Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Argumentative Writing Handouts and Guidelines

Over the years teaching argumentative writing classes for undergraduates at Berkeley and elsewhere I have accumulated a number of general guidelines, workshopping templates, peer-editing worksheets and so on, some of which I have presented in teaching seminars, or which have circulated informally in bits and pieces, some online, others as smudged samizdat. Occasionally (and weirdly often lately) I get requests for copies of this material from former students who have gone on to teach themselves or who think they might apply in different contexts (organizational mediation and facilitation, that sort of thing), or from colleagues who remember some presentation I delivered who knows when, or what have you. So, anyway, I am publishing some of the material I get requests for here, just so that they are readily available for anybody who asks me for them. Another, slightly longer piece is forthcoming, but I want to edit it a bit first, and since I'm off to teach it will have to wait, come to think of it. But, anyway, the last few posts have been different enough from the usual in tone and substance that I thought I should explain why I put them here. Perhaps some will interest you despite the change of pace, but come what may, I'll be back to the usual technodevelopmental social struggle, corporate-militarist critique, and centaur softcore you have come to expect soon enough.

4 comments:

Go Democrats said...

Wow, cool! Thanks for sharing.

Ryan Berg said...

Dale,

I just emailed you about getting a hold of the 4 habits. Thank you for this post.

Robin said...

Seriously, thanks for these.

I'm doing a day of philosophy writing workshopping that I don't usually do in Intro, and I have a bunch of additional writing assignments that are slightly new for me this semester for other classes. These handouts are close to my own, and I might steal some of your wording where it's obviously more coherent and less rambling than my own. Thanks for posting these!

Robin said...

I shamelessly used your handouts today, and your thesis workshop ideas. Aside from the senior rhetoric student in class, I think the students who are writing their first philosophy papers found the exercises helpful. I certainly did, as it gave me a structured way to force them to talk out their ideas in advance of paper-writing.

So thanks for making these available!

(I gave you full credit for their brilliance, of course!)