC, maybe through the local community college) to refresh his design skills. His partner is a high-powered lawyer, working full-time with a long commute -- and she got accustomed to having Stefan at home the last two years, so tends to bring work home or slack off completely when she gets home. Stefan still carries the main burden of household labour and child-rearing, so dude is BUSY! He tries to keep up on current affairs in tech -- since that's related to his job -- and reads Wired, but generally only catches the in-brief sections in between kid demands, so I'd target my argument there. He'd be interested in Google Fiber to make his online course-taking easier, as well as for the opportunity it offers to park the kids in front of streaming cartoons while he does homework or housework -- it'd also allow him to cut his cable bill in favour of streaming options, saving the household money that could go towards childcare (immediate need) or the kids' college educations (long-term) ... or maybe a much-needed holiday!

Instructions For Students:

Your task, as a group, is to invent a person to whom you might address an argument about our class topic -- which of course means first deciding what argument you want to make. Give your person a name and a backstory, sketching out aspects of their life that give an idea of what kind of person they are and what might make them receptive to your argument.

Write your person's story on the big sheets of paper provided and nominate one group member to introduce your audience member to the class.

Evaluation Suggestions:

This is a zero-stakes in-class exercise in my classroom and stands in isolation; some students carry out this same exercise to invent an audience for later assignments, but I don't require students to make the argument they sketch out in class, nor address the same person.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

This lesson plan is adapted from an exercise I employed frequently as the editor of a popular lifestyle magazine and as a marketing consultant for sports organisations I've participated in. As an editor, I used this exercise in new writer orientations and creative/editorial meetings, identifying our core consumer in order to better target our content (and our marketing department did the same thing in order to pitch advertisers); as a marketing consultant, I used it to identify potential new audiences and brainstorm techniques to reach them. I've found that sharing these proven real-world applications increases buy-in substantially.

This also offers a useful lead-in to talking about media kits -- publicly available documents publications produce for potential advertisers which lay out the 'average reader'. These kits are based on both these kinds of exercises and demographic data obtained through consumer surveys, and offer a very clear, very specific idea of the ideal and actual audiences (publications attempt to minimise the gap between the two as much as possible) for a specific publication.

I encourage students to be as creative as they like in both inventing their person and in presenting them; as long as they can justify the inventive choices they've made, they're good to go. For example, in the Google Fiber version of this exercise given above, students invented people ranging from not-so-tech-savvy grannies wanting to Skype family members abroad to West Campus residents sick of their 'net access being slowed down by four roommates all watching Netflix separately, to DJ SparkleBootz, a community college student and strip club DJ who needed superfast internet to keep up with the latest musical trends and to download samples. (This last was presented to the class with a soundtrack selected from someone's smartphone and ended with the revelation that there IS a DJ Sparkleboots living and working in Chicago.)

Course Type:

Course Description:

This lesson plan was carried out in RHE306, Rhetoric and Writing -- an introductory course in writing and argumentation.

Tags:

Audience

Marketing

Distributed Peer Review

Rosen — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:19:20 +0000

Author:

Stephanie Rosen

Image Credit:

"Tin Foil Hat" by James Provost vis Flickr

Brief Assignment Overview:

When students can review their peers' attempts at an assignment before it's time for their own attempt, they inevitably critique other students' work and incorporate the best writing strategies into their own. For a typical rhetorical analysis assignment, everyone's analysis is public writing—on a class blog, and everyone's analysis is due on different days.

Type of Assignment:

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Multiple Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Peer Review

Revision

Writing Process

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Rhetorical Analysis

Revision

Organization/Arrangement

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Required Materials:

Class blog in which each student is a contributor.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

This assignment is a typical rhetorical analysis. The innovation is that everyone's analysis is due on different days, and everyone's analysis is public writing—on our class blog. When students can review their peers' attempts at an assignment before it's time for their own attempt, they inevitably critique other students' work and incorporate the best writing strategies into their own.

The rhetorical analyses were posted over the course of 5 class meetings, with 4-5 students posting each day. Posts were due by midnight before our class meeting, and students who did not post that week were required to leave a comment on one post per week in the morning before our 12:30pm class. This ensured that students who were not writing that week were reading—at the very least, one post by another student.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

This assignment works best once a blog has been established, that is, once students have become familiar with it by writing required posts and comments for at least one class unit. In preparation for the rhetorical analysis post, students were given a detailed assignment prompt, and the freedom to choose their own rhetorical document (an advertisement) to analyze.

