Blogging Pedagogy

Towards the end of the semester, I always like asking students to reflect upon what they have learned and to assess the value of it. This is probably a fairly standard practice – I remember teachers doing it to myself since second grade – but it seems more necessary in these days of budget cuts and attitudes fostered by entitled entertainment. Big pictures are good, especially when you’re teaching rhetoric to a room full of science and business majors. The moment for this reflection always comes at that point in the semester (for myself and my students) in which work isn’t divinely inspired but rather fragmented and hurried, an ethic not necessarily lending itself towards deliberation. This semester I was just thinking I’d have the moment with my students during the last week of classes, before they ran off to jump their last hurdles of library books and/or end up in the pool. But then a cup of coffee got me thinking.

I was at Starbucks and had just read Paul Krugman’s recent column, “The Amnesia Candidate” (22 April 2012). The article is a thoughtful evaluation of Mitt Romney’s most recent campaign rhetoric, and is especially efficient in the way it attacks the former governor for blaming some of Bush’s legacy on Obama. While Krugman does concede that Obama could have handled economic matters differently, he ultimately concludes by asking “Are the American people forgetful enough for Romney’s attack to work?”. This is a complex question. You hear cynics complain all the time that American voters have a 6-month attention span, which is often compromised by consumer culture’s narcotization. I think this is probably true to a degree, but how could it not be given technology’s onslaught of information? It isn’t so much a question of whether or not voters can recall that Romney’s speech was given in a warehouse which was shut down during the Bush years – to suggest as much is to blame the average American voter for not having the mind of a Princeton professor, which would be ignorant. “Work” here, it seems to me, is a question or whether or not Romney can emotionally engage his base. The more that Americans are thinking critically about their environment, the more likely they are to realize (not remember) that the president has very little to do with the economy.

Image Credit: storyful.com

This got me thinking about the goals I set for my own students, as well as why the University of Texas might require first-year non-majors to take a basic composition course. I investigated Romney’s rhetoric a little bit, found a new TV ad that advances his “Obama Isn’t Working” slogan and sought out the warehouse speech that Krugman takes him to task for. I printed out eighteen copies of Krugman’s Op-Ed and was ready to have “the talk” with my students. The discussion opened with a general discussion of what they learned over the course of the semester, which as a group they had no problem recalling all the various concepts. It was hard for them to contextualize this learning, however. Obviously, some said that it’d help them write better in the major, etc. But not a one of them could tell me why such a course was required at a public university, nor why Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin insisted upon similar programs of study when they founded the universities of Virginia and Philadelphia.

We started with Romney’s latest TV ad. The students had a lot to say about how it resembled a movie trailer, and how its particular unemployment statistics for North Carolina weren’t necessarily impressive (“that’s only the amount of people that can fit inside the Longhorns football stadium”). When we got to Romney’s speech, my students nailed most of the points that Krugman makes in his Op-Ed. The only point of Krugman’s they didn’t get to was the question of whether or not “the American people are forgetful enough for Romney’s attack to work.” My students weren’t eligible to vote back when Bush was in charge, and I got the impression from them that there were more important things in high school than reading the morning paper. And who am I to blame them for this shortsightedness? Romney’s attack wasn’t working here not because they remembered enough of the past to see its fallacies, but rather because they were thinking critically about their environment. I passed around Krugman’s Op-Ed and they saw that collectively they’d reached his conclusions. Now asked again what they learned over the course of the semester, the answer was obvious and apparent.

In the week or two before Spring Break, it’s customary for lab chit-chat to turn towards what we look forward to on break. This spring, as my colleagues told me how they anticipated getting out of town or getting some writing done, I told them that I was looking forward to my students’ midterm. “I’ve never given a midterm,” was the repeated response. Before this semester, neither had I. So I’ve decided to write here about why I gave the midterm and how I used the Lab resources to enhance it.

The midterm I gave was a standard open-book essay exam. Students were required to write one essay in which they advocated a position, engaged the position in one foundational article, and incorporated three additional sources from our reading list. The essay prompt was available to them from day one (it was printed in the syllabus) and students were allowed to refer to the required readings, as well as any notes they made in their course-pack, during the exam. (The complete Digital Midterm lesson plan is available on the DWRL site.) 

One major reason behind my midterm was my own curiosity. I often incorporate in-class writing so students have a low-stakes context in which to explore their ideas through writing and to synthesize major ideas, concepts, and connections of the course. I believe that these writing assignments allow students to grasp major trends in the course and that they better prepare them to move forward with the material. But I never get to see the writing assignments. Part of the “low-stakes context” is the promise that students don’t have to turn the work in — or show it anyone, although they’re often asked to speak afterwards, using the writing as an aid to their spoken response.

The midterm gave me a chance to see how students were synthesizing ideas, grasping major trends, and understanding the course concept. My curiosity was satisfied. Students put texts together in interesting and unexpected ways, using several readings to support their own arguments, or using one text to support their reading of another. Furthermore, they consistently demonstrated that they understood the basic argument of the course, “Health Rhetoric”: that “health” is a problematic term in argument because rhetors agree on its value but not on its definition. And students supported (or complicated) that argument in a variety of fascinating ways.

