Assignment Overview
Reading Summaries (20%)
Discussion Boards (20%)
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Due by 11:59 p.m. each Sunday (posted in Google Docs and shared with Dr. Harris with Comment privileges)
Reading the materials and understanding them thoroughly will be key to successfully completing this course. With this in mind, you will need to submit a 3-5 page double-space reading summary for each week that respond to a prompt provided at the beginning of the week and to demonstrate that you understand the readings before we discuss them. These summaries will also encourage active reading, help us to demonstrate an understanding the history of rhetoric and major rhetorical theories, and prepare us to be able to fully support our ideas in the discussion board weeks. Your readings summaries may lend to your wiki work. See deadlines on the Schedule
Discussion boards will ask you to reflect on the readings and ask and answer questions to engage classmates. See 2.1 Discussion Board for an overview of discussion board requirements. During most weeks of the class, we will be discussing the readings on the syllabus. Your job, just as it would be in a face-to-face graduate seminar, is to 1) pose questions about each reading and 2) engage classmates in discussion about those questions and to engage your classmates in discussion of those questions. The questions can be analytical (e.g., What does Douglas Ehninger mean when he states that …), application (e.g., Would what Ehninger said regarding … apply to …), or evaluation (Is what Ehninger says about …. relevant to…?). You can NOT ask basic knowledge questions (e.g., What does Ehninger say about ….?) or questions that simply ask for the reader’s opinion (e.g., What do you think about Ehninger?). To engage in discussion, you must login multiple times during discussion weeks to respond both to those who take on your initial questions and to respond to the questions of others. I evaluate discussion boards for both content and engagement (both what the posts say and whether or not the posts respond to others). See the discussion board rubric in Blackboard for further details on how discussion boards are evaluated. |
Two Edited Wiki Pages (20%)
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You will be responsible for posting one original wiki page to RhetWiki.com, our new departmental rhetoric page, before midterm and one original wiki page before finals. One of the posts should be an explanation of a rhetorical term and the other post should be an overview of the theories and major works of a rhetorician. You will need to follow the guidelines specified in the RhetWiki Style Guide.
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Essay Exam (10%)
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We will have an essay exams over the first five weeks of this semester. For this exam, you will log in to answer a question that establishes what time you first accessed the exam questions. You will then have two days from that point to answer the essay questions. You can use any readings, notes, or research to answer the questions.
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Rhetorical Analysis Proposal (10%) and Essay (20%)
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You will propose and complete research to perform a rhetorical analysis of a major artifact (i.e., a written work, video, etc.), social movement (i.e., Quiverfull, the Occupy Movement, etc.), or a modern concept (i.e., poverty, family values, etc.). The proposal must be approved before research can commence on the rhetorical analysis. The final project should be 15-20 pages.
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