rhetorical appeals and argument

Critical AI Literacy as a Tool for Building Writing Skills

Kerri Rinaldi Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This structured classroom activity offers an agency-centered approach to teaching critical AI literacy in the writing classroom through a feminist methodology lens. Rather than approaching AI literacy as training students how to use generative AI tools, the activity positions students as rhetorical judges and critical witnesses, aligning […]

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From Connection to Critique: Evaluating an AI-Generated Essay

Abigail Michelini Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment brings generative AI into the writing classroom with the goals of learning about what it can and cannot do well, enhancing students’ ability to critique it, and engaging it responsibly without compromising critical thinking. The best place for this assignment is in the second half

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Teaching Critical AI Literacy through Popular Natural Science Articles

Chad Lewis and Jackson W. Martin Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description The writing classroom is an opportune space to teach students how to critically think about generative AI (GenAI) outputs and their limitations. This assignment asks students to compare the rhetorical situations of scholarly research articles in the natural sciences with their popular science

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Analyzing AI-to-AI Debate as Rhetorical Observation

Daewoo Jin Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity aims at developing students’ ability to distinguish statistical text generation from human meaning-making by observing how two AI systems exchange directed arguments in response to short, human-written prose. Students analyze rhetorical clarity, disruption, and absence in AI-to-AI debate transcripts, within one class meeting, and in

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Acting Bias: Staging Media Analysis in First-Year Writing

Freddie (Fiona) Harris Ramsby Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In first-year writing classrooms, embodied teaching methods, such as Kathryn Dawson and Bridget Kiger Lee’s drama-based pedagogy (DBP), “[provide] an innovative means to stimulate students’ creativity…to foster learning that sticks, cultivating brains that retain information” (Harris Ramsby 1). Combining Newman P. Birk and Genevieve B.

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“So What?” Speed Dating: Articulating an Argument’s Significance

Shannon Mooney Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity is intended to help students practice articulating the larger stakes, or the “so what,” of an argumentative or analytical assignment. The activity works best after students have developed complete drafts, and it can be easily adapted for any paper that requires students to present and

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Brand Style Guide Assignment

Madeleine Sorapure Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description The Brand Style Guide (BSG) is a common genre for organizations both large and small. It establishes a verbal and visual style that employees can apply in print and digital communications, yielding consistency across different expressions of the brand. Creating a BSG is therefore a good fit

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Impersonation Podcast: Understanding Untruth in Uncertain Times

Joseph S. Vuletich Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In today’s media ecosystem, politicians dismiss unflattering news stories as “hoaxes” and AI-generated deep-fakes concern us because of their increasingly realistic qualities. Scholars teaching information literacy have responded by developing sophisticated methods for sorting fact from fiction, promoting credibility, and dismissing falsehood. Yet falsehood is not

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Writing Counterstories: Ways to Challenge Dominant Narratives in FYC

Sana Sayed Volume 7 Chapter Description This chapter draws from Aja Martinez’s concept of counterstories as a rhetorical research methodology in rhetoric and writing studies and encourages you, a first year writing student, to draw upon your experiential knowledge to both challenge and reframe master narratives that are accepted by the majority. In first-year composition

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Rhetorical Analysis: Creating an App Casebook 

Melvin E. Beavers Volume 5 Assignment Description The purpose of this assignment is to use rhetoric to think and write critically about technology and the users’ experiences with it. To do so, students will work collaboratively to determine what makes a smartphone app successful. Once they agree, each student is bound by the criteria they

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