Another reason I gave the midterm was to let students craft a written argument earlier in the semester. In my syllabus, students complete several writing assignments — a summary, a rhetorical analysis, a synthesis, a bibliography, a proposal — before they finally write a persuasive argument in their final paper. However, I often encourage students to argue for their positions in class discussion, and I wanted to give them a chance to do that in writing before the semester’s final weeks.

As I fielded questions the week before the midterm, I realized that the prompt was confusing to students, precisely because it asked them to write an original persuasive argument — something they had not done before. They needed extra explanation and encouragement to employ the rhetorical figures and appeals we had been analyzing. But that explanation and encouragement paid off in their writing. They made strong cases for their positions, using the appeals and figures they had studied appropriately and to great effect.

Although my midterm was similar to every essay exam I’ve proctored as a Teaching Assistant or taken as a student, I modified the template in one important respect: no Blue Books. I had students write their essays on the Lab computers. They were therefore able to revise, or at least edit, on the fly and submit more polished, better organized writing. This system also eliminated the grading bias that I know I’m subject to when I read a barely legible student essay. Every essay looked the same. I believe that this made the midterm grades more objective. And it certainly made me better enjoy reading them over my Spring Break. 

On the day of the exam, students arrived in class to find a printed midterm prompt in front of each lab computer. They logged on and opened the word processor (opening other programs or using a web browser would result in a failing grade). And they printed and stapled their finished exam essay for me before they left. Some students will need accommodations or prefer Blue Books. I had a private conversation with a student who has a learning disability; I gave them the option to write the essay by hand (they chose to do so). I also made an announcement that anyone with a legitimate reason for preferring a Blue Book instead of the word processor could see privately me to make that request. In my class, no one did. 

Overall, the midterm was a success. The grades were high, the essays were interesting and well-written, and the students took the process very seriously. I didn’t realize, when I included the exam on my syllabus, how much a midterm would mean to the undergrads. I got the sense, however, that the inclusion of a midterm gave my course more weight in their minds. On the one hand, it took up more of their study time and gave them more anxiety. On the other, the studying and anxiety led to quality writing, though which they came to a fuller understanding of what the course is about and why it is important. This is what made the midterm most worthwhile. By synthesizing ideas through writing in a high-stakes context, my students “got it” fairly early on in the semester. And having done that, I’d like to think they especially enjoyed their Spring Break.

I’m teaching an upper-division rhetorical theory course about legal rhetoric in which I focus students on the rhetoric involved in adjudicating particular cases in dispute. The initial unit in the course focuses students on the rhetoric of narrative, memory, and proof surrounding factual disputes in particular cases. Although there are many examples of such discourse, the most classic example is in a legal trial. My goal in the unit is to illuminate certain common topics, or topoi, of forensic discourse as well as to illuminate the contingencies in factual disputes that create opportunities for persuasion. At the conclusion of the unit, the students write a 1,000-1,500 word paper in which they rhetorically analyze opposing arguments regarding an evidentiary controversy in a forensic dispute, which in the context of the course nearly always means a trial. The assignment specifically requires that in addition to a primary source for the arguments the paper analyzes, the paper must include a primary source of the evidence in dispute. This latter source typically includes trial exhibits such as photographs or video and/or the testimony of trial witnesses reflected in a trial transcript. Trial transcripts, however, can be difficult to locate and access.

As a result, toward the end of this unit I conduct an online research tutorial with my students in class designed to assist them in accessing trial transcripts and excerpts from such transcripts. In an electronic classroom in which each student has access to a computer with internet access, I first show students the location and search features of various online resources for trial discourse. One of the greatest sources for such discourse is the Clarence Darrow Digital Collection, which provides free online access to complete word-searchable trial transcripts from the most famous cases of one of America’s greatest trial lawyers. Two other great free online trial archives are the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913, containing details regarding 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court, and Douglas Linder’s Famous Trials Site, which includes excerpted arguments, trial testimony, and exhibits from numerous famous trials. In addition, certain paid databases available through the University of Texas at Austin contain trial records, such as Hein Online’s World Trials Library and Gale’s Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600-1926. I also point students toward the print volumes in the extensive Notable Trials Library series, many volumes of which contain extensive excerpts from the trial transcripts in a large number of famous trials, as well as other print sources for opening and closing arguments from famous trials.    

As a conclusion to this online research workshop, I have students explore the rhetoric of 18th-19th century crime broadsides from the Harvard Law School Library's online collection of crime broadsides. Beyond teaching additional online research skills regarding legal rhetoric, the goals of this assignment are to further a discussion of the symbolic aspects of legal rhetoric, or how legal rhetoric operates not only to decide the outcomes of legal cases but to shape communal values and norms. To accomplish this, I have students conduct an in-class rhetorical analysis of the texts and images in the database. These materials describe crimes and the apprehension of criminals during the 18th-19th century when such information was widely disseminated in broadsides and public discourse regarding the investigation of crimes common. The assignment both reinforces the availability of many interesting forms of legal discourse online and generates engaging class discussion.

