Welcome -- but first, a discussion about discussion... Welcome to this unit's discussion! Discussions are one of the most important elements of this class, because discussion is where you will work wi

Welcome -- but first, a discussion about discussion...

Welcome to this unit's discussion! Discussions are one of the most important elements of this class, because discussion is where you will work with your classmates and instructor to construct knowledge.

What does it mean to construct knowledge? A constructivist view of knowledge assumes that knowledge is not acquired simply, but is generated through a complex interplay of discussion, debate, and analysis. Constructivists view knowledge as something that groups of people create together by interacting in a social environment. 

You might be saying, "Okay, but so what?"

Good question! What this means that you should use discussions to try out new ideas, test your interpretations, debate important questions, and experiment with new perspectives. Discussions are also important because they are one of the places in this course where you will have a significant amount of interaction with your instructor. Your instructor will act as guide and mentor: asking questions, pointing out avenues for further exploration, offering corrections, identifying areas for improvement, and modeling good discussion habits.

For each unit's discussion, you will see a list of learning goals, a description of your discussion task, a note about working sources, details on grading, and other reminders. At the end of each unit, your instructor will use a rubric to grade your performance in discussion.  

With some practice, you will emerge from this course an excellent contributor to both online and face-to-face discussions!

LEARNING GOALS: By participating in this unit's discussion, you will:

• Better understand the rhetorical triangle
• Analyze this unit's readings by David Sedaris, Annie Dillard, Plato, and others
• Discuss the genre of the learning narrative

TASK: To participate in this unit's discussion, please choose 2 of the prompts below, and craft a 1-2 paragraph response to each prompt. Remember that your instructor is interested in your ideas, interpretation, and analysis, so take your time to craft a thoughtful response! There are many possible "good answers" to each of these prompts. Choose the prompts that most interest you. Please tell your classmates which prompts you are responding to!

1. Plato's "The Allegory Of The Cave" has proven to be one of the most important texts of Western culture. Plato's allegory can be dense and intimidating, but at its heart, "The Allegory Of The Cave" is a straightforward parable about the power of knowledge. Let's think about Plato's work as a story about learning. Who or what is doing the learning in Plato's allegory? What is being learned? What happens as a consequence of this learning? And what does Plato's allegory suggest about the nature of learning, education, and knowledge? How do you know?
2. In the final paragraph of "An American Childhood," Annie Dillard writes: "If in that snowy backyard, the driver of the black Buick had cut off our heads, Mikey's and mine, I would have died happy, for nothing has required so much of me since as being chased all over Pittsburgh in the middle of winter -- running terrified, exhausted -- by this sainted, skinny, furious redheaded man who wished to have a word with us." Discuss this quote in the larger context of "An American Childhood." How does this final paragraph change your understanding of the rest of the essay? Has Dillard learned anything from this experience -- if so, what?
3. David Sedaris is usually described as a humorist, meaning that his purpose as a writer is to make his readers laugh. Did you find Sedaris's essay funny? If so, what specific moments in the essay were most funny? What made them funny to you, exactly? Besides humor, Sedaris seems to describe something important about the nature of learning -- what is that? To Sedaris, what is learning best compared to?
4. Jenee Desmond-Harris writes about the effect of the death of Tupac Shakur on her own growth and identity. What stood out to you most as you read this essay? What elements of Desmond-Harris's experience did you recognize from your own experience? What did Desmond-Harris's essay teach you about how we grow and develop identities in adolescence?
5. Brad Benioff writes about "Rick," an important figure in his life. What was the nature of their relationship? How did it change? What did Benioff seem to learn from Rick? When in the essay does Benioff indicated what he learned? As you read Benioff's essay, what did you learn about how we learn from other people?
6. Most of the readings this unit could be classified as learning narratives. Let's imagine that the learning narrative is an authentic genre, or type, of writing, using these three pieces as examples. First, discuss what is similar about each of the pieces, and what is different. Then, describe your experience of reading these pieces together. What connections did you discover? Finally, based on these three pieces, what would you say are the important aspects of the genre of the learning narrative?
7. Choose one of the readings from the textbook and compare that writer's learning experience with your own experiences as a learner. Do the writer's ideas about the nature of learning hold true to your experience? Why or why not?
8. An important element of critical reading is understanding who a writer is writing to. Review the autobiographical essays from Ch. 3 of Reading Critically, Writing Well, as well as any relevant background information you can find online. Who seems to have been these writers' original audiences? How do you know? (Note: if you learn anything from a web source, please cite it by identifying the name of the web site and providing a link.)

A NOTE ABOUT SOURCES: One of the primary differences between everyday writing and college writing is that college writers are usually expected to cite their sources in particular ways. Let's start this unit. If you decide to quote any of the readings in your responses, please cite your source by placing the quoted material in quotation marks, clearly indicating the author of the work, and providing a page number for the quotation, if applicable. For instance, if you quote Reading Critically, Writing Well, you might form a sentence that looks like this:

According to Axelrod, Cooper, and Warriner, writing "does not proceed smoothly in a straight line from beginning to end, but rather may be chaotic" (13). 

Notice how the example identifies the authors of the quotation by first and last name, includes quotation marks around the quoted material, and includes a page number in parentheses so that readers can quickly find the original quote if they so choose.

For more examples and discussion of how to work with quotations in writing, see the Easy Writer chapters on "Quotation Marks" and "Integrating Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism" and the Appendix ofReading Critically, Writing Well. If you are still confused, don't worry! Try your best to cite your quotations, knowing that you will learn more about how to work with sources in academic writing in the coming units.