Instructions For Students:

(500-900 words) due by midnight the night before class.

Write a summary and analysis of an advertisement you found in your research that makes an argument about health. Your blog post should include an image of the whole or part of the advertisement and should also explain the context of the ad and its audience. In this post you will analyze how the ad makes its argument (its rhetorical strategies including logos, ethos and pathos) and why it makes the argument in this way. Basically, you must describe how the advertisement makes its argument, and you must explain why the advertisement is persuasive (or not) for its particular audience.

To be successful, your post must include basic elements including:

a clear and brief summary of the ad's argument
enough description of the ad so that your reader can follow your analysis
a discussion of the ad's intended audience
a discussion of the venue or location in which the ad originally appeared
your explanation of how the ad uses specific logical appeals to lead its audience to specific conclusions
your explanation of how the ad uses specific pathetic appeals to evoke specific values or emotions from the audience
your explanation of how the ad uses specific ethical appeals in order to appear credible to its specific audience
your argument about the ad's effectiveness for its specific audience

What to Find

Many advertisements make arguments about health, not just ads for prescription drugs. Of course, an ad for a prescription drug to treat depression, sexual disfunction, or some other disease or disorder would work for this assignment, but you can think more broadly than that. You could choose an ad that

makes an argument about health in order to sell a medical product (drug, supplement, treatment)
makes an argument about health in order to sell a non-medical product (deodorant, a car, food, anything)
uses health or illness as a metaphor to sell anything
makes an argument about health to convince its audience to do, believe, or feel something.

Where to Find it

Look around you: in magazines and on TV, on billboards or on the web. If you find a print ad, scan it; a poster or billboard, take a picture of it; an online ad, take a screenshot. If your ad is a video, you need to find the video online so you can watch it as many times as you need. Search YouTube using keywords including the product name.

Evaluation Suggestions:

My class uses the Learning Record for student evaluation. For the rhetorical analysis blog post, students were given aproximately one page of written instructor feedback within a week after posting. They also received comments from their peers on the blog which responded to their ideas rather than reviewed their analysis.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

From the first batch of blog posts, the writing was at a surprsingly high level. Each student had already posted a summary on our blog of one required text. Now they had the chance to write a post about a text of their choice, on a blog that already had an archive and a following. From there, things only got better. The blog took on a life of its own, outside the classroom, and it not only sparked intellectual conversations, it also became an unexpected writing resource.

Course Type:

Literary Studies Course

Tags:

Remediating and Reviewing Peer Arguments

coulson — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:14:17 +0000

Author:

Doug Coulson

Image Credit:

Jbrazito's Photostream

Brief Assignment Overview:

Designed to facilitate a deeper level of peer review and collaborative learning, this assignment asks students to deliver oral presentations of each others' work and offer constructive commentary on their peer's paper.

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

Partial Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Peer Review

Revision

Synthesis

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Presentations

Remediation

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

This assignment is intended to facilitate a deeper level of peer review and collaborative learning as well as facilitate classroom discussion regarding the writing process.

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

No classroom technology is required for this assignment, although a media consolae/projector facilitates students who want to use technology in their presentations.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

In this assignment, you will deliver an 8-12 minute oral presentation to the class (1) restating your peer’s paper, (2) identifying the conversation in which your peer’s paper is situated, and (2) offering constructive feedback or questions regarding your peer’s paper that might be helpful for the class to discuss to assist the author. Your peer will in turn deliver a presentation regarding your paper. After each presentation, a brief Q&A period will be permitted for the class to discuss the paper and ask the author questions if desired. The author may respond to questions during this period, but otherwise the author should not intervene to explain their work during the presentation but should instead simply listen to the restatement and commentary offered by the presenter and the class.

You should approach your presentation as a writer sharing a peer’s work with fellow writers and not be overly formal. Your presentation must follow a formal outline, contain the content called for by the protocol below and in the order set forth in the protocol, and be delivered within the stated time limits. When the time limit is up, the presentation will be stopped. You should practice the presentation before you deliver it live to ensure that you can deliver it within the stated time limits. Please note that a paper outline is required and must be handed to me before to your presentation on the day it is scheduled. You’re allowed but not required to use audio-visual materials during your oral presentation as long as they’re not used to substitute for your own extemporaneous commentary during the presentation. You can present sitting down or standing from any location in the classroom that you wish.

