Reflection and Refraction on the Semester

The end of the spring semester is always a difficult time for me where I spiral into a slug-like state of sitting around until 4pm for a couple of days wondering what I’m supposed to be doing. More realistically: I fret about what I should do first. I have a long list of things that, between September and May, I write down and grumble to myself that if I didn’t have to teach on this particular schedule I would have so much time to accomplish all these things. Well here we are in the earliest of early days of summer 2023, and I feel a bit out of focus (not the world, me).

Often this time of year is one that calls for people to call for reflection, which is a “bending back” or sending back of the light by formal definition. Refraction though seems more interesting where light is deflected, broken, and courses are changed. I wonder if rhetorically one can move into the other? As we reflect we suggest refraction? Perhaps the rhetorical move is to shine the light back, see what it shows us, then redirect the light going forward. It seems that in speeches many people keep this sort of attitude, particularly this time of year when we are awash in commencement speeches.

Let me reflect on the semester’s teaching then suggest how to refract that information to change what appears.

Moving Speeches out of the Classroom in Public Speaking

Reflection

This was something I thought would free up class time for conversation about things rather than about modalities. The trouble with teaching public speaking is that all the resources focus on modalities – types of occasion speeches rather than issues. My theory was that if I assigned particular books it would not only spark some good classroom discussion but good speech topics as well.

The topics the students chose had little or nothing to do with the readings. The class discussion used the readings to launch into tangents from the readings that connected deeply and well with the supposed subject, rhetoric (public speaking as I see it). But there was little depth to the reading conversation and no connection at all to the speeches, which we did through software called GoReact.

Refraction

Specific speech assignments – maybe 2 to 3 minute total reactions as opposed to larger 6 to 7 minute assignments – might be a good way of connecting the readings more to rhetoric. Asking particular questions about rhetorical concepts in the books would be good.

Keeping the speeches outside of the class is great. Going to continue it for a while, but I need to figure out who the audience is and what the style is for these speeches recorded on webcam. I might have to encourage them to do a few different kinds: Sitting at a desk, walk and talk, sitting outside, public place, etc.

There is also the question of accessibility. I have confronted this before in terms of offering some non-spoken assignments for equity purposes like quizzes or short writing assignments. The more I think about it, accessibility is vital but this might not be the way to go for it. I still need to think forward about how to do this, maybe weekly oral assignments is the way?

No Textbook only Books

Reflection

I seethe with jealousy when I look at compositionists’ courses, full of interesting books about vital and fascinating topics. I thought the tradeoff was rough: 60 plus essays to grade pretty frequently can cut into your weekends. I wondered if the best of both was possible: Could it be that I could assign a thematic set of readings and teach public speaking based off of that?

I tried in earnest now that I found GoReact. Earlier this wouldn’t have been possible since in the classroom it can take 4 to 5 class days to ensure everyone delivers their speeches. This is time wasted, as the classroom doesn’t really provide anything but anxiety and avoidance behavior from the students. Doing it as videos online seems like a better way to teach how to present more efficiently.

I assigned four books this term: Joe Sach’s translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric with Plato’s Gorgias in one volume, David Bohm’s book On Dialogue, American Dialogue by Joseph Ellis, and finally On Time and Water by Andri Snær Magnason.

I chose these because they represented ideas and topics I thought students would engage with automatically: Climate Change, U.S. centered rights discourse, and the role of dialogue versus overt persuasion. It seemed good and we had some nice discussions about the readings, but the course wasn’t readings focused as it should have been.

The students seemed to like the reading and did ask questions about it, the conversations went all over the place however and I wish it had been a bit more focused.

Refraction

Organizing the readings around key themes would be the way forward. I think I’ll keep Gorgias and Rhetoric as a good contrast to Bohm’s focus on dialogue as a sort of anti-rhetoric discourse. This could be a good way to open up the term since on everyone’s mind is the question “Why do I have to take this course and pay for it?”

Posting textual or audio responses in Discord or the LMS (we use Canvas, but Blackboard, Moodle, Google Classroom are all the same thing in my view) would be a two-birds maneuver – non-speech oriented assessment and feedback would be great to add.

One of the things we all shy away from these days is lecturing – it’s a villain! It’s not a great defense considering his politics and viewpoints, but Woodrow Willson had some amazing thoughts about lecturing in his writings about Adam Smith. I have re-sold those volumes or I’d quote it here. Needless to say these are not the people you want defending lecturing. However, given the podcast and YouTube future of public address, maybe lecturing can be re-imagined here as something that is done outside the class, and the classroom space is the forum or place of conversation about it. This is something to experiment with for sure. And time intensive for the instructor.

The other books I’m not sure of yet. Maybe something about rights and the Supreme Court? Students seem to be interested in claiming their rights all the time, so maybe we can send things that way.

Assignments and Artificial Intelligence

Reflection

A much bigger post to come here on this topic but I took the attitude of designing assignments and student work that pushed hard on the idea that I want their personal opinions. This is the solution to AI generated assignments in my view.

What I got was some very interesting writing that wasn’t very good by University writing standards, but great in the realm of sparking my imagination, giving me pause, and helping me rethink some of the ways I teach.

This course was called Foundations of Rhetorical Theory, or for those of you who are from the life, Classical Rhetoric. I had some great writing responses that resonated with me and it was a relief to not read the formulaic “correct college paper” essay that Jasper Neel savagely dragged years ago and Dan Melzer revived in a creative way not too long ago.

Thinking about the role of assignments in the land of AI had me think about fighting the huge wave of pedagogical history the students have about writing: It has to be professional, good, well cited, and correct. The anxiety is such that most students sit down to write a paper the night before and try to hammer it out without looking back at it – there’s too much that could be wrong with it, so better to just hope and type on! It is a challenge to fight against how they have seen writing papers over time, and on face they really don’t believe me when I say I want their opinions. But it worked out ok for those who gave it a go!

The paper assignment can seem like nature is upside down to them, what they thought they were approaching to climb transforms and threatens to drown them. Not preparing at all seems reasonable in a situation where the geography can alter without warning.

Refraction

Sharing a philosophy of writing or paper composition might be the way to go in the future. I remember once sharing my half-page, bullet pointed assignment guide for a paper that was incredibly general with a colleague who gave me a 17 page paper assignment guide that was mostly the basic rules of grammar. No wonder students turn to AI tools for some relief and manageability when they are assigned a scary paper. More repetition and more reinforcement of what I’d like to see through some shorter assignments might be good.

Students also write continuously, all the time via text messages and social media. Incorporation of images in writing might make the form more comfortable and push them toward a way to plan out for the kind of writing we’d prefer. Learning a language is best done in relation to the language you know already. And that’s what we are trying to do isn’t it? Not evaluate their attempts at something new as if they’ve been doing it a while? I’m very guilty of this too; a few years ago I gave some comments on some papers that I wish I hadn’t. Redesigning the assignment was more prudent to get the sort of insight that I want for them and for me. AI’s quick spread – like a spill across a table – has been great motivation to really work on what this could look like.

Communicating disappointment with a correctly written college essay might be the move too: “I like the grammar and the citations here but this feels empty; where are you in all this?” This might be the best way to get a re-write if someone has aptly used an AI tool to write. The detectors are no good; and the professors are worse than any cheating could be. Suggesting using AI as a co-pilot is good, but then they have to add themselves into the mix. I might try to write an assignment guide like this for my fall courses. If I do, I’ll post it.

Reflection and Refraction done! Now summer can begin in earnest, right? I won’t spend my mornings messing around with nonsense and start writing and reading at 3PM, right? right??