To begin the assignment, I introduce students to the Harvard Law School Library's online collection of crime broadsides. With students at their computers, I demonstrate the site's search features and discuss a couple of sample broadsides as a tutorial of the site. I inform students that their task is to isolate and analyze the ways in which norms and identity are rhetorically constructed in one of the broadsides from the site. The remainder of the class is then devoted to students conducting their own research and posting their broadsides along with a brief rhetorical analysis to a course blog to which they regularly post other assignments. The blog posts may then be discussed collectively as a class with or without requesting individual students to present on their broadsides and analysis. This assignment can be completed in a single class period or span two class periods, depending on the details of the assignment.

I don’t grade the assignment but use it as an encouragement to collectively explore and comment on some fascinating documents regarding the public rhetoric surrounding particular cases of crime. It's primarily designed to engage students in questions considered during the course and to facilitate class discussion. I've used this lesson plan with two classes and both groups of students found the broadsides and their rhetoric fascinating and enjoyed the assignment. Their contributions have been consistently engaged and insightful. The assignment not only provides a thought-provoking ending to what can sometimes be a tedious research tutorial, but has helped me to simultaneously teach online research skills, generate interest in the materials contained in online archives, and illuminate the cultural significance of forensic rhetoric beyond instrumental problem-solving motives. 

As we approach the end of the long academic year and my students prepare their first draft of their final paper for peer review, I thought it would be fitting to reflect on the pedagogical practice of peer reviews in a writing course.

First off, let me say that my colleague in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing, Cate Blouke, convinced me last semester to make the switch to digital submissions of writing assignments. To reduce the paper load I had to carry, I asked students to share their essays with me via NoodleBib’s sharing tool (which relies on GoogleDocs). At times, students had difficulty sharing their papers via this tool, so I also made BlackBoard digital submissions an option. Checking for student assignments in two different web-based software programs required a bit of extra work on my part, but because I believe in democratic, student-centered classroom practices, I was willing to provide options as we made the switch from paper to digital submissions.

This spring, consolidating all of my classroom instructions, resources, and student work into one place (with the PBWorks wiki system) was a breath of fresh air. At the beginning, a few students had a bit of anxiety about using the online workspace; none of them had used a wiki before. One student even wrote (in an observation on her learning processes) that she found digital submissions to be “less personal” and "a bit confusing." But, a few weeks later, this same student wrote that it was easier to navigate the wiki and that she could do so "without problems." 

A handful of students have run into a few glitches here and there (during heavy uploading traffic times), but the PBWorks support team has been helpful whenever these issues come up. And, as another student put it, "The wiki kinda grew on me. It saves paper :-D." So even though some students felt "apprehensive about using the wiki on a daily basis," these same students concluded at the midterm, "I can see how helpful technology, such as the wiki and other resources, are to the writing and reflection process. I actually like this way of organization much better, because it is efficient and fast." I fully agree and am a huge fan of the wiki.

I even have to make one final plug for digital submissions and contest a comment Ms. Blouke makes in her discussion of some of the pitfalls of digital submissions, "No system is entirely perfect. Digital submission means that I can't generally grade papers on the bus," and admit that I actually do take out my laptop on bus rides and comment on student papers. Once papers are all on the wiki, I simply need to download them and create a folder devoted to comments on that particular writing assignment. The rest of the work is done offline, and I do not need to be “plugged-in” until it’s time to upload my comments to their “Teacher Comments” folder. In fact, I plan on reading papers while in the air during my travels this weekend.

Now that I’m done plugging for digital submissions and the PBworks wiki system, I’ll go into how peer reviews work via the wiki during in-class review sessions. At the start of the semester, I envisioned that students would provide comments on papers digitally—much like I do with their papers. However, before the first review session, students were very vocal about having hard copies to work with as well. So, that has been our practice. And, as fellow bloggers Blouke and Jay Voss have pointed out, this preference is clearly an uncommon one. So, in my class, I require both. Students ask for printed copies, and they get what they want for those peer reviews. Here’s the rationale for requiring that these first drafts be uploaded to the wiki as well:

 I can check to see whether they completed a full first draft:

Last semester, students learned that I was not going to read their first drafts for peer reviews, so I started to notice a trend of very “unfinished” first drafts, which did not help them or their reviewers. Reviewers were unable to answer all the questions I set out for them to respond to when their partners only had a page or two of their paper completed.

Students can more easily include specific examples in their feedback:

Since the peer review prompts students to be as specific as possible (e.g. if you’re confused, which part is confusing?; or locate and transcribe the main claim; give examples of where you see your peer explaining how arguments intersect/differ, and so on), rather than transcribing all of the examples that they want to refer to, students can download their peer’s paper from the wiki and simply copy/paste the relevant sections.

Increased sense of online collaboration and interaction:

Because I give student work high security restrictions on the wiki (only the writer and I can see that student’s work), peer review is the one time when students can peer into and access their partners’ work on the wiki. I grant assigned peer groups security privileges (but only to their peer group’s papers—and only for that particular paper). They are then able to type up a review and reflect on the paper copy and use the electronic copy as needed. Also, if a student is absent on peer review day, they already have access to the paper via the wiki, and I do not need to ask certain students to email their paper to their absent partners (this was an issue on several occasions last semester but hasn’t occurred this semester as this group has perfect attendance on peer review days!) The peer review process requires online collaboration because students usually do not finish their reviews during class time; they can use the wiki or BlackBoard to email their reviews to their partners. I also ask that they post their reviews on the wiki so I may see what kind of responses they had. Last, for multimodal compositions, electronic submissions are the only kind that make sense. For their final paper of the semester, I’ve encouraged students to showcase their understanding of visual and spoken rhetoric and incorporate a variety of multimedia evidence—whether podcast recordings of interviews they conducted, images they found or took themselves, or links to video sources that display authoritative testimonies.

