Course Description: Introduction to cooperative argumentation. Students develop empathic and critical listening skills for cooperative deliberation and problem solving. They apply and assess reasoning and argumentative skills on various topics in oral and written communication contexts
Course Narrative: This course taught me a variety of different techniques when it comes to effective communication. The beginning of the course was a general overview of what communication is and then from there the class dove into deep topics. We started by doing individual essays on rhetorical analysis of different argumentative essays and looking at the rhetorical strategies like syntax, expert opinion, anecdotes, etc, that authors use to convince the reader. Besides this we learned to look into the context of videos, speeches and essays and how the author and intended audience played into the essay (syntax, register, length) Apart from this, the class had us do a group discussion in front of the class to demonstrate how debates work and how effective research and body languages is apart in discussions. The discussions were interesting because each group had a controversial topic and all five group members had to research the viewpoints of a specific stance, even if they did not necessarily follow the beliefs. The last assignment in the class was a video presentation and this was interesting because I have never used a video based method of doing a presentation. The issue we focused on was medically assisted suicide and this was very eye opening because state-to-state the policies vary and the psychology behind the process is surprisingly positive. Another unique aspect of the class was the professor's focus on mental health and how meditation and soothing techniques play a role in effective communication. The link to the rhetorical analysis essay is here.
Course Narrative: This course taught me a variety of different techniques when it comes to effective communication. The beginning of the course was a general overview of what communication is and then from there the class dove into deep topics. We started by doing individual essays on rhetorical analysis of different argumentative essays and looking at the rhetorical strategies like syntax, expert opinion, anecdotes, etc, that authors use to convince the reader. Besides this we learned to look into the context of videos, speeches and essays and how the author and intended audience played into the essay (syntax, register, length) Apart from this, the class had us do a group discussion in front of the class to demonstrate how debates work and how effective research and body languages is apart in discussions. The discussions were interesting because each group had a controversial topic and all five group members had to research the viewpoints of a specific stance, even if they did not necessarily follow the beliefs. The last assignment in the class was a video presentation and this was interesting because I have never used a video based method of doing a presentation. The issue we focused on was medically assisted suicide and this was very eye opening because state-to-state the policies vary and the psychology behind the process is surprisingly positive. Another unique aspect of the class was the professor's focus on mental health and how meditation and soothing techniques play a role in effective communication. The link to the rhetorical analysis essay is here.