*Authors are obligated to deliver a copy of their paper to their presenter no less than 72 hours before the scheduled presentation so that the presenter has adequate time to prepare.

Protocol

Your presentation should closely approximate the following format:

(1) Describe the paper and identify its central argument(s)/contribution(s) (4-6 minutes). What appears to be the central issue/puzzle that the paper seeks to address? How would you state the paper’s central argument or thesis? How does the author develop the paper? (Provide a very brief summary of the paper and its arrangement.) In what debates/discussions does the paper situate itself? What does the author contribute to the conversation the paper engages.

(2) Identify the evidence/methods the author uses to support the claims made (2 minutes).

(3) Offer constructive feedback (2-6 minutes). Identify one or two broad areas in which the paper might be improved. What might be helpful for the group to discuss to assist the author?

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

No instructor preparation is required.

Instructions For Students:

Students are provided the full assignment description set forth above.

Evaluation Suggestions:

The assignment is graded based primarily on the basis of completion, contingent only on the students meeting the minimum requirements that the presentation follow a formal outline, contain the content called for by the protocol and in the order set forth in the protocol, and be delivered within the stated time limits.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students have reported some anxiety both as author and as presenter of a peer's paper, particularly regarding losing control of the presentation and not being in a position to defend their work as author or mis-characterizing their peer's work as presenter. My experience is that students take the presentations more seriously when presenting a peer's work than when presenting their own, however, and in some ways experience less anxiety because they don't have to defend their work. They also appear to value the experience of hearing a peer restate their paper's content. Requiring them to read a peer's paper in sufficient depth to deliver a presentation regarding it has also proved educational about the writing process.

Course Type:

Course Description:

In his book On the Contrary, rhetoric scholar Thomas Sloane writes, ”Rhetorical thought is—let us admit it—highly perverse and lawyerly in nature.” In this statement, Sloane not only alludes to the closely intertwined history of rhetoric and law from the earliest days of Western thought to the modern era, but highlights the shared promotion by both of these fields of an agonistic “art of controversy” which seeks to facilitate controversy through the practice of arguing both sides of a case, a practice classical rhetoricians called in utramque partem (“on either side”). The principal theorists of classical Greek and Roman rhetoric promoted agonistic contests in which speakers argued opposite sides of disputed issues, often with specifically judicial contexts in mind, and the American legal system’s adversarial system of justice is founded on a contest of accusation and defense between parties in which each seeks to persuade a judge or jury of disputed issues on opposite sides of a case.

Despite the close relationship between rhetoric and law, however, and the fact that the lawyer remains, in the words of legal scholar James Boyd White, “the modern rhetorician in its purest form,” the modern professionalization of law has frequently attempted to deny or repress the rhetorical aspects of legal discourse and the agonistic conflict on which the adversarial system of justice is founded. Instead, modern law has promoted a view of legal discourse as a value-neutral “science” based on logical deduction and immune to social and political influence. This paradoxical relationship between law and rhetoric in modern legal discourse has produced a recent revival of questions about modern law’s denial of rhetoric, including important questions about the role of character and emotion in legal argument, the role of narrative in the analysis of legal evidence, the effect of the adversarial system of justice on social cohesion and division, and the relationship of legal rhetoric to democracy, coercion, and violence.

We’ll study these questions by first examining the forms of argument used in the legal profession today, focusing on arguments regarding the interpretation of circumstantial evidence in legal cases and the analogical, or case-based, form of legal argument known as “legal reasoning” which is used to argue for or against the application of judicial precedent to new cases. Specifically, we’ll study arguments regarding the evidence in controversial trials such as the 1976 Patty Hearst trial, the 1982 Lindy Chamberlain (“Dingo”) trial, the 1992 Randy Weaver (“Ruby Ridge”) trial, and the 1994 trials of Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, Jr., and Jason Baldwin (the “West Memphis Three”), as well as arguments and judicial opinions in U.S. Supreme Court cases regarding the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure clause and the minimum standards of effective legal advocacy found in the Sixth Amendment’s right to assistance of counsel. After examining the forms and purposes of legal rhetoric as it is actually employed in the legal profession, we’ll then consider contemporary critiques of the adversary system and the agonistic rhetoric on which it depends, including critiques implicit in public perceptions of the legal system and cultural representations of lawyers.