And, since I use The Learning Record as my method of assessing student learning processes, I have the privilege of sharing evidence of the purposefulness and helpfulness of peer reviews from the students themselves. As part of the Learning Record, students make observations about their learning; I encourage observations that are relevant to our five course goals, or course strands, but otherwise, students are free to make observations on any topic on a self-imposed timeline (although they do have a minimum of fourteen observations to make throughout the semester). These observations are analyzed as data of how their learning progressed over time. In commenting on their observations, I focus on the content and not the grammar, so in the direct quotes below, I’ve kept the original errors and will refrain from pointing them all out with the [sic] reference.

One student wrote after the peer review session:

"For starters I didn't really know what to think of my experience with peer editing.  I like the idea of having your peer proofread, make suggestions, etc. However, I don't think I got as much out of it because my peer didn't give me any critical things I needed to change or work on. It was mostly just what I was doing right, which of course I admire, but I know my paper is far from perfect.  I found Ms. Mazique's suggestions very helpful though.  There were some things I knew after being in class I knew  I had to revise, but she gave me other feedback of things I had not thought of that were insightful.  I hope to implement the revision goals to end up with a splendid 1.2 paper!"

However, around the midterm, and after the second peer review session, this same student observed:

"I think this is crucial to the writing process for not only the person we are evaluating but for ourselves. I know that reading and evaluating my peers' papers it enhanced my own paper. The reason for this is because everyone has different writing styles and techniques and when I would read some of the other papers I realized my paper lacked in some areas where theirs was more in depth.  It made me look at my paper in a whole new way because of the feedback I was given and also the feedback I gave them."

A second student, who is not a native English speaker, has shown much improvement in his writing over the course of the semester. He made this observation after the second peer review session:

"For this assignment I review [my group partners'] paper. I felt like if I were Rachel for a second. I tried my best to correct their papers, and I also focused on their erros. I used my experience learned from my mistakes and applied it to their papers. I also used what I have learned from Rachel's comments. This assignment helped me realize how much I have learn."

I found this comment especially poignant after attending a Peer Review Workshop that presented research on how and why peer review works.

Susan Schorn, of the School of Undergraduate Studies, provides consultation work to instructors and faculty who teach writing-intensive courses (across a variety of departments). She shared research that confirms what I have experienced with my students.

For example, her presentation noted that Lundstrom and Baker (2009) found that students who gave feedback improved their writing more than those who only received peer feedback. Students with the poorest writing skills improved the most. Considering the improvement of the second student above and his strategy in providing feedback (trying to think like the teacher and recalling feedback he had received from me in the past), I would say that he relied on critical thinking skills in order to complete his peer reviews.

And, although research shows that peer reviews benefit those with the weakest writing skills the most, one of my best students--a student who already has a Bachelor's degree and is in my class only as a pre-requisite for a medical school program (that he's already been accepted to)--has also made an observation about the peer review process:

"While reviewing [my partner's] paper I found it very surprising how many errors in each others papers we were able to find in a single reading.  I found [his] comments very helpful and insightful, and I think I was also able to point out some sentences in [his] writing that could be clearer with a little revision.  It's amazing what another set of eyes can find."

A couple of other students made observations about how the peer review process made them think about writing style. For example, one student wrote,

"While analyzing and editing the writing of my partner, I learned many things about my own writing.  I learned how my writing style differs and how I can better my own writing.  Changing my word choice and syntax will help me explain my thoughts more efficiently and ultimately make me a better writer."

These comments align with other research that Schorn presented at the workshop with faculty from the English Department, the Department of Theatre, and the Department of Rhetoric. Schorn cited Monroe and Troia (2006) as finding that when students collaobarote their standards become higher. They are better able to assess their own writing.

We thus have evidence from multiple sources that peer review works when done well. One point that really stuck out to me was that peer review is an academic form of “peer pressure” (Schorn) that helps students take the instructor’s comments more seriously. After receiving feedback from peers, they are less able to rationalize that the feedback they receive from their teacher is just from someone who “doesn’t understand them,” or who is just another “really picky teacher.”

I’ll leave you with some other pertinent thoughts/options for peer review and links/suggestions for further reading in case you ever need a resource to justify your pedagogical practice of peer reviews!

Options for Peer Review formats:

1. Response-centered (doesn't rely on grammatical expertise)

--E.g. “I was confused when…” “This doesn’t make sense…” “I really like”)

   2. Advice-centered (recommending specific changes)

--Sometimes detrimental when students give poor advice, or the wrong advice, or do not know what to say so they make something up

  3. Ask students to do either or both

For further reading:

Check out the School of Undergraduate Studies' page on "Peer Feedback," which is a resource in and of itself, but also cites references to published books and articles on peer review.