Tags:

End of Term Writing Assignments

Voss — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 21:30:39 +0000

Image Credit:

The New Yorker magazine

Brief Assignment Overview:

We’re coming up on the midway point of this semester, and as we’re all currently planning the weeks ahead after Spring Break, I thought I’d take a moment here and share what I’m currently doing for my course’s final assignment. I’m teaching The Rhetoric of The New Yorker, and my students’ final assignment is to compose a New Yorker-style essay. Of course, with the rare exception whatever they produce is nowhere near New Yorker-quality. Nevertheless, this assignment grew out of two pedagogical realities and subsequently I think it’s entirely valuable. The first reality is that after a few semesters of teaching I realized that my students were rarely submitting end-of-semester work that met my expectations. I don’t admit this as any fault of my own teaching nor mean it as any disrespect towards my exceptional former students. Rather, I try to spend my time reading good writing and my students are journeymen writers – whatever they produce will inevitably fall short of what I like to read. Secondly, my former students have often considered submitted work to be in some way “finished,” and all us instructors know that writing is a process. No matter how much I told them that nothing is ever finished, they just persisted in thinking that A-level work is a finished product. So, as a result of these two imperatives, I thought I’d design an end of semester writing project in which it’s nearly impossible for any of my students to complete the work “perfectly”. The point of this assignment is the process, not the product.

Type of Assignment:

Homework Assignment

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Course Unit

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

The goals of this assignment are for students to assimilate previous research into a coherent argument. More specifically, over the course of this assignment, it is my hope that students will learn how to: synthecize seperate arguments, articulate their uncertainties, learn to restrain themselves from writing about the obvious, and learn that writing is always an ongoing project.

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

This assignment doesn't not include a research component, so it's important that students have already compiled 7 or so relevant sources into an annotated bibliography. (In my course, the annotated bibliography is created in a mid-semester project, so by the end of the semester my students can focus entirely on compiling that research into good writing.) Ideally, they've compiled a variety of sources, such as several opposing arguments, interviews, historical accounts, etc. Other than that, it's important that students bring to this assignment general excitement and genuine intellectual interest in their subject matter -- without such things they'll be bored and their writing will suffer.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

In 5-7 pages, students are to assimilate previous research into a New Yorker-style essay. What "New Yorker-style" means is basically an essay that subtly combinds narrative and argument into a well written product intended for educated readers. Students' writing should be free of grammatical error, writen in correct MLA-style (unless Chicago-style is more relevant to their future academic work), and contain correct grammatical usage. Structurally, there is no one set way New Yorker essays are organized, so in this assignment students need to determine what kind of organization is most effective for the argument they are trying to make. Asking students to determine their arguments parameters is often challenging for them, but it's my hope that the hurdle gets them thinking about the writing process in productive ways. (In general, students' papers for this assignment tend to be organized as follows: introduction of topic or individual, argument about said topic or individual, background of said topic or individual, and finally some use of counter argument to confirm their own argument.) I encourage students to think of a New Yorker essay (or two) that they liked over the course of the semester, and to model their argument off of what's done in that essay.

Throughout, students are asked to always keep in mind the ways in which various arguments relate to one another. They shouldn't be thinking of arguments as islands of thought that operate within a void, but rather discrete bits of information that romantically mingle with one another. If students get confused or discouraged, they're encouraged to articulate their uncertanty, which if they learn this skill often puts them ahead of their peers in so far as their ability to write is concerned. Throughout the unit I stress that a solid part of the assignment's assessment is their level of intellectual engagement -- in other words, if they think of this assignment in terms of "what shold I write to get an A," they will probably struggle.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

In general, since I know that my course is leading up to this assignment, I always try to direct my class's discussion of New Yorker articles in the direction of noticing writing mechanics. (Therefore, if this is the type of assignment that you'd perhaps like to encorporate into your own course, be thinking about the ways in which daily class discussion might be relevant to the larger goal.)

More specifically, be prepared for students to have a lot of trouble making subtle arguments (like those found in the New Yorker). They've been told for years that thesis statements are always at the end of the first paragraph of a text, which of course rarely holds true outside stuff written for school. Induldge their attempts and give them the benefit of the doubt as far as effort is concerned. There'll be a range of student achievement, as usual, but with such a difficult assignment I think it's important to keep in mind that students here will learn by doing.

Instructions For Students:

These are the instructions I give my students when presenting this assignment in class (I also include assessment criteria, see below):

"Your mission for Paper 3.1 is to take all of the research that you compiled in your Annotated Bibliography and turn it into a New Yorker-style essay. Your essay should be 5-7 pages in length and be in correct MLA format (doubled-spaced, page numbers, correct MLA citations, proper headings, etc.). Aside from these simple parameters, you’re free to go about this assignment in whichever way you determine to be most rhetorically appropriate given your subject matter. A profile of a popular sports athlete will look much different than a consideration of the social effects of our excessive cell phone use.

You’re encouraged to consider a New Yorker essay that you liked over the course of the semester, and use the structure of that essay as a model for your own writing. If you do this, what’ll probably happen is that you’ll start writing an essay structured similarly to the New Yorker piece, but then you’ll inevitably branch out a bit once your argument comes alive. You will probably even change your introduction to fit your conclusion and your essay will then be devoid of any resemblance to the New Yorker essay. (NOTE: DO NOT structure your essay based upon a New Yorker essay that considers your same topic – this will inevitably lead to a sort of plagiarism.)

Also, think about how often we went off on tangents during class discussion over the course of the semester. If I thought this was harmful to you as a writer, I would have worked to get us back “on topic.” Instead, most good writing often goes off on natural tangents, and these tangents are skillfully used to complete an argument and offer example. So as you think about and eventually write your essay, think freely and expansively about your content, just like we did in class."

Evaluation Suggestions:

I like to assess students on:

their ability to communicate ideas clearly and humanely,
their ability to avoid the boring five-paragraph essay format that they learned in high school,
their ability to master and objectively present the competing interests that circle their topic,
their ability to embed their argument with subtlety and style.

Course Type:

Course Description:

The New Yorker is a highbrow magazine that’s been around since the 1920s. Published weekly, the magazine regularly offers various forms of cultural commentary, from fiction submitted by respected authors, to investigative journalism written by first-rate essayists, to cartoons composed with unfailingly witty captions. Each issue contains calendars highlighting upcoming social events across Manhattan. Quite often longer content in the magazine relates to current events outside of New York City, and increasingly outside of the United States. This course will examine all the various rhetorics that surround the magazine. We will consider each week’s cover and the various rhetorical strategies therein at play. We will read several famous articles from the magazine’s past, as well as current articles commenting on the world in which we live. Ultimately, we will consider the various ways that arguments in the magazine are made.

Regular reading of The New Yorker will guide us as we practice research and writing over the course of the semester. Vital to your success will be your ability to “interpret” another’s argument, which basically means coming up with a cogent, interesting account of what an argument means, what it’s trying to do to/for the reader, what technical choices the author’s made in order to try to achieve the effects he wants, and so on. In light of this, you’ll also be asked to compose your own arguments. You will pick a controversy towards the beginning of the semester and, in addition to our reading from the magazine, investigate this particular issue. The goal of this research will be for you to produce a New Yorker-style essay by the end of the semester. This is all designed to enhance your ability to analyze the various positions held in any public debate and to advocate your own position effectively and responsibly.

Tags:

Setting Up a Studio Environment for Multimedia Projects

Scott Nelson — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 02:27:16 +0000

Author:

Scott Nelson

Image Credit:

Matt Jones CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Brief Assignment Overview:

Whenever I teach, I always assign some form of multimedia project, and these practices have helped to set up a studio environment where collaborative multimedia projects can thrive. Rather than post an explicit lesson plan to our site, I thought I’d run through a set of practices that have been successful for me over a few courses.

Type of Assignment:

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Multiple Class Periods

Course Unit

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

The pedagogical goals for this assignment are to have students think about what multimedia production skills they already possess and what skills they'd like to develop. Further, these practices foster a collaborative environment where studetns learn to work together toward common goals.