Image Credit: Stetson University

As instructors, we all know how haggard most students look on the day that a paper is due—the sunken cheeks, the bleary eyes, the undaunted yawns all signal to me that heady material isn’t going to be as quickly (or as enthusiastically) received as usual. So, many of us make it a point to have some sort of fun activity on the day that a paper is due. We all know the kind of activity I’m talking about—the kind where students don’t have to have read or prepare prior to coming to class. I’ve been experimenting lately with making fun, paper-due-date activities using the technologies available to us in the DWRL computer classrooms. My most recent experiment, when my students turned in Paper 2, was to see what happened if I asked my students to make 30-second long videos about their favorite city using iMovie. I was quite surprised with the results. 

Whenever I introduce a novel activity like the iMovie workshop, I initially encounter some resistance. As I’m walking around the class to check on how my students are doing, I often notice that a few of my students are visibly frustrated with the new and unfamiliar program. Some of my students documented their discomfort in their Learning Record observations last week, and I learned that, for a couple students, the activity “was somewhat frustrating initially” and “interesting but very overwhelming at first.” Reading these types of observations reminds me that not all students are as tech-savvy as I assume they are.

These observations also help me think about ways to boost my students’ confidence and skills in the workshop environment. On my rounds, I often make a beeline for those struggling students and show them simple things on iMovie that have impressive effects (like adding text over the images that they imported into the program, or transitioning between images, or incorporating a map). With a small amount of confidence in their video editing skills, students let go of their inhibitions and start experimenting with the program’s many effects. In other observations, I learned that students “never realized all of the things you could do with [iMovie], from adding effects, to music, to words and sounds,” and that, for one student, “playing with iMovie on the computers during class was the highlight of my day!” These moments of confidence and skill-building are great results from such a low-stakes, unstructured, and fun activity.   

Since the final project for my course, Rhetoric of Suburbs & Slums, is a group video, the iMovie workshop isn’t just an unrelated activity for the goals of my course. Students gain familiarity and a few skills in importing, editing, and exporting. Many students also end up reflecting on their own habits, such as one student who observed that “it was interesting to try a new program that I see everyday, but never open. It made me think about all the programs that are unused on my computer, sitting there, but never used. All it takes is a click to try something new, and it adds to my knowledge!” Another student stressed that “This quick tutorial showed me how to edit videos and slide shows in addition to adding effects. I'll definitely be able to use this skill in the future!” My main goal for this activity is to allow students to de-stress after a paper. Yet, sneakily, I’m preparing them for their final project, too.

I hope to continue experimenting with these low-stakes, high-fun classroom activities using new programs. After Friday’s wonderful AVRG workshop on “Using Video in the Literature and Rhetoric Classrooms,” I’m inspired to come up with other activities (such as the suggested classroom activity of juxtaposing recorded poems and images) for the day that Paper 1 is due in my literature class next semester…

image via Fanpop

Jeff Winger is Socrates’ worst nightmare. As an former lawyer disbarred for having a phony bachelor’s degree, and whose central skill on the NBC sitcom Community is manipulating others’ emotions with his words, Jeff bears out almost all of the concerns Socrates expresses in the Phaedrus and Gorgias about what can happen when training and skill in rhetoric is divorced from a strong moral code.

Quick context before I get back to talking about Jeff’s sophistic wiles (and, eventually, pedagogy—I promise): Community is a show about the increasingly unrealistic/delightful adventures of a community-college study group, and Jeff is one of the show’s and group’s central characters. He’s back in school to replace the fake degree mentioned above, and is usually—though not always—a raging narcissist.

As a narcissist, he frequently uses his abilities in judicial speech to make his own life easier: talking his groupmates into giving him extra help on class projects or tests, talking the dean into giving him credit for made-up courses. And his groupmates, ever more aware of his proclivity, venture observations about Jeff that sound strikingly similar to the observations ventured by the Greek sophists’ contemporaries. Jeff “always [knows] what to say and always [knows] when to slap the table” (“Contemporary American Poultry”); thus—like Gorgias’ audiences—his listeners are “willing but not forcibly made slaves” by his words (Plato, Philebus 58a). When he finds it difficult to compose a wedding toast, his friend Annie is skeptical, observing, “You once convinced [someone] that turtlenecks were made of turtles’ necks.” Jeff concurs, noting, “My superpower is being able to assume any position that suits my purpose” (“Urban Matrimony”). Jeff Winger: 21^st-century master of the dissoi logoi.

And then there’s Britta. Another member of the study group, she alternates between playing Jeff’s antagonist, love interest, and conscience. If Jeff’s superpower is speaking well in support of whatever position serves his purposes, Britta’s is being dubbed “the worst” as she alienates friends and strangers alike with her frequently off-putting commitment to social causes (consider montage #1). 

In one episode, as the other characters talk excitedly about the delicious nature of their college cafeteria’s chicken fingers, she proudly declares, “I wouldn’t know. I’m a vegetarian. And if you guys knew how they treated the animals you’re eating, you would eat then even faster just to put the out of their misery. And then you would throw up” (“Contemporary”). By the time her speech shifts gears into a pathetic—and not in the classical sense—lament over her pet cat’s health problems, the rest of the group has gone from rolling their eyes to literally sprinting for the door, dashing toward the promise of a coveted chicken finger. In short, Britta Perry is a supremely ineffective rhetor. But—perhaps not coincidentally—Britta is also the moral center of the show.

Why, you might ask, is this relevant to a blog that is not (yet) a Community fanblog? Because, for me, Jeff and Britta serve as frequent reminders of the diversity of students and student attitudes I am likely to encounter as a rhetoric instructor. There are Jeffs, who might see a rhetoric course as an easy “A,” a chance to show off skills they already possess on the way to the meaningless, bureaucratic credential of a college degree. And there are Brittas, who might actually be better at empathizing with and considering the perspectives of the marginalized, but aren’t skilled at considering their peers’ perspectives in a way that will persuade said peers to take seriously the plights of the marginalized. (And, of course, there are Abeds, Annies, Changs, Pierces, Shirleys, and Troys, but this is a blog post—not a dissertation chapter [yet].) Strong persuasive skills with little ethical support, strong ethical character with little rhetorical savvy, and all point in between.

As a teacher of rhetoric, my tendency is often to valorize the Brittas and dread the Jeffs, feeling—like Socrates—that effective rhetorical instruction without an explicit focus on ethical content risks creating narcissistic manipulators. Despite the excess of credit such a worry likely grants to a one-semester first-year rhetoric course, it’s a worry that pesters me every time a student offers an inadvertently xenophobic comment in a class discussion.

My inclination with such comments is often to jump in with a brief counter-declamation, one that demonstrates—for instance—why men aren’t innately superior to women as college professors. But, in my more reflective moments, I wonder if I’m giving the student-communities I facilitate too little credit. After all, it’s rarely the teachers on Community who effect change in the study-group characters—the students effect change in each other. When Jeff gives persuasive speeches intended to prevent the group’s fragmentation, he doesn’t do so because he’s received in-class ethical instruction. It’s because the sense of community engendered by the group has fostered in him a sense of ethical responsibility for its members’ well-being (cue montage #2).

And beginning to understand her groupmates is one thing that helps Britta better communicate the import of social causes.

Obviously Community is artificial (but hey, so are Plato’s dialogues), so its merit as a ground for reflecting on one’s teaching practices might be doubtful. At the very least, however, I do find it helpful as a reminder of how potent a persuasive influence students can have on each other, and a check on my occasional urges to assume ethical caveats in the classroom must come from the teacher. Perhaps I instead need to leave more time for my students to respond to and complicate each other’s perspectives, myself learning to ask questions that effectively open spaces for ethical inter-student communities, rather than tending towards Socratic monologues that seek to impose morality from above.

Works Cited

"Contemporary American Poultry." Community: The Complete First Season. Sony, 2010. DVD.

Plato. Gorgias. Trans. Donald J. Zeyl. Indianapolis IN: Hackett, 1987. Print.

Plato. Phaedrus. Trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1995. Print.

Plato. Philebus. The Older Sophists. Ed. Rosamund Kent Sprague. 1972. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2001. 39. Print.

"Urban Matrimony and the Sandwich Arts." Community. Hulu. 2012. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.

Teaching English classes (or any kind of class, for that matter) to an audience of native speakers can be intimidating for graduate instructors who are not native speakers of English. Even if communication as such is not a problem, students will react differently to a non-native speaker when it comes to grading their papers or teaching them about grammar or style. Research shows that undergraduate students tend to associate accented, “broken” English with a lack of qualifications (Rubin&Smith 1991). An easy remedy seems obvious: Give foreign instructors better language training, and everything will be fine. It turns out, however, that students’ perception of the teacher’s language skills is only partly determined by the instructor’s command of grammar, lexicon, and pronunciation: Recent studies in speech perception find that students’ social attitudes strongly influence their impression of how well their teacher speaks English. 

The first and probably most surprising finding is that the teacher’s looks, more specifically the teacher’s perceived ethnicity, influences students’ speech perception. Several studies have described what we might call “dialect hallucination”: Listeners will hear an accent where there is none. In Rubin 1992, for instance, two groups of students were asked to listen to a recorded lecture and were shown a photograph of the speaker. While the recordings were identical, the photos were not: Researchers presented a photo of a Caucasian speaker to one group, a picture of an Asian woman to the other. Even though all participants were exposed to the same recording of unaccented American English, the students who were under the impression that they were listening to an Asian speaker reported significantly more difficulties in understanding the speaker.  The participants heard an accent where there was none, judging from her “foreign” appearance that her speech probably sounded foreign, too. This imagined accent directly influenced their behavior during the lecture: students associated accented speech with lower qualifications and paid less attention to what the speaker had to say.

Now besides the fact that listeners might just imagine an accent based on the looks of their teacher, they will also not treat all accents the same. Students’ evaluation of how “correct” or “pleasant” their non-native teacher speaks varies according to the first language of the teacher: In a study (Lindemann 2005)  that asked students to label foreign-accented English according to “correctness” and “pleasantness”, participants generally perceived Western European accents to be more “correct” than varieties from China, India, Russia or Mexico. While some of these findings make sense linguistically since speakers of closely related European languages might find it easier to learn English, the ratings seem influenced by the students’ attitudes towards the specific country. A Mexican accent, for instance, will be quite similar to the Spanish accent of a teacher from Spain; the former, however, is consistently described as less correct and less pleasant than the latter. The table reproduced below presents several similar examples. French-accented English, for instance, will be perceived as “more correct” than Chinese- or Russian-accented English, even if all the speakers have almost native-like competence.

From: Lindemann (2005): 192

Students’ perception of their teacher’s competence in English is thus more than a simple reaction to language skills. Social attitudes and stereotypes influence students’ evaluation of their teacher’s linguistic competence and qualifications.

Works Cited:

Lindemann, Stephanie. 2005. "Who speaks 'broken English'? US undergraduates' perceptions of non-native English". International Journal of  Applied Linguistics (15.2): 187-212.

Rubin, Donald L. 1992. "Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates' judgment of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants". Research in Higher Education (33.4): 511-531.

Rubin, Donald and Kim Smith. 1990. "Effects of accent, ethnicity and lecture topic on undergraduates' perception of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants. International Journal of Intercultural Relations (14.3): 337-353.

Like most writing teachers, I like incorporating informal writing assignments into my class in order to make my students comfortable with writing casually and in the moment, without the the threat of a bad grade stifling their process. One way I've done this in my Banned Books class this semester is by requiring them to post a blog entry on the day's reading at least once during the semester. (The post is graded pass/fail, which also enables them to stretch the parameters of the assignment in any way they like.) This semester, the blogging assignment has created some interesting, and I think helpful, resonances between our material and popular culture. 

I should add here that even though I believe that informal writing assignments are important, I also take care to reiterate to my class that the informality of the blogging assignment doesn't carry over into their midterm, final, and assorted short papers. These I grade pretty strictly. That's why I like the blog so much--it provides what I think is a needed counterpoint to the finality of the writing assignments. Writing doesn't always have to be fraught with anxiety.

That said, the blog posts also allow my students to incorporate other kinds of media into their thoughts on the day's reading. The assignment asks them to write a post before class summarizing the day's reading. In addition I also ask them to incorporate critical observations about the reading, connecting it to themes we've already covered, or even to our other texts. They are also required to post three to five critically substantive discussion questions to guide the day's discussion. These questions can be conceptually or thematically oriented, or they can ask the class to pay special attention to a particular scene or passage in the reading, encouraging the class to perform, together, a close reading of the passage in question. The blog posts are assigned at the beginning of the semester, and it usually works out that there is one scheduled blog post per class day. This way, each student gets to lead discussion for one day during the semester--the day's blogger has to walk us through his or her post, and explain the discussion questions.

Since they are writing in blog format, I expect them to follow "blogging conventions," which for me includes incorporating other forms of media--mostly images--into the posts. It was about halfway through our reading of The Island of Dr. Moreau that I began to notice an interesting confluence between the reading and, in particular, the images that my students chose to use in their posts.

First, some background. As most of you probably know, H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau is an early science fiction novel that dramatizes the horror of the proximity of our cruel animal natures. Dr. Moreau, an island-bound exiled vivisectionist, performs "experiments" on animals, attempting surgically to instill in them human physical and mental characteristics. The result is a grotesque menagerie of half-human, half-animal beings who both manifest the cruelty of their natures and inspire similar cruelty in their holders--Moreau and the two men who are trapped on the island with him. The idea, of course, is that it's unclear whether cruelty is inherently a human or animal instinct, and by the end of the novel we are left questioning the utility of the nominal boundary between "human" and "animal."

Here's where it gets interesting. The students assigned to blog about The Island of Dr. Moreau tended, apparently organically, to incorporate LOLcat images into their posts. Though the gesture is perhaps a bit flippant (an attitude that I don't frown upon in class, if it's in response to the content of a text--I take it as a sign of engagement) to me it suggested some kind of affinity between our cultural obsession with the comically illiterate cats and the horror of the just-barely human animals in the text. Below, a couple of examples of their images. 

The first image refers to the twisted biblical allusions that the Beast-men make in their attempts to comprehend morality, and the second, whcih in our blog was captioned "A Drunken Beast," humorously reinterprets Moreau's epithet for his creations. Despite their levity, the lolcat images seemed weirdly appropriate for the text, and to me demonstrates that, even perhaps unconsciously, my students were processing the humanity/animality theme. Seen this way, their use of images suggests to me a sense of creative play with the ideas in the text, resulting in a digital archive of their personal, vernacular responses to the reading. I like to think of these posts as a collage of popular references around the complex themes in the text.

Their images were not always lolcat related. They also referenced other pop-culture phenomena, including body modification, plastic surgery, and cosplay. These images, some of which are rather shocking, emphasize the tenuousness of the human/animal divide. All depict people who, in some way, want to appear as animalistic or not human. Which led us to the question: what is the attraction of animality? In what ways can it be attractive, and in what ways can it be distasteful or even repellent? 

The blog also allows them to insinuate their own political views into the post (though I don't generally tell them to do this). Below, an image in a post about The Handmaid's Tale. Needless to say these kinds of images tend to inspire interesting discussion. 

At the very least, these images have led my class to make strong and unexpected connections to the popular culture they are immersed in, and allows them to make these connections in internet vernacular, in which they are very well versed. Indeed, this is a form of engagment that we teachers and writers often exhibit ourselves. 

 As described in more detail here, students in my “Literature and Biology” course participated in a Skype conference with the science writer Jonah Lehrer. Overall, the day was a success: having read and discussed an excerpt from Lehrer’s first book, students had an opportunity to meet him and ask questions, which helped to round out, synthesize, or challenge their previous thoughts on his work.

However, as I was writing up the lesson in retrospect, the problem of my students’ lack of participation became increasingly glaring. Interactivity and engagement are key aspects of learning, so the relative quiet of the class when confronted with a new (albeit virtual) presence was a major drawback. In fact, the activity was in part motivated by a desire for immediacy and interactivity: due to the small class size and availability of the speaker to address our class agenda, students would have more access to Lehrer than they would at, say, a large public lecture, or by reading his articles in Wired.

I’m curious first of all about how to understand this lack of engagement. Did it reflect a sense of intimidation at approaching a guest speaker deemed “expert”? I had naïve ideas that this dynamic would be re-mediated by the technology, but there was still an element of the ‘talking head’ phenomenon (literally, a huge projection at the front of the class) that belied this more egalitarian impulse, even if the speaker was situated in his Brooklyn apartment rather than at a podium in a lecture hall.

Or did it stem from the logistics of the set-up—the lack of eye contact between students and the speaker that made full interactivity/responsiveness difficult? Or was there something intimidating about the ‘newness’ of that format or situation, rather than the presence of the speaker himself? The only student who would vocalize any discontent about the conference at our next class session mentioned that she was thrown by the format—i.e., trying to communicate with the speaker without the usual visual clues. 

I tried to anticipate this student response by collecting their questions for Lehrer in advance on our course blog. I then brought their feedback into play during the visit. However, do readers have any thoughts on how to make these conferences more productive in the moment? Having students take responsibility for interacting with the speaker (e.g., tied to some form of assessment) might increase accountability, but it does go against the impetus to create a sense of comfort and open-ended dialogue in these conferences.

I’m also wondering: if we assume some limitations to engagement in the nature of the conferencing medium itself, I would recommend including some sort of post-visit follow-up that fosters further engagement. For instance, if the speaker agreed to it, he or she could be available for a certain amount of time via facebook or some other form of online chat. Alternatively, a follow-up assignment or exercise would allow them to engage with the speaker’s comments and give them a space for reflecting on the experience. Perhaps recording the session (provided permission is granted) would allow you to revisit the experience with your students, as this Yale professor did. 

In any case, I certainly recommend seeking out—and seizing on—opportunities to introduce other voices into the classroom through digital conferencing tools like Skype. I even stand by the somewhat broad pedagogical goal of the assignment, which is to demonstrate how our classroom discussions connect to what’s going on outside the academy. However, I want to point out the challenges of student participation and motivated engagement that I experienced when using Skype for an invited author visit. To what extent do they stem from the affordances these tools provide, and to what extent do they reflect how we use and/or scaffold them as instructors?

Since the beginning of my time instructing students in rhetoric and English courses, I have found that students are much more successful at communicating and developing their ideas when they become more aware that their writing is geared toward a concrete audience. I have also found that writing skills improve significantly when students learn to articulate their ideas in a variety of situations and formats. Finally, in talking with countless graduate students and professors about their own intellectual development, I have noticed a common refrain: teaching a topic is a crucial motivator and test for the mastery of a topic. In my "Special Topics Presentation and Blog Post" assignments, I have attempted to combine several of these values at once by requiring students to prepare the class for an upcoming discussion and take the reins for the first ten minutes of class. In doing so, the students write a blog post that provides an angle of entry into the day's reading and then make a presentation. In doing so, the students present an argument about the reading and follow up on their approach by asking questions which encourage the class to respond to their analysis, exploring how it relates to other parts of the reading selection. 

In the first half of the semester, I emphasize the fact that texts can be read through a variety of critical lenses; for example, in light of its historical background, the text's formal qualities, or the text's mediation of cultural conflict. After walking them through some examples of these kinds of approaches, I encourage them to hone their own critical tendencies with an initial round of papers. Once these skills have been established, they refine their skills by preparing their peers for a segment of the assigned reading. In the week before the class presentations, I discuss the next week's reading with students who are preparing presentations. Over that week, we discuss the aspects of the reading that interest them most and I point out some resources that can help them pursue that approach further.

Two days before the class, they write a blog post which advances their main claims and sets the stage for the presentation that they will give on the material.  The other students in the class are then notified of this and encouraged to take a look at the presentation topic. The setup for this presentation encourages students to make sure that they are, in fact, making an argument about the text that can be responded to. During the class period, they share their "way in" to the selected reading and explain its relevance to a passage or two from the reading. In doing so, presenters reframe their arguments to allow for more active discussion and conversation. Whereas a blog post invites students to respond to the substance of the analysis, many of the most successful presentations have been punctuated by moments where the discussion leader encouraged their peers to do short close reading exercises that are set up by the presentation.

                                                                                                                     Image Credit: Matt Hurst

So far, I have found that this assignment has produced some of the best discussion sections I have ever seen in action.  I have also found that students who learn to respond to one another in this way become more effective at finding their own personal stakes in finding . Finally, no matter what profession they ultimately choose, I hope that assignment will help the students get ready to think of themselves as "teachers"--as masters of a skill, art, or craft that they can pass on to their friends and coworkers.

For more details about this assignment, please visit my detailed lesson plan here!

--Ty Alyea