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

Since these are a set of practices rather than a specific use of a technology, what follows can be adapted to any classroom. Because most of the classes I teach are in rooms with computers for the students, I'll assume such a setup. Mainly, the students need some way to communicate with each other outside of class. I use PBWorks wikis for this aim, but a class blog or even email can be used to coordinate student skills.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

While each course's specific assignment may vary, I've sucessfully implemented these practices in many student projects. These projects have ranged from creating infographics to video games to ebooks. What I hope to achieve from these practices is a form of student autonomy that places responsibility for their work squarely with students.

For this aim, it's important that the assignment's product have some form of value outside of the classroom. Digital media needs a real audience, one beyond just the teacher in a particular course. With this in mind, I require that any multimedia project that students create have some venue in which it is showcased. This can be something as simple as posting it to Facebook, or something more complex such as publishing an ebook in Apple's iBookstore. Hopefully, by having an audience beyond the classroom, students will attribute more value to the rhetorical work they do. These projects aren't just for a grade in a self-contained course, but instead rhetorical practices that work upon the networks they inhabit.

Secondly, I set up a type of Craigslist for student skills. Early in the semester, I have students post a brief biography detailing their current skills in multimedia production and skills they'd like to develop. I normally create a new wiki page for students to populate, but this can be done via a course blog or a mass email. This particular stage in setting up the studio environment requires that students think about their relationships to multimedia and the ways they can create in these modes. Undoubtedly, I have students who begin this stage thinking they have no skills in multimedia whatsoever, but a brief class discussion usually gets students thinking about the digital discourse communities they already belong to. Some may be avid social media prosumers, while others may keep Twitter or Instagram accounts.

A further advantage to these Craiglist-style bios is that students can self-select collaborative groups. If, for example, one student has a great idea for a video game, but no skills with Photoshop, the bios are a first step to making those need-based connections. Plus, because students are shopping for skills among their classmates, they tend to create more organic groups with a common goal. This practice seems to reduce the occurances of group members who refuse to contribute to a project and let others "take up their slack." Common interests drive group formation, so individual students are less likely to be bored with the project.

As a final bonus from this practice, because groups are formed based upon skills, sudents tend to create affinity groups that share knowledge. Students teach each other their skills, and thus all participate in the production of the project. While there is the risk that students will only practice what they are already good at, experience has shown me that this isn't the case. Students are genuinely interested in the common goal they've set, and hence, they all work to create a quality product.

The final practice I do in the classroom is to give students time to play. Multimedia takes some time to create, and scheduling in-class time to experiment is extremely important. Digital technologies ask that we manipulate them, to try out hypotheses regarding their rhetorics and grammars. Groups need time to teach each other skills, and studio work days are important for this task.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

As I've indicated above, this is more a set of classroom principles rather than a specific lesson plan. However, they've worked well for my students, especially when they are working with multimedia. A familiarity with programs like Photoshop, GIMP, Illustrator, Inkscape, inDesign, iMovie, Audacity, or GarageBand can help, but I've found the single most important skill to have is flexibility. No instructor can possibly know all there is to know about these multimedia creation applications, so a willingness to learn from students is paramount.

Instructions For Students:

Since this is a set of practices rather than a specific lesson, there aren't any explicit instructions to students beyond what I've outlined above. However, the following may be helpful when attempting to set up a Craigslist-style skill listing:

In a brief paragraph, outline your interests in the upcoming project, listing any type of multimedia you would be willing to work in or learn. The aim here is not necessarily to give only those programs you're already confident in, but instead your interests in creating multimedia using some applcations.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Because I use the Learning Record Online for all of my courses, the practices outlined above aren't assessed in the traditional sense. I circle the room on studio days, talking with students about what problems they may have run into and to get a general sense of the project's progression. The Learning Record allows for these documented processes to be used as evidence for learning, so the multimedia product is much less important than the processes students go through to create their project.

A successful project is one where students learn new ways of communicating in multimedia, and learn to collaborate with likeminded individuals toward a common goal.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

As I've indicated above, these pracitces have been sucessful in a variety of group projects. I've used this with an infographic assignment, a video game prototype assignment, an actual working video game assignment, an interactive image assignment, and an ebook assignment.

Course Type: