Founded in 1995, the IEDP is a non-partisan, grassroots teaching and learning collaborative for faculty interested in public writing, argumentation, political debate, the civic traditions of rhetoric, democratic discourse in the age of the Internet, and patterns of communication across cultures. Courses at any level can make good use of the project.

Each year classes are connected via email and web-based discussion forums so that students can:

· interact and write about public, social, and cultural issues

· study the media and politics

· work on collaborative and community projects

· meet face-to-face at regional conferences or via video technology

Beverly Wall, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA:  beverly.wall@trincoll.edu

Classes that participate in the IEDP usually emphasize one or more of these goals.

In the IEDP, students join email lists or web-based discussion forums where they raise and debate issues of concern to them. With each posting they face many rhetorical challenges as they explore ideas with others and try to turn the attention of readers to their issue and to their stance on an issue. They try to understand what kinds of appeals and evidence gain attention, have credibility, and are persuasive. They learn how each message creates its own ethos--intentionally or unintentionally. Also, they may come face to face with the temptation to be rude, insulting, or destructive of responses with which they disagree, and they must decide the most appropriate responses to such writing. In the process, students put into action the study of rhetorical principles, along with theories of argumentation and discourse.

In the IEDP, students find that the boundaries of their single classrooms are extended by the multi-class network. They write to a wide diversity of students from different institutions and geographic areas--students with a range of characteristics in terms of race and ethnicity, class, gender, age, and sexual orientation. As the exchanges continue, students may explore their own expectations and prejudices about "others," and they may explore the unexamined sources of their own identity formation and culture.

In the IEDP, students’ posts receive immediate responses from an audience. As they continue in an extended exchange, students have the opportunity to use their readers’ responses as creative input as they draft, revise, and "publish" their posts. They can study what a particular set of readers care about, what they already know about the topic, what they do not know, and towards what end they, as authors, would like to move or affect this audience. In order to achieve this end, they can grow sensitive to the issues and ideas that gain the attention of this audience, to the evidence and values that matter to this audience, and to the language and tone of voice which gain their respect. At the same time, students discover their own gaps in knowledge and learn to "listen" and to account for the audience’s views and values and thus, they have an opportunity to adjust and revise their goals and their views. In the process, students learn about the kinds and stages of public writing that keep the discourse moving forward and the kinds that are merely repetitious, uninformative, rude, or destructive. Ultimately, they learn to judge the success of their writing by the kind and quality of response they get from their audience.

Students learn to discuss selected topics of public concern and to develop a critical perspective on these issues.

In the IEDP, students raise and debate an array of issues, both familiar and surprising, as they connect the public sphere to their own education, their future, their world views, and their day-to-day lives. As they continue their exchanges, they learn what are the stock issues related to a current public controversy, what are the typical stances, and what are the prospects for consensus or action. Also, they develop tools of critical analysis that will help them understand the politics and discourse of any particular issue. They may identify paralyzing binaries and envision alternatives. In addition, they may confront the slippery boundary between the public and private, and they struggle to decide what makes a particular situation a public issue or a personal problem.

Students learn about the nature of dialogic communication via the Internet as they participate in an essential activity of democracy: public deliberation.

In the IEDP, students share their concerns about political and social problems that affect them as citizens, personally and politically. In their posts, students explain why they are concerned about a problem that affects them, their peers, their region, their country, etc. They explain what they would like to do or have others do about the problem. As their readers agree or disagree, student-citizens are challenged to analyze the problem further, explain the causes and effects, share personal stories, pose hypothetical examples, and argue for a particular policy or solution. They also learn how hard and carefully citizens must argue for their points of view, how tempting and easy it is--especially on the Internet--to repeat standard phrases, clichés, and simplistic lines of thought or to be insulting to those who disagree. They learn how hard it is to affect change or move a community towards action, and how important it is to include all voices and views if consensus and democracy are to be achieved. By engaging in these exchanges and listening to each other, students gain a new kind of dialogic literacy. By analyzing the exchanges, students may also examine the effect of the technology and new media upon their deliberative discourse. They may examine whether or not the forms of communication made possible by computer technology will be a means of achieving new, more inclusive and participatory forms of democracy.

Students have the opportunity to work collaboratively with students from other colleges and universities on research, writing, and oral presentations.

In the IEDP, students have the opportunity to "meet" the participants at other institutions. Those classes in regional proximity may meet face-to-face at a common workshop or conference. Those at far distances from each other may meet via teleconferencing or some other form of telecommunication. This meeting is the opportunity to extend or conclude a number of IEDP themes and skills. For classes studying public writing, argumentation, and writing for real audiences, students have the opportunity to identify and meet like-minded students at other institutions; in the process they may work collaboratively on a project that they present to others at their conference. This extends IEDP skills to include collaboration, research, and oral communication. For classes studying communication across borders of culture and identity, students have the opportunity to meet and communicate in another venue, which may further complicate and unsettle students’ assumptions about others and themselves.

In the IEDP, faculty can teach students to connect their IEDP exchanges to public action. In order to make this connection, students engage in a learning cycle that differentiates agonistic argument from deliberation, that locates areas of common ground among all members of the deliberative group, and that uses this commitment-in-common as a prompt to seek opportunities for effective real-world action or advocacy. Students engaged in related service learning projects or in politically-oriented groups may bring their experiences to their IEDP deliberations. As part of their public action, students may have the opportunity to contribute to a student-authored Internet resource list of sites and organizations dedicated to taking action on public issues and problems (and hosted by the IEDP web site).

Faculty gain teaching and research advantages (and challenges) by participating in the IEDP.

By participating in the IEDP, faculty have the opportunity to teach writing, rhetoric, and civic engagement by using interactive, student-generated texts. In addition, the IEDP supports a special faculty e-mail discussion list, and it convenes a variety of face-to-face faculty meetings. In these venues, faculty participate in cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary conversations about the project with other instructors. They share and exchange teaching strategies, assignments, syllabi, and other instructional material. They discuss theory and practice that derive from shared experiences in the classroom and on-line. They collaborate on scholarship and research. They can research a large body of student-generated discourse (with permissions from student participants). Interested faculty are always welcome to participate in the IEDP discussion list and faculty meetings even if they are not teaching a class in the IEDP.

1. How much technology or computer know-how is needed for me and my class to participate?
2. Does the class need to be taught in a computer environment?
3. How much time needs to be devoted to teaching the use of technology?
4. How should I connect the IEDP to other class activities?
5. What other kinds of assignments go well with the IEDP?
6. How are the IEDP posts used in the class?
7. Is a face-to-face meeting required?
8. What occurs at the face-to-face meeting and how do I set it up
9. Do instructors participate in the students’ forums?
10. How do I track the students’ posts and how are these evaluated?
11. Can I participate in the faculty e-mail discussion list if I am not teaching a course in the IEDP?
12. How many weeks of my course should I allot to IEDP participation?

1. How much technology or computer know-how is needed for me and my class to participate?

The IEDP requires fairly common Internet technology and skills with which many students are now familiar. You and each of your students should have an email account and access to a web browser to reach the World Wide Web and the IEDP home page: http://www.trincoll.edu/prog/iedp/

Basic email and web-browser skills are all that are needed to participate, although some faculty have students build their own websites as special IEDP projects.

2. Does the class need to be taught in a computer environment?

The class does not need to be taught in a computer environment (although such an environment may facilitate students’ posting to the forums). Students’ reading and writing to the forums may be done outside of class and from any computer that has access to the Web. Furthermore, students may copy and save their posts either as a computer file or in hard copy so that they may track their own writing and share it with the class.

3. How much time needs to be devoted to teaching the use of technology?

The amount of time you need to spend teaching the use of technology will vary, of course, depending on your students’ familiarity with computers and the Internet. Some students may need no assistance whatsoever, while others may need a lot of help with basic computer functions and with overcoming computer anxiety. At the same time, many students may be more familiar with such technology than are their instructors, and they may be able to assist other students with acquiring the few computer skills necessary to participate in the IEDP. Such interaction is in keeping with the collaborative dynamic of many classes today.

Keep in mind that the computer skills necessary for participation--accessing, reading, and writing to a web site--may now be considered part of basic literacy for college students and, therefore, may have a natural place in a writing class. Furthermore, the more important emphasis and challenge in teaching with the IEDP should not be on computer skills but on communication skills within a computer-mediated environment. That kind of communicative action needs our expert attention and teaching.

4. How should I connect the IEDP to other class activities?

5. What other kinds of assignments go well with the IEDP?

6. How are the IEDP posts used in the class?

The IEDP posts may be used in any number of ways as befits the learning goals of the class. They may constitute weekly (or more) writing or argument assignments in their own right. In such instances, some faculty also ask for pre-writing analysis, planning, and/or drafting to occur as part of that weekly writing assignment. In other classes the writing of IEDP posts may occur more spontaneously during class time. Also, many faculty have students study a particular thread and then analyze it for specific features, such as for the presence of particular argument strategies and fallacies, for the rhetorical features of logos, pathos and ethos, or for other topical or cultural discourse features or markers, and so on. Such analyses help students to write posts in a manner that deepens the conversation and move beyond repetition or other less productive discourse. In addition, in-class analysis of the posts may also help students identify subject matter for other writing assignments, and it may help to prompt reflective analysis among students about the nature and sources of their own beliefs and assumptions.

7. Is a face-to-face meeting required?

A face-to-face meeting with other participating IEDP classes within regional proximity is not a requirement for IEDP participation, but it adds significantly to the IEDP experience. Many faculty have found that the face-to-face meeting has several benefits: It adds a degree of excitement to IEDP participation, it extends the range of relevant activities, and it provides opportunities for students to turn their internet deliberations into public action with peers and in the larger community. Participating faculty have found that their institutions are proud of their participation in an inter-institutional project like the IEDP, and the face-to-face meeting is a public occasion of such participation.

For more information about the benefits of the face-to-face meeting see the chapter entitled: "The Students’ IEDP Experience: Public Deliberation via the Internet & the Face-to-Face Conference," in the section entitled "Information about the Face-to-Face Conference" (pg. 15).

8. What occurs at the face-to-face meeting and how do I set it up?

The face-to-face meeting can be as simple as a convening of two classes in the same institution or it may include more classes within or beyond one institution. A variety of activities may occur at the face-to-face meeting, including such things as student presentations, round-table discussions, poster sessions, guest lectures, etc. These activities are valuable in themselves, and they are also in keeping with the deliberative and presentational learning activities of the IEDP.

To locate interested colleagues and set up a face-to-face meeting, IEDP instructors usually promote the project among interested colleagues within their own institutions, and they send inquiries to appropriate email lists to reach faculty at other institutions. Both strategies have worked well for IEDP instructors. Once interested colleagues are located, the location, goals and activities for the face-to-face conference can be decided (or alternatives to the conference are considered, including a telecommunications conference with a participating class, etc.).

For more information about setting up a face-to-face meeting, see the chapter entitled: "The Students’ IEDP Experience: Public Deliberation via the Internet & the Face-to-Face Conference," the section entitled "Information about the Face-to-Face Conference" (pg. 15) and "Advice and Information about the Face-to-Face Conference from IEDP Faculty." (pg. 16).

9. Do instructors participate in the students’ forums?

Participating IEDP instructors have their own discussion list where they exchange e-mail on a variety of topics, including:

Instructors may also choose to participate in student forums, and many have chosen to do so, although often in a low-key manner so as not to dominate the students’ discussions. (Faculty who are interested in the IEDP may join the instructor email list even if not teaching a class in the IEDP; contact Beverly Wall, beverly.wall@trincoll.edu.)

10. How do I track the students’ posts and how are these evaluated?

Faculty may track the posts simply by reading the discussion forums as the students do. However, the software used to host the IEDP forums usually allows faculty to sort the posts in a variety of ways that enable efficient reading of posts by one student, all students, or on one thread, etc. Another approach is to make students responsible for keeping track of their own posts. An electronic portfolio system can be set up, or a simple series of assignments can be given to students requiring them to report on their activities on-line and analyze the quality of their posts.

Evaluation of the posts (and of students’ contribution to a thread) should be tied in with the learning goals of the course and with the students’ increasing proficiency with the discourse and analysis derived from those goals, especially as these relate to communicating and persuading an audience, respect for a diversity of opinion, and an understanding of the rhetorical and communicative challenges of our new electronic democracy. For evaluation purposes, some instructors treat students’ posts as informal writing and give a single grade for participation, similar to a grade for class discussion or participation.

11. Can I participate in the faculty email discussion list if I am not teaching a course in the IEDP?

Faculty who are interested in the issues, themes, and questions of the IEDP are welcome to join the faculty email discussion list at any time. Faculty do not have to be teaching a course in the IEDP to participate in the list or to participate in face-to-face meetings. Interested faculty should send an email to Beverly Wall, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA: beverly.wall@trincoll.edu.

12. How many weeks of my course should I allot to IEDP participation?

There are many ways for a class to participate in the IEDP. Participation may constitute the work of a small unit or portion of a course, or it may shape the entire structure of a course. Classes have participated in the following ways with the following time commitments.

(a) Students do a wide range of assignments or projects as well as the Internet exchanges and face-to-face conference, and all of the assignments relate to the IEDP (see "Sample Syllabuses" and "Assignments and Handouts" in this Handbook). Time commitment = entire semester.

(b) Students participate in the Internet forums and the face-to-face meeting in addition to other, unrelated projects. Time commitment = one-third to one-half of the semester.

(c) Students participate in the Internet forums (without the face-to-face conference) in addition to other, unrelated projects. Time commitment = one-quarter to one-third of the semester.

(d) Students participate on the Internet forums for specified number of weeks, usually capped by an assignment to write a paper reflecting on their experience or using the experience and information gained to report on an issue. Time commitment = approximately 3 weeks.

In all cases, the nature of the participation should be tied to the learning goals for the course. Learning goals will prompt the most appropriate ways for students to participate and the amount of time they will require.

Importantly, instructors need to decide how much time their students will need to enter, understand, and enjoy the dialogic, rhetorical, and community experience available to them.

The students’ primary means of deliberating with students at other institutions is through their posting of messages to an IEDP web-based discussion board, which is prompted by their reading and responding to messages from other students. The dialogic give-and-take of deliberation through frequent reading and responding to IEDP postings by other students constitutes the heart of this part of the IEDP experience.

Students start their IEDP Internet experience by visiting the host web site. At the site they will (usually) find many deliberative forums to join. Some of the forums are topically framed, such as "The Environment," "Guns and Violence," "Popular Culture," "Sports and Society." Other forums are "Open" (designated only by number--"Open Forum #1," "Open Forum #2," etc.) and are places where students may raise and seek response on any issue they deem worthy. Students’ first IEDP decision may be which forums they will join, although many instructors guide this decision by requiring that their students join certain topical or open forums while still having the option to read and join other forums, too.

Some instructors have their students wait and preview other students’ postings as they come on-line. Such a preview is helpful in orienting students to the nature of public deliberation via the Internet and in familiarizing students with IEDP student culture, in particular. This kind of "lurking" is considered good form across the Internet. Lurking helps students move swiftly into fruitful IEDP exchanges and does not disrupt the on-going conversation. As part of lurking, instructors may have students read and analyze on-going "threads" or exchanges from previous semesters (some of which are still available for reading on-line). Students take note of what is being "talked" about, who is posting, how topics are raised and debated, what form, language, and structure characterize the posts, and which kinds of posts seem most productive in generating helpful "conversation."

After previewing the IEDP web site and selecting forums to join, students are ready to participate. They usually start by introducing themselves to others in the forum, and if they are among the first to participate in a semester’s forum, they raise an issue for deliberation. If a conversation is already in progress, students are asked to read all of the posts in a specific "thread" and then add their voices to the discussion. Of course, they can also seek to interest participants in new topics at any point.

Once the IEDP multi-class network is fully underway, students are primarily responding to the statements of others. The challenge for students is to listen carefully to what has already been said by others and to find a way to connect and interact constructively with others . In their first attempts at such response posts, students usually state (and restate) their opinions without providing evidence or reasoning. In fact, threads can get caught in repeated statements of opinion ("I think . . . "; "I think . . . . "; "I think . . . "). Students often abandon such fruitless conversation by joining another thread or by raising a different issue. Learning how to stay on topic and move beyond simple statements of opinion is one of the important learning opportunities of the IEDP experience.

If students are to move beyond statements of opinion and make public deliberation meaningful, instructors will have to help most students learn and practice a variety of effective deliberative strategies. Such strategies include:

Which deliberative strategy should a student pursue in a specific forum? How productive will it turn out to be? These questions and decisions lie at the heart of the IEDP learning experience for students and instructors.

In order to help students recognize and pursue new deliberative strategies, instructors often design accompanying activities, such as journals, thread analyses, rhetorical analyses of posts, web research, and more. At the end of the semester, many instructors have their students look back at what they have written or review the many threads in which they have participated and evaluate for themselves the quality of their IEDP experience and the new insights they have gained through public deliberation via the Internet.

I ask my students to participate in one open forum and at least one topical  forum and to contribute a minimum of one productive post per week. I explain that for a post to be productive it should be a positive contribution to the aims of successful democratic deliberation. I tell them that successful  democratic deliberation assumes that all participants have equal access to the deliberative forum, that all have equal rights to free expression, that all bear the same responsibility to "hear" as well as to "speak," and that viewpoints and opinions may be expressed and considered, but not imposed. I explain that democratic deliberation, which thrives in a climate of open-mindedness and a willingness (indeed, a necessity) to compromise, is oriented to consensus or, failing that, agreement to continue deliberating.

In addition, I tell them that productive, positive contributions to democratic deliberation include (but are not limited to) posts that

Finally, to help my students come up with appropriate issues to discuss, I suggest a number of conditions that might warrant public deliberation on an issue:

I tell students that the IEDP will give them an opportunity to discuss the issues they are following in the news, with a wide range of students whose opinions may be very different from their own. Past experiences have shown that these cross-institutional discussions can get very heated, and therefore, very exciting. This excitement can sometimes lead to reactions of anger, passion, awkwardness or disbelief. These reactions can, in turn, lead to even more exciting and productive exchanges--or they can become flame wars. Therefore, it's good to follow a few common, widely understood rules for networked discussion. (See first handout in "Assignments and Handouts.")

I still follow the old habit of asking students to browse forums and select a couple they find interesting to join. I don't require them to join open forums, but rather let them select forums that have either a topic or a discussion flavor that they find interesting. I require them to post twice a week (at least), and to copy me on their posts. In addition, I ask them to turn in a couple of informal writing assignments about the posts.

(1) After studying "ethos" in class, I asked students to submit one of their own posts, together with a discussion of the ethos they were striving for in that post; I asked them, too, to consider whether that post drew any responses, and if so (or not), could they imagine why (or not)?

(2) Later in the semester, I asked students to select a thread that interested them, and to analyze it using one of several approaches we had studied in class (we had read a variety of articles about electronic discourses): a sociocultural approach; a gendered-language approach; a rhetorical/deliberative approach. I liked this assignment because it required students to choose a lens through which to examine discourse, but it allowed them to choose a method of analysis that was meaningful and interesting to them.

The one skill I would most like students to achieve--and the single most important learning goal I have for this project--is to listen to and engage with others in meaningful dialogue. In other words, I want them to learn the skill of deliberation. I want them not just to "express" an opinion, but to hear, and respond to, the points that others make. That end will shape the guidelines I plan to give students next time around. I think I will ask them first to "listen"--to summarize or paraphrase another post they find interesting, and to respond to it (Rogerian rhetoric or, in more contemporary terms, dialogic argument). My netiquette guidelines will include some discussion of the techniques of quotation.

The IEDP is a forum, a place where students can learn how their arguments work with a real public audience and where they can practice the art of deliberative rhetoric.

I divide students up and assign them to a forum, but they often get impatient with their own forum and look at what's happening in others. Some have then participated in several forums. I ask students to post 10 times; it is assigned as homework. I want to see students develop an ability to read another student's argument and respond by exploring that argument's assumptions; to question each other's points they have in common and, most importantly, points on which they disagree; .to make a clear and reasonable case for their views and concerns yet remain open to other views as well; and to keep the discussion ongoing. As an accompanying assignment I have students examine and identify the reasons an argument is using.

The course in which I offer the IEDP is a course in argument and research, focused through an introduction to primary democratic documents and to rhetorical strategies. One writing project is a rhetorical analysis of a teacher-selected thread from a current or past forum; this assignment has been very successful. I have tried framing IEDP participation in several ways within this frame; the most successful seems to be to frame it as an opportunity to try out their rhetorical skills on a real audience and perhaps to find out how those in other parts of the nation think.

Regarding forum assignments: Students are assigned to a forum in the beginning; then if a student is not feeling that she fits into the assigned forum, I allow a change. For several years, I experimented with various posting assignments; once a week, twice a week, etc. Last quarter, though, I required that they participate in conversations and print their best conversation; students seemed more engaged somehow than when they had a particular number of posts. I find it interesting that those who successfully engage in real dialog post the most frequently; those whose posts are ignored get discouraged and don’t want to do it.

I ask students to post at least twice a week, making a total of three posts, two of which must be responses to other students. By specifying the number of times per week rather than simply the number of posts, students seem to engage more frequently. When I teach in a computer lab, my students often come early or stay late to read and make posts. Posts are usually done as homework, except for the first week when we do them in class and when I ask students to discuss a specific rhetorical strategy they've used or would try to use apply a rhetorical strategy learned/discussed in their posts.

Because my students have been first-year composition students, I particularly emphasize issues of audience when participating in the IEDP. But I also use the students' IEDP participation as a means for them to  engage in self-analysis about their own cultural positioning, examining the assumptions that underlie their own stances on issues and to see how that influences the types of arguments to which they are drawn.

Another part of the IEDP experience for students is the face-to-face conference. A face-to-face meeting with other participating IEDP classes within regional proximity is not a requirement for IEDP participation, but it adds significantly to the full IEDP experience. Many faculty have found that the prospect of meeting the students with whom one is communicating helps student-authors to envision their readers as real people and serves as a natural constraint upon discourse which may easily become inflammatory. Furthermore, the face-to-face meeting adds a degree of excitement to IEDP participation and can extend the range of relevant assignments to include collaborative and oral activities across institutional boundaries. More importantly, the face-to-face offers a way to bring IEDP participation to closure by turning the attention of the class to opportunities to achieve consensus or promote action among one’s peers.

A variety of activities may occur at the face-to-face meeting as befits the teaching and learning goals, including:

To prepare for the conference, IEDP instructors in regional proximity need to make contact with each other. The IEDP faculty discussion list serves as a good venue for locating regional faculty and discussing plans for the meeting.

Among the many decisions to be made are the location and agenda for the meeting. The activities for the face-to-face meeting should include those which most naturally bring the semester’s learning goals to closure. Also, the place, time period and agenda for the meeting should be added to the syllabus for the class so that students may plan from the first day and make needed adjustments to their schedule so they may attend.

Many participating faculty have found that their institutions are proud of their participation in an inter-institutional project like the IEDP, and they will offer support for the meeting. Many schools can offer meeting rooms without attached costs. Some faculty have access to bus transportation through their school’s athletic department. Small grants from deans and chairs may support bag lunches or other snacks. Other ideas and sources of support for the face to face meeting are readily discussed on the IEDP faculty discussion list.

The original galvanizing force behind the IEDP was a face-to-face conference of professors in rhetoric and composition. At this conference, which that year (1995) was in Washington, DC, a group of professors were talking about how important it was to be able to share ideas, research, and intellectual work with their colleagues. They lamented that students rarely get the chance to share their work with students from other campuses, and they spent many hours talking about how they could organize a course so students would have the same learning opportunities as the professors. From the idea of the professional conference, they worked backwards, trying to figure out how to get students together, and, once together, what they would have to discuss. Because the conference was in our nation's capital, and because they were rhetoric professors, they thought about having students study writing about public issues. The students could collaborate over e-mail (a new concept at the time!) and then get together at a conference near the end of the term to present their ideas to each other.

Since then, the face-to-face conference has proved an integral part of the IEDP. The conference enables students to practice an essential component of rhetoric: civic speech. It also enables them to collaborate with their fellow students at other campuses. They have the opportunity to meet the people with whom they have been corresponding electronically, and they address a real audience concerned with the current issues that have absorbed them throughout the term. Their research gains added meaning because it will matter to a large group of listeners. The students are also are in a position to develop ethos in a manner that rarely occurs in the classroom where the student writes primarily to the teacher. In the face-to-face conference, students present their research and their findings to their classmates as well as teachers, and, because the presentations are oral, they reach a wide audience and practice the skills necessary for civic speech. Because they have the chance to gather, they are in a position to share their learning in a forum that prepares them for professional work and civic action. These forums take the form of single presentations, group presentations, roundtable discussions, and poster sessions.

For most students, the face-to-face is a culminating experience. They take great pride in their work, they feel professionally engaged, and the conference itself is a celebration of their learning and their research. It is an exciting time for the students and the teachers--many students report that the conference is the best experience they have had in college.

One of the goals of the IEDP is to enable students to take part in diverse intellectual and social communities focused on deliberating political and social issues of concern to them. The electronic lists generate student discourse on public issues and provide forums for detailed written discussions with classmates and with students at universities across the nation. This exchange of opinion via the Internet is an intense experience, and it is expanded and deepened at the end of the semester a regional face-to-face conference where students present their work to each other in a variety of formats: group presentations, poster sessions, debates, formal speeches, and impromptu speeches.

If students understand from the first day of the semester that the face-to-face conference will be part of the IEDP experience, that knowledge affects the whole project. The students’ knowledge that they will ultimately meet each other in person contributes to a different, more thoughtful dynamic on the electronic lists, leading to a deeper sense of civic responsibility and a keener sense of audience as they work towards public presentation. Furthermore throughout the semester, students become aware of how others’ posts project images of their authors, and they then become concerned with the development of their own ethos. Then at the conference, they tend to forget the teacher as audience and to think instead of how best to communicate to the diverse conference attendees. Also during the conference, students’ preconceptions and prejudices are frequently shattered when they meet each other, contributing further to their learning.

During several offerings of the IEDP, my students have had opportunities to use e-mail to work collaboratively with students from Merrimack College and Worcester State College in preparation for the face-to-face conference. Our students seek out like-minded students at the other institutions. They then negotiate a project to present to others at the conference, and they divide up the work so that each member of the team contributes to the final outcome. Through this process, our students have learned actively about civic dialogue and tested their capacities for critical thinking, communication, and persuasion. As students have studied and practiced language, writing, rhetoric, and critical thinking, they have widened their perspectives and become more responsive and responsible through rhetorical interactions with diverse, multicultural groups of participants made possible by the networks.

A brief word about the conference schedule: Generally speaking, when I have hosted the regional conference, the agenda has two parts. During the morning sessions, students meet each other and make their presentations to each other on topics derived from their IEDP forums. During the afternoon sessions, students participate in deliberative discussion circles, where they take on a "case" or problem related to forum themes (such as how to reform drug or sex education in high school, or how to reduce gun violence in schools, etc.). They then present their insights to the whole group. The day ends with a whole group discussion about the complete IEDP experience. When URI hosted a particularly large conference with students from many schools, we added a guest speaker at lunch. The day had the feel of a professional conference, and the students recognized the special quality of the experience

Philip Burns
Worcester State College

One approach to a face-to-face conference is to combine and adapt the formats of traditional academic conferences (for morning sessions) and general public forums (for afternoon sessions), with the former providing a basis for the latter (the knowledge and experience students [as students] acquire at the "academic conference" supporting and informing their participation as citizens in the "general public forum"). At the morning academic conference all students actively participate through individual speaking roles (with or without visual aids that have been produced either individually or collaboratively) as part of integrated panel presentations, with 3 to 5 students on each panel and the rest of their peers serving as a responsive audience. In the afternoon public forum session, which addresses issues that are similar to those that had been addressed academically in the morning, students-as-citizens participate in problem-oriented deliberation groups--groups whose deliberations are informed in part by what had transpired during the morning academic experience--with each group presenting the results of their deliberations to the full audience of their peers upon completion of all groups' deliberations. Logistically, depending on number of attendees, there may be duplicate (or triplicate?) morning panels/afternoon groups on each topic, each set of panels/groups meeting in different rooms, but it is most effective if everyone meets together for the final presentation of deliberation results.

Regarding the foci for the face-to-face conference, here are two alternatives: One alternative would have the morning panel topics and corresponding afternoon deliberation topics corresponding to key issues that had emerged in the IEDP forums during the course of the semester. That way, the conference would be a face-to-face adaptation of what the students had been doing on-line during the preceding weeks.

The other alternative (which is the one I prefer) would make a clear distinction between what the students discuss via the IEDP forums during the course of the semester and what they address at the face-to-face conference. Within their on-line forums students would have discussed various public issues, including those that have come up during the Presidential campaign, the candidates themselves, and other campaign-related topics. In other words, the on-line forums would tend to replicate public discussion generally. The purpose of the face-to-face, in contrast, would be to address issues that bear more directly on the IEDP project itself--issues such as the role of higher education in public discourse; political apathy/activism among college students; what makes democratic deliberation effective (or ineffective); the problems/challenges for democracy in an electronic age; and the politics of pluralism, diversity, or multiculturalism. The main reason I prefer this model rather than the other one is that I think it forces the students to think about the democratic process, their own role in that process, the goals of the IEDP itself, public rhetoric, etc.--stuff that I think has wider and more important application than what they think about any particular public issue of the moment. In any case, this is the approach I tried to take in designing our face-to-face at Worcester State College.

Sample #1: Introduction to the IEDP
Sample #2: Guidelines for Writing Posts to IEDP Discussion Lists 
Sample #3: Responding to an IEDP Post - An In-class Collaborative Exercise
Sample #4: A Sequence of Classroom Exercises that Support Deliberation
Sample #5: Initial Self-analysis of IEDP Participation
Sample #6: IEDP Network Instructions & Analyses
Sample #7: Annotated WWW Bibliography
Sample #8: Informative Paper Assignment
Sample #9: Argument Paper Assignment
Sample #10: "Website" of 3 - 4 Linked Pages to Inform Members of an IEDP Forum
Sample #11: A Civic Document To Enhance Citizen Knowledge and Action
Sample #12: Collaborative Project for the IEDP Face-to-Face Conference
Sample #13: Guidelines and Netiquette for High Quality IEDP Discussion

Heidi McKee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

The IEDP is an on-line gathering of over ___ students from around the country. Using e-mail and web-based forums, students discuss and write about issues of social and political importance in American society.

The IEDP provides a forum to use writing to explore your own views on various issues and to share these views with fellow college students from around the country. Because you will receive immediate feedback from a real audience, the IEDP will also help you gauge the effectiveness of the various rhetorical strategies you use in your writing.

We will participate in the IEDP from _____ until ____. During this time the number of your hand-written journal entries will be reduced.

Access to a computer linked to the Internet. To access a school computer you must have an OIT account.

1) After we spend part of one class period navigating the IEDP web site, you will have some class time to read the posts that have been made and to write your first posting to the discussion, introducing yourself.

2) Each week you will need to write at least one substantive post (250+ words) and a couple shorter responses to the discussion. Before we begin this project and while we participate in it, we will frequently discuss ways to engage in on-line dialogue. (I say we because I participate in an on-line discussion with the various faculty members involved with the IEDP, so many of the issues you will wrestle with, such as, "What do I do if no one responds to me?" are also ones that I wrestle with as well. Maybe together we can figure out what seems to "work" in on-line discussions.)

3) Every two weeks, we will spend some class time sharing posts and discussing issues brought up in the forums. I encourage you to use the forum as a place to "try out" the arguments and evidence you will use in your argumentative essay.

General Information is available at: http://www.trincoll.edu/prog/iedp/

The IEDP discussion forum for Spring 2001 is password protected and limited to IEDP participants. The web address is <http://my.trincoll.edu>

Assignment Sample #2:
Guidelines for Writing Posts to IEDP Discussion Lists

Linda Shamoon, University of Rhode Island

• to encourage democratic discourse

• to explore ideas in depth

• to build good e-mail conversation skills

• to make a clear and reasonable case for one's views and concerns

• to remain open to others' views

• Read all (or all new) posts on the subject

• Select and thoughtfully analyze a few posts of interest that have a topic in common

• Plan and draft a response

• Reread and revise your response

• Update the subject line for the header if it is not appropriate

• Send the post

• Name the person(s) and paraphrase the idea or statement to which you are responding.

• State a very brief preview of the main thought of your message.

• Elaborate your position (tell your story, cite facts or source, state reasons, etc.)

• Invite others to respond by asking genuine, discussion-provoking questions.

I am responding to Steve and Jill on why no one else seems to be getting involved with environmental issues. Is it laziness, lack of education, or what? I believe some of it has to do with laziness but a lot also has to do with education.

Some people litter because they don't have the energy or make the effort to walk the five steps to that garbage can and throw their garbage out. They don't realize the damage that they're causing with that one little candy wrapper that they drop on the floor. Some people are in the mentality that someone will eventually pick it up off of the ground so what's the difference.

I do, however, feel that a lot also has to do with lack of education. For instance, no one did anything to save the dolphins until news of their plight was advertised all over the place. Once people knew what was happening, they got involved. I remember sitting in my fifth grade class and writing a letter to boycott all tuna that wasn't advertised as being caught in a dolphin safe manner. Today, the nets used to catch tuna are supposed to be dolphin-safe and the yearly by-kill and by-catch has been reduced from millions to practically zero. This was achieved through a big campaign to advertise and educate people about dolphins.

If anyone else knows of other species that have been saved through education, I'd really like to hear about them. Jill also asked about efforts to educate people about litter. I'd like to know about that, too. Thanks!

Cathy Jones
URI

Assignment Sample #3:
Responding to an IEDP Post - An In-class Collaborative Exercise

Linda Shamoon, University of Rhode Island

Directions: On the attached sheet are three short but complete threads from the forums at the IEDP site. Read through the threads and decide which of the threads you want to respond to. You will pair up with another person who wants to write to that thread. As you go along, develop answers to each question below and save them to a file on your floppy disk. When done, print out the answers in one document.

Co-authors - put your names at the top of your document and the thread to which you will respond. Now:

1. Decide together to whom you are responding. (You can respond to more than one person.) Enter their names on your document.

2. Decide together the specific ideas to which you are responding, Summarize this in your own words and record your summary in one or two sentences.

3. Brainstorm and talk through your one or two best response(es) to these ideas and your best evidence to support this best response. The best response usually can be explained in a sentence or two but it is made compelling when it is accompanied by evidence. Evidence can be: a personal experience, a real life example or two, a clear statement of your reasons or reasoning, comparisons to similar things, statistics, or quotes.

4. Once you have decided on your best response and supporting evidence, write this up in a clear, easy to read paragraph. Together, reread the paragraph for easy reading on line; revise as needed.

5. Now together embed this paragraph into a full IEDP style posting. Here is the full format:

Philip Burns, Worcester state College, MA

Exercise A:

Exercise B:

1. Go to the most productive of your IEDP forums and read all of the posts about an issue you've been discussing.

2. For each post, make note of any claims that are not substantiated--and that you think need to be substantiated.

3. Also make note of any other kind of information (factual, statistical, demographical, etc.) that has not been supplied but that needs to be supplied if the participants in the discussion are to be fully (or sufficiently) informed about the issue.

4. Go to our local discussion board and post a message in which you identify your issue and list all of the types of information that seem to be missing from the discussion. That is, list the kinds of information that would fill the "knowledge gaps" in that discussion.

Exercise C:

Go to the IEDP forum that is associated with your current Report project. Read (or re-read) all messages whose arguments might benefit from the research you've been doing. In reading these messages, look for a place where you can enter (or re-enter) the deliberations with a post that moves the discussion forward on the strength of the new information that you've come up with. Then make sure that no one else has already contributed the same information.

Compose a post that will enter smoothly into the current flow of deliberations, a post that incorporates your new information in some meaningful way. Post your message to the forum at the appropriate juncture, either as a post with a new subject line or as a reply to a post on an existing thread.

Heidi McKee, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Whether engaging in deliberation or persuasion with others, rhetors (a term for people who write/speak a message to others--in this case, you!) can always benefit from self-reflection upon their own positions.

Attempting to understand the cultural forces that have shaped your belief systems can not only help determine how you wish to present your views to others, helping you locate what rhetorical strategies will be most effective, but it can also help you attend more closely to what others are saying.

While it is not necessary for rhetors to bare their souls to their audiences (if that were the case, I'd imagine most of us would hardly speak!), you do want to be able to explain your cultural positioning in a thorough manner so that your audience can understand more clearly why you believe what you do. (Reference the class handout from today for samples of IEDP posts that attempt to engage in this strategy.)

In later class periods we will spend some time analyzing the rhetorical strategies employed by other students in the IEDP, but first I would like you to take some time analyzing your own postings. Read your first post or two and please answer the following questions in a typed, journal-like response (journal-like--do your best with spelling, punctuation, grammar, but my focus in reading these responses will be more on the ideas and analysis you present.)

Please print out the post (or posts) to which you refer and hand it (them) in with your response.

Assignment Sample #6
IEDP Network Instructions & Analyses

Beverly Wall, Trinity College (Connecticut)

Student Multi-Class Network Instructions
Web address: http://courses.trincoll.edu/courses/IEDP/

Basic instructions: Read and participate substantively once a week--at a minimum--in both an Issue/Topic Forum of your choosing and in the Group Open Forum to which you’ve been assigned (i.e., a minimum of at least two substantive posts each week).

As of October 1, 2000, over 700 students have joined us on these forums from other classes at Trinity, as well as at Wellesley College, California State University-Hayward, Villanova University, Merrimack College, Worcester State College, University of Rhode Island, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, St. Joseph College, Bradley University, New York University, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and University of Wyoming. The forums give us a rich, complex model for exploring digital rhetoric and argumentation in the public sphere and for experimenting with modes of participatory democracy on-line. At three points in the semester you will have an opportunity to analyze and reflect on your experience on the network with these assignments:

Multi-Class Network Analysis #1
Due Thursday, Oct. 19

Collect and print out all of your posts as of Oct. 17. Choose one post that you consider your best or that you find particularly interesting, and write a rhetorical analysis of your argument (two pages). Hand in the complete printout, along with your analysis.

Multi-Class Network Analysis #2
Due Thursday, Nov. 9

Choose two posts--one by you, one by another network participant--involving a direct exchange that you find valuable or interesting to analyze. The exchange may be an argument that you expressed, followed by a direct response from another writer; or it may be an argument made by another writer, followed by a direct response written by you. Write a rhetorical analysis of the exchange (three pages). Print out the two posts and hand in with your analysis.

Multi-Class Network Analysis #3
Due Tuesday, Dec. 5

Write a rhetorical analysis tracing the thread of a discussion that you were involved in (four or five pages). What was the question or issue? What claims were made and positions taken? How was evidence used? What was the tone and how did the participants interact? Was your mind or anyone else’s mind changed or enlightened or were views modified? What’s your evaluation of the quality of the discussion? Print out five representative posts from the thread (including two by you) to hand in with your analysis.

Deborah Burns, Merrimack College

This assignment asks you to collect TEN web sites on two discussion topics from the listserves of your choice. You need to be a critical reviewer of these sites. Remember, anyone can create a web site, and information is not always accurate, unbiased, or trustworthy. Always question any source. Do not just question sites you disagree with; question those you agree with.

After you've collected your ten sites, summarize the information on the site in the annotation. Give specific details about the site content, including discussion of graphics, statistics, and other t information. This summary should be in essay style and should be at least one paragraph long.

The second part of the annotation should evaluate the information contained in the site. Is the information useful, unbiased, well supported, or accurate? Evaluate the graphics and layout. Is the site easy to access? These are suggestions; you might want to come up with on your own criteria.

Each annotation should begin with a bibliographic entry written in MLA style of documentation. This bibliographic information should be SINGLE SPACED with the second line indented, in alphabetical order by title. Here is an example:

US Fish and Wildlife Service. "Program Overview." Endangered Species Home Page. http://www.fws.gov/~r9endspp/programs.html (15 July 1996).

Notice that the entry begins with author's (or sponsor organization’s) name, the full title of the work in quotation marks, the title of the complete work if applicable in italics, the full URL (the address), and the date of your visit.

Assignment Sample #8:
Informative Paper Assignment

Based on an assignment by Deborah Burns, Merrimack College

This assignment requires you to explain a topic from one of our listserve discussions in detail (5 double-spaced pages), providing its background or history, explore causes or effects, and analyze the topic’s debatable issues. This informative paper should contain objective information from reliable web and library sources. It should convey information in a manner that is as clear, economical, and balanced, serving the needs, interests, and curiosity of IEDP members. Unlike argument papers, informative writing doesn't aim at supporting or exploring your opinion or your critical insights. Instead, informative writing asks you to adopt the stance of a careful reporter or an informed synthesizer.

Assignment Sample #9:
Argument Paper Assignment

Deborah Burns, Merrimack College

This argument paper asks you to take a stand on a topic from our discussion lists. In argumentative writing, your own voice, attitudes, opinions, and values play an important role. As a result you must attend carefully to the relationship between your ideas and your readers' potential responses. The primary goal of argumentative writing is to advance the your point of view, or to suggest a course of action to solve a problem. You want to say to your reader, "Try to see it my way," or "Here's a way to think about this, and here's why." Some helpful hints: (1) Identify an issue from our list discussions you feel strongly about; (2) Articulate your opinion; (3) Focus on a thesis and purpose, (4) Develop supporting evidence (from WWW, list discussions, library sources, interviews, etc.), (5) Recognize and respond to counter-arguments.

Linda Shamoon, University of Rhode Island

Project goal:

To create 3 - 4 well designed web pages for members of your IEDP forum, informing them about a proposed action a new development with respect to an issue you and they are debating.

The pages:

1. A home page to introduce the impending or proposed action or decision. The home page should also explain why this issue is important and provide links to your other pages.

2. A linked "FAQ’s" page that presents a few of the typical questions asked about your issue and presents answers that appeal to your audience. (In your own words!)

3. A linked page that previews 3 good, stable and helpful WWW sites on the theme (i.e. a mini web biblio. - your own words).

4. Extra credit: A linked page that suggests and makes possible a real and effective action for the reader to take on behalf of your issue.

         5. Also due at completion of project: a list of your sources of information and images.

Activity Sequence: (1) select a topic from an on-going IEDP thread (2) locate a recent development; (3) complete an audience analysis; (4) locate and write-up audience-centered content; (5) develop a design and navigation plan; (6) execute the plan in Netscape (7) invite students on your IEDP forum to view and critique the pages; (8) revise the pages based on audience response.

Audience Analysis- Your audience for your web pages will be your peers in the forum. Your task is to analyze this audience, then to choose your web page content in light of your audience analysis.

a. What are the different stances toward your issue to be found in the forum? Name the people associated with each stance. Which is the most widely held stance? This stance and the people who hold it are your target audience.

b. For the most widely held stance in the forum, what is the primary LOGOS that supports this stance? There may be several reasons and evidence to support the stance. Copy an e-mail which demonstrates the main line of reasoning. Now, explain this logic in your own words.

c. What misconceptions does this audience seem to have about your issue (or development)? What content might you provide on your web pages to dispel these misconceptions or faulty logic?

d. What does this audience know accurately about your recent development? What new information, ideas or arguments could you provide to add to their knowledge?

e. What attitudes, values or beliefs seem to be held by this audience? There may be several attitudes and beliefs at play. Copy an e-mail which demonstrates these values. Explain the attitudes and beliefs in your own words.

h. Which of these values and attitudes could you appeal to in delivering your message about this issue or development to your audience? (Attitudes and values help determine why an audience thinks an issue is important and when they will take action on an issue.)

f. Your web pages should change or deepen your audience’s stance, logic, and/or attitudes and values. In light of your answers to all of the questions, brainstorm and list some of the content and images that might appear on your (a) home page, (b) FAQ page, (c) links page and (d) action page that will have such an impact. Connect your earlier answers to these decisions.

Linda Shamoon, University of Rhode Island

Project goal:

To create an informative, easy to use flyer, brochure, booklet, or web site for members of your local community that will help them participate in public life. Your document should motivate readers to participate and it should be non-partisan.

Your document might be a voter information packet; a brochure about local referenda, candidates, or pending legislation; a directory of non-profit activist agencies; directories for contacting elected officials and local administrators, etc.

Activity Sequence: (1) based on your IEDP forum, select a an area of citizen participation in which your peers do not know to proceed (2) locate and analyze the layout, features and content of similar non-partisan documents in the public realm; (3) complete an audience analysis and write-up audience-centered content; (4) develop your design plan for your document; (6) execute the plan and invite students on your IEDP forum to view and critique the document; (8) revise the pages based on audience response.

Audience Analysis- Your audience for your document will be your peers in the forum. Your task is to analyze this audience, then to choose your content in light of your audience analysis.

a. What does your audience know about to go about participating in your selected area of citizen participation? Post questions to your forum to determine their knowledge.

b. Through what appeals could you stimulate this audience to participate in this citizen activity? Ask your forum members why and when they would engage in such activity.

c. What manner of document would help them participate? Ask your forum members about their use of brochures, web pages, etc.

d. Your document should motivate your audience to engage in this citizen activity. In light of your answers to all of the questions, brainstorm and list some of the content and images that might appear in your document. Match this analysis with your analysis of such documents. Start creating your citizen action document.

Beverly Wall, Trinity College (Connecticut)

Objectives of the Special Conference Project:

(1) Collaborative Research: to give you an opportunity to "specialize" and work together with others as you examine closely one of the many sub-topics that make up our broad subject--the study of political rhetoric and the media;

(2) Effective Presentation: to give you practice in thinking about how to present the results of your study clearly and persuasively to a large audience, and to enable all of us in the audience--students and faculty--to benefit from your work.

For a group topic, you might analyze the campaign rhetoric of a particular candidate, or you might examine how a particular issue is argued by two or more candidates. You might follow the coverage of the Presidential election in one newspaper or on one news network, or take one issue and do a comparative analysis of how it is treated in two or more news magazines or on two or more networks. You could take a specific political talk-show on TV or radio and track the conversation for three-to-five days. You could do an evaluation of specific websites run by candidates, parties, or advocacy groups. You might study political satire on late-night talk-shows or in print cartoons or comics, or the effects of movies or novels with political themes. You might explore an issue that you feel is important but is not being discussed by the candidates or in the mainstream press.

For modes of presentation at the E-Democracy Student Conference, I encourage you to think rhetorically and creatively about how you can communicate the results of your study. You might organize a panel discussion, or plan a mock debate, or put together an annotated web page, or set up a poster display, etc.

Group Logistics:

The class will divide into groups of two, three, or four. You can use the class website to propose topics and form groups. If you haven’t formed a group by Tuesday, Oct. 31, I will assign you to a group in class. We will take class time to do group work and submit preliminary plans.

You will need to keep an individual log with notes of your work in the group. This information, along with an informal one-page assessment of your group’s presentation at the conference, will be due on Tuesday, Nov. 28.

Dates:
Oct. 31, Tuesday Groups formed and report of preliminary plans for projects
Nov. 7, Tuesday Post titles and descriptions of projects on class website
Nov. 17, Friday Presentation at E-Democracy Student Conference (10am-3pm)
Nov. 28, Tuesday Logs and assessments due

By URI Students in Wrt 235 Writing in Electronic Environments, Spring 2000:

1. Be a good responder. (Do more than say, "I agree with you.")

2. Make sure that your responses are non-offensive. But don't be afraid to make some waves with your responses. If you are not writing what you truly feel, you are only hurting the discussion group.

3. Make sure that your responses are well thought out and that they have good supporting statements. Make credible statements in well thought out answers.

4. Don't post a response just to post it. Make sure that you fully agree with what you are writing because another member in the discussion may ask you to defend your point.

5. Be aware and welcome a diversity of views and a multiracial audience.

6. Take time to correct the grammar and punctuation and spelling.

7. You don’t have to respond to every message. Try to be a part of some conversations on different topics but not on all of them.

8. Research and provide information that may further the discussion.

From The Research Paper and the World Wide Web (Rodrigues and Rodrigues, 2nd ed. Prentice Hall):

1. Before you start writing and sending off a message to the IEDP discussion, read all of the posts relevant to your thread since you last posted.

2. At the start of your message, indicate to whom you are responding and the idea to which you are responding.

3. Do not copy the entire message into your response

4. Write about one topic per e-mail message and aim at about one screen of text (or two).

5. Sign your name and university at the end of messages.

6. Complete the "Subject Line" of the message.

7. Reread your post one last time before you send it.

8. Do not throw a flame.

9. Do not write in capital letters. THIS IS CONSIDERED SHOUTING.

Introduction to College Writing/Participating in the Electronic Democracy Project
Composition
English Composition II - Academic Writing
Advanced Expository Writing: Rhetoric and Culture in an Electronic Democracy
Civic Discourse
Political Rhetoric and the Media

Introduction to College Writing/Participating in the Electronic Democracy Project
Deborah Burns, Merrimack College

Required Texts:

Branscomb, H. Eric. Casting Your Net: A Student's Guide to Research on the Internet. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998 (CN).

Hatch, Gary Layne. Arguing in Communities. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1999.

Intercollegiate Democracy Project Web site: http://www.trincoll.edu/writcent/edproject.html

Course Description:

This course is affiliated with the Intercollegiate Electronic Democracy Project, a collaborative project that links students and faculty interested in public writing, political rhetoric, and civic argument in courses across the curriculum. The course provides students with the opportunity to use electronic tools and rhetorical techniques to study the  discourse of democracy and to participate interactively in political discussion and debate. This En 105 section is a course in border-crossing. It should help you to recognize and cross disciplinary borders as well as the perceived border that separates academia from the larger public sphere. The  operative metaphor for the course is "conversation"; the central concept is "discourse," or the ways of writing and speaking that comprise "the conversations" whose purpose is to carry out the work of communities, in this case the various disciplinary communities of academia and the primarily deliberative communities of the civic public sphere. Given this metaphor and concept, you will learn about academic and public discourses by participating in them (through both writing and speaking). You will increase your understanding of those discourses by sharing in the work of both the academic and deliberative communities.

In this course you will develop your research, writing, and deliberation skills as you interact with your peers at Merrimack College, the University of Rhode Island, Worcester State College, Bristol Community College, Wellesley College, Cal State Hayward, Texas Christian University and other colleges and universities over topics of public concern. Your active participation in this course will include "keeping up" with the issues (and potential political candidates?) through various media (TV, radio, print Internet); analyzing those issues and the rhetoric through which they are "constructed," argued, and discussed; and discussing and debating the issues yourself. In the process, you will increase your awareness of and develop a critical perspective toward the issues and arguments; develop and practice a rhetorical perspective toward argument and public discourse, using the issues and arguments as a focal point; learn about and engage in "deliberative discourse," especially with regard to politics and issues of public concern; and develop a "cultural perspective" on public discourse, contextualizing its issues and personalities as well as your own position within it. In addition, you will join in and study the rhetoric of e-mail discussion--both listserve rhetoric and the language and logic of collaboration via e-mail; explore and critically evaluate information on the World Wide Web; and compare the rhetoric of the Internet with other information sources, particularly television and print media.

The primary aim of this course is to enable students to become more active and effective participants in our democratic culture through rhetorical action, and thereby to contribute to the improvement of civic discourse in our society. To achieve this overarching goal, students in the course will be expected to meet the following objectives:

Required Activities and Formal Assignments (with percent of grade):

1. Join two web discussion forums established for this course: (1) a forum on a topic about which initially you have strong opinions, and (2) a forum on a topic in which you're interested but about which initially you're "undecided." You may join additional forum if you wish. You must contribute thoughtfully to lists 1 & 2 at least once each week. (20%) (See handout for instructions on rules for constructing messages on e-mail).

2. Compose two annotated bibliographies of web sources, both to be associated with a forum topic. Each annotated bibliography must consist of at least 10 items. (10% + 10%)

3. Write a documented research paper (minimum 5 pages) in which you inform your readers about some aspect of the rhetorical context of an issue about which you deliberate on one of the e-mail lists. Example "aspects" include history; multicultural perspectives; and various "obstacles" deriving from audience, subject, or purpose. (20%)

4. Write a documented paper (minimum 5 pages) in which you try to persuade a political candidate or ordinary citizen in your community to take a  particular position on one of the issues about which you deliberate on one of the e-mail lists. (20%)

5. Collaborate with student(s) in our class to construct a Web Page on a topic we have discussed this semester. This Web Page should concern a public issue, imply a target audience(s), and embody a clear rhetorical purpose. (10%)

6. An oral presentation at our face-to-face conference at the University of Rhode Island on Friday April 28th, 2000. This oral presentation must be on specified issues decided on during the semester. The presentations may incorporate PowerPoint, overheads or handouts. You might also want to include audience discussion. (10%)

Composition
Linda K. Shamoon, University of Rhode Island

TEXTS: J. Trimbur, CALL TO WRITE

Anson & Schwegler, LONGMAN HANDBOOK, 2nd edition

N. Reynolds, PORTFOLIO KEEPING

This class has several aims: (1) to give you practice in writing so that you may improve your writing; (2) to explore aspects of communication on the Internet and, particularly, communication in the public sphere; (3) to explore the rhetoric of several kinds of computer-generated documents and publications.

First, the aim is to help you improve your writing. With this in mind, we will complete seven projects:

(1) a public letter formatted for readability

(2) thoughtful submissions to The Intercollegiate Electronic Democracy Project discussion lists;

(3) a review of websites on an issue under debate in your forum

(4) an information paper addressed to members of the IEDP discussion list;

(5) a problem solution paper addressed to members of the IEDP discussion list;

(6) a collaboratively created presentation on an IEDP forum topic;

(7) a final portfolio of selected documents, fully revised and carefully introduced.

Each of these projects will call for a variety of homework activities and drafting assignments--such as reading, library searches, web searches, critical summaries, e-mail correspondence, and drafting--which will help you complete the overall project. In each case you will be practicing a variety of writing skills, and the quality of the writing will be an important part of the evaluation of each assignment.

Second, in this class we aim to explore aspects of communication on the Internet and, particularly, on listserves, MOOs and the WWW. Writing via e-mail, listserves and newsgroups are changing the way we participate in the public life of our country, affecting everything from the way we shop, to the way we learn about people's opinions, to the way we vote in local and national elections. Communication via the Internet, therefore, is becoming centrally important to us as a society, but effective writing on the Internet is not quite the same as writing on paper. Effective writing on the Internet calls for its own set of conventions and skills. We will study the features of written communication via the Internet and work to improve our communications skills in this venue.

Third, we will explore the rhetoric of text and screen design. Since the computer enables us to produce text in a staggering variety of modes and output styles, we must understand its underlying rhetoric, and we must understand how the appearance of the document and screen helps or hinders effective communication. Room 308 has the technology to support a variety of desktop publications, including posters, pamphlets, pictures, newsletters and other text/graphic documents. The projects will challenge you to produce visually effective documents. You will have time and support to learn to use the appropriate software to generate these documents, but our emphasis will be on the elements of text and graphic design that enhance the impact of your documents and presentations.

This semester we have the opportunity to participate in a special project that is being hailed as a model for the future. Classes at four other colleges will be studying and writing about the same issues we are studying, and they will be completing several of the same assignments. By the fourth week of the semester we will begin WWW discussions with the students and instructors in these classes. Eventually, we will challenge you to find students on our listserves who might serve as co-authors for a project. Finally, on -----, we will meet our e-mail partners face-to-face at a convention where you will present your co-authored project.

This exciting intercollegiate project gives us the opportunity to study and write in a manner similar to real world writing and communicating. Computers, e-mail, the world wide web, and other electronic technologies are beginning to dominate communications. In this class you are starting on a communications pathway to the future. The purpose of this class is to help you proceed with skill and critical awareness.

PROJECT #1 PUBLIC LETTERS

A letter to a publication that responds fully to an event, article, feature, editorial or column; or a letter of appeal to take an action or make a contribution.

Project #2 INTERCOLLEGIATE DEMOCRACY PROJECT

Participation in public deliberation via the Internet - using an electronic forum to debate issues of public and social importance.

Project #3 EVALUATING WEB SITES

A document that establishes criteria for evaluation of web sites, and that describes and analyzes five websites on a topic under discussion in your forum.

Project #4 THE INFORMATIVE REPORT

A researched statement about an issue that is under debate in your forum. The report should provide brief background information about the issue. The main portion of the report should provide clear and thorough information about recent developments relevant to the issue and possible future directions. The report should be written in a manner that would capture the interest of members of your forum.

Project #5 FORMULATING AND SOLVING PROBLEMS

A document that addresses a specific, tangible problem being discussed in your forum (as opposed to an issue). The document should analyze the problem, consider alternatives solutions, and argue for a "best" solution. The report should be written in a manner that would capture the interest of members of your forum.

Project #6

COLLABORATIVE PROJECT FOR CONFERENCE PRESENTATION

A poster, web site, pamphlet or persuasive essay, created collaboratively with students in your IEDP forum that urges a specific action on an issue or theme under debate in your forum.

PROJECT #7 PORTFOLIO (replaces final exam)

A selection of documents from the semester’s projects that are revised and polished. The collection opens with an introductory essay or letter that previews the contents of the portfolio and presents evidence of the author’s learning, writing strengths, improvement and interests.

Bartholomae, David. "Inventing the University." From When a Writer Can't Write. Ed. Mike Rose. New York: Guilford Press, 1985. (on library reserve)

Freire, Paulo. "The 'Banking' Concept of Education." From Pedagogy of the Oppressed." New York: Continuum, 1993. (on library reserve)

Trimbur, John. The Call to Write (brief edition). New York: Longman, 1999.

English Composition II focuses primarily on formal academic discourse to give you a foundation for (and practice in) writing and research within academic disciplines. At the same time, English Composition II is a course in border-crossing. It should help you recognize and cross disciplinary borders as well as the perceived border that separates academia from the larger public sphere. The operative metaphor for the course is "conversation"; the central concept is "discourse," or the ways of writing and speaking that comprise "the conversations" whose purpose is to carry out the work of communities, in this case the various disciplinary communities of academia and the primarily deliberative communities of the civic public sphere. Given this metaphor and concept, you, along with your instructor, will learn about academic and public discourses by participating in them (through both writing and speaking); together, you will increase your understanding of those discourses by sharing in the work of the respective academic and deliberative communities.

The general aim of English Composition II is to improve your ability to research, write, and speak effectively as a participant in an academic community. To do so, however, you must understand that an academic community bears a dynamic, reflexive, and vital relationship to the so-called "real world" beyond the campus. You need to understand that many real-world questions find their answers in academic research, and that new knowledge emerging from academic research enlightens public discourse (i.e., it enlightens public writing and speaking). Therefore, an equally important aim of English Composition II is to instill you with an appreciation for this reflexive relationship, in light of which you should perceive your academic work (in this and other courses) as meaningful in and motivated by social context. To achieve these intertwining aims, you are expected to meet the following objectives:

Although your obligations include regular class attendance and participation in a variety of informal, class-related activities and exercises, you will be evaluated on the basis of six formal assignments:

During the next four-to-five weeks try to situate yourself within or with respect to various public and academic "discourse communities"--communities to which you either belong or seek entry. Attend to the political, economic, social, and cultural factors that determine or otherwise affect your positions within these communities, and pay particular attention to your position on the threshold of academia (i.e., as a Freshman at the beginning of your academic career at Worcester State College). Learn and begin to use rhetorical terminology that describes how you and others write and speak within these public and academic communities. Most importantly, consider and investigate the ways in which the academic community can be responsive to and support deliberation in the public sphere.

Reading: Freire, Bartholomae, and Trimbur (Chapters 1, 3, 14, 2, & 8)

Writing: Academic journal (begin)

Speaking: Informal classroom discussions plus talk to frame issues and identify research questions that emerge from IEDP debate about the issue

During the next six or seven weeks you will have to coordinate your efforts on a number of different "fronts." While (1) continuing to write in your academic journals and (2) continuing to monitor IEDP forum discussions and working on your "metadiscourse" summaries and essays, you will have to (3) devote most of your energy to your academic research and writing. Begin to follow up on your research questions using library and Web sources, especially (or almost exclusively) those that are considered academic or "scholarly" (e.g., academic journal articles). During this phase, also keep in mind the ways in which your research articulates with relevant IEDP deliberation threads.

Reading: Trimbur (Chapters 15, 16, & 17); additional reading in support of research projects

Writing: Academic journal (continue); "metadiscourse" summary; "metadiscourse" essay; academic research paper

Speaking: Informal classroom discussions plus "roundtable" discussions on academic research projects

During the next three weeks (for the rest of the semester), concentrate on academic discourse within specific disciplines (preferably your major discipline, if you have one), learning about its conventions, techniques, implied values, audiences, organizations, purposes, etc., and select a specific academic journal for close examination. All of this effort will be oriented toward your academic discourse panel presentation.

Reading: Depends on focus of your panel presentation

Writing: Evaluative essay (due on your official final exam day)

Speaking: Panel presentation

 Civic Discourse
Philip Burns, Worcester State College

Required Texts (read in the order presented):

William A. Covino, The Elements of Persuasion (Allyn & Bacon, 1998)

Gregory Clark, Dialogue, Dialectic, and Conversation: A Social Perspective on the Function of Writing (SIU Press, 1990)

James Bohman, Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy (MIT Press, 1996)

The primary and most general aim of "Civic Discourse" is to enable students (both as students within the course and as citizens) to become more active and effective participants in our democratic culture through rhetorical action, and thereby to contribute to the improvement of civic discourse in our society. To achieve this overarching goal, students in the course will be expected to meet the following objectives:

Join a minimum of three e-mail lists established for this course: (1) the general list, (2) a list on a topic about which initially you have strong opinions, and (3) a list on a topic in which you’re interested but about which initially you’re "undecided." You may join additional lists if you wish, but one of the topical lists must be devoted to environmental issues. You must contribute thoughtfully to lists 2 & 3 at least once each week. (20%)

Formal Assignment 1. Write a 3-5 page rhetorical analysis of a political text (speech, debate, campaign ad, web page). (10%)

Formal Assignment 2. Write a 5-10 page documented research paper in which you inform your readers about some aspect of the rhetorical context of an issue about which you deliberate on one of the e-mail lists. (10%)

Formal Assignment 3. Write a 5-10 page documented paper in which you try to persuade a political candidate (or some other appropriate audience) to take a particular position on one of the issues about which you deliberate on one of the e-mail lists. (10%)

Formal Assignment 4. Prepare a brief collaborative report on selection from class bibliography, to be delivered orally in class. (10%)

Formal Assignment 5. Collaborate with student(s) from other institutions on a publication (e.g., brochure, pamphlet, web page) to be presented at a face-to-face conference. The publication should concern a public issue, imply a target audience(s), and embody a clear rhetorical purpose. (10%)

Participate in face-to-face deliberation with your collaborative group at the conference. (10%)

Formal Assignment 6. Write a 5-10 page analysis of one of the listserves on which you’ve participated during the semester. (10%)

Participate regularly in class discussions and exercises. (10%)

George Orwell called political language "the defense of the indefensible," and yet democracies need a lively public culture of argument and debate in order to come to terms with complex issues, define values, make decisions, and solve problems. This course will explore the contemporary state of political rhetoric in the United States, with a focus on the dynamic interactions of television, radio, print, and the Internet. Students will participate in electronic discussions with peers across the country as they debate current issues generated by national election campaigns.

This course is part of the Intercollegiate E-Democracy Project, a non-partisan grassroots collaborative for teachers and students interested in public writing, political argumentation and debate, and the civic traditions of rhetoric. For Fall 2000, over 700 college and university students across the U.S. will be connected via a multi-class on-line network operated by Trinity College.

To participate effectively in this class, you will need to: (1) have a functioning email address and be able to use a web browser; (2) keep up with current events and the Presidential campaign on a weekly basis; and (3) take part in the IEDP Regional Student Conference, to be held on Trinity’s campus on Friday, Nov. 17.

Texts

Orwell, 1984 (including Appendix: "The Principles of Newspeak")
Corbett and Eberly, The Elements of Reasoning, 2nd edition
Diamond and Silverman, White House to Your House: Media and Politics in Virtual America
Thompson, Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie
Other readings: selected webpages, photocopies, and video/audio clips

Recommended: one or two daily newspapers

Class Website: http://courses.trincoll.edu/courses/ENGL-338-01
Intercollegiate E-Democracy Project: http://courses.trincoll.edu/courses/IEDP

1. In-Class Participation / Informal Exercises (20%)

2. Multi-Class Network: On-line Discussions & Debates (40%)

3. Special Conference Project (20%)

4. Final Exam (Dec. 14, 3:00 PM) (20%)

Here are some basic questions that we will use to explore how political rhetoric works and how various contemporary media affect the nature, quality, and possibilities for citizens’ participation in civic life:

1. What are the public spaces in our civic culture? How do media function in these spaces?

2. Who participates? Who talks? Who listens? Who decides?

3. How is individual ethos constructed? Cultural ethos? Community ethos?

4. What kinds of questions or issues are considered worth examining and arguing about?

5. How do dramatic events or visual images focus attention on particular issues?

6. How are agendas framed and key terms defined? Why is this process important?

8. What counts as evidence? How do we decide what information is credible?

9. What constitutes persuasive language for specific audiences?

10. Who argues for victory? Who argues for understanding? How do we distinguish these modes?

11. Who or what "wins," and how do we know it, in any given case?

12. What values are embedded in different styles of rhetoric and approaches to argument?

1. The first step in gaining consent is to seek and receive the approval of the Institutional Research Board, which should have a presence on most campuses. To do research involving human subjects, you need to get IRB approval first, and then ask students to sign consent forms. (Doing it the other way around violates most IRB standards.) Furthermore, it appears that email messages and web-board posts are protected by copyright law. In other words, researchers cannot quote a post in its entirety without a signed waiver by the author.

2. IRB boards usually want to see the following on a consent form:

• a statement of how much confidentiality you can provide to subjects;
• a statement of risks involved in the study;
• the name of a contact person who is responsible for the study;
• information about how a subject can withdraw if he/she decides later not to participate.

3. Researchers in the field of rhetoric and composition should also be aware that the standards being developed by the Conference on College Composition and Communication, National Council of Teachers of English, are even more stringent than IRB standards, in part to recognize the power differential between teachers and students. The CCCC standards for "fair use" may be reviewed in the journal College Composition and Communication, 51.3, February 2000, 485-7.   See also "Guidelines for the Ethical Treatment of Students and Student Writing in Composition Studies," CCC, 52.3, February 2001, 485-490.

4. After permission to conduct research is granted, instructors should distribute the consent form to all participating students for that semester. Typically, instructors have also distributed an explanatory letter with the form.

The following are templates for a consent form and an explanatory letter:

 Consent Form: ["Insert Title of Project"]

I, _______________________________(Student’s Name), agree to participate in the "[insert Title of Project]" study being conducted by [insert Researcher’s Name]. The study is being done as part of [insert nature of work, e.g. a doctorate] at [insert name of institution]. In signing this form, I give permission for [insert Researcher’s Name] to:

• Include my posts to the Intercollegiate E-Democracy Project multi-class network in [his or her] database, for further analysis.

• Use excerpts from my posts, as well as from any follow-up questionnaires sent to me, to make points about the subject of the study in any written or publicly presented versions of [his or her] study

• To use information that I voluntarily supply on questionnaires to create a general portrait of the entire group participating in the study (e.g., the number of males and the number of females)

• To interview my instructor, __________________________(Instructor’s Name)

I understand that the results of this study will appear in [insert name of targeted publication site or degree], and may also appear in published form or in papers presented at conferences. I understand that [insert Researcher’s Name] may be using direct quotations from various forms of my written work, and that [he or she] will conceal my name and other features that may serve to identify me in order to preserve my privacy. I further understand that, because of the very public nature of the listservs that serve as the primary database for this project, [he or she] cannot guarantee complete anonymity; it may be possible for readers of [his or her] work to determine my identity.

___________________________________
(signature)

___________________________________ _____________________
(name, printed) (today’s date)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I do not wish to participate in this study in any way. Please do not use any of my words from the IEDP multi-class network.

___________________________________
(signature)

___________________________________ _____________________
(name, printed) (today’s date)

Explanatory Letter

Date

Dear Student,

My name is [insert Researcher’s Name] and I am [insert Professional Position/Title] at [insert Name of Institution]. You are participating [have participated] in the Intercollegiate E-Democracy Project, an electronic project that linked your class with other classes around the country. I am interested in researching [subject of research--e.g., how students learn to use rhetoric to argue in an on-line public setting], and I would like to study the dialogues you generated on the IEDP multi-class network as part of my scholarly work. I hope you will give me permission to do so.

For this study, I plan to read and analyze some of the web-board conversations that [you are currently participating [you participated] in for your class; I will be interested in conversations that were highly successful as well as those that involved struggle and difficulty. [Include sentences like the following, as appropriate: I think it may be possible that [[insert variables or qualities you are observing]] I am also asking you to fill out a brief questionnaire giving me a few facts about yourself. And finally, I am seeking a few volunteers who would be willing to let me work with them for follow-up interviews and related activities.

The results of this study will become part of [insert kind of document], to be submitted to [name target publication site]. It is also likely that I will present portions of my research at professional conferences, and that some of what I find may be published, in article or book form, for a similar audience of professional educators. In all public forms of this work, I will remove your name and any other information that might serve to identify individual students.

Please sign the attached form to indicate whether or not you are willing to participate, and return the form to your instructor.  I realize that many of you are required to participate in the IEDP multi-class network for your classes, but please know that you are NOT required to participate in the study I am doing, and that your decision to participate (or not) in my study will not affect your grade or your standing in your course in any way. Also, if you agree to participate in the study and then later decide you would like to withdraw, you can simply notify me by email [insert email address] or phone [insert phone number] and I will withdraw all information related to you from my database.

Thanks, in advance, for being willing to consider participation in this study.

Sincerely yours,

[Researcher’s Name]

Once the IEDP multi-class network is underway during a semester, questions and problems are bound to arise, as they do with any educational project. In most cases these problems actually are teaching and learning opportunities related to a general lack of understanding about deliberation, dialogic literacy, writing for a real audience, writing in an Internet environment, and understanding the complexity of skilled rhetorical practice.

1. Students do not receive responses to their posts.
2. Students post often but there is little interaction or conversation. Their Internet conversation does not "deepen."
3. A student sends or receives a flame.
4. The forum conversation drifts out of the public realm or toward trivial content.
5. An instructor cannot find a partner for a face-to-face conference.
6. As the face-to-face conference date approaches, students present reasons for their not being able to attend.
7. Students do not mix with students at other institutions during at the face-to-face conference.

IEDP conversations usually start with students’ stating their opinions on a wide range of issues of concern to them. Then students take up one or two issues presented in such statements and add their own insights and information. Ideally, the give-and-take of response from a diversity of participants helps students to see and understand new ideas and information as well as helping them to hear how well their own statements are received by a diverse public.

Sometimes, however, students do not know what to write after they have stated their own opinion and read the opinions of others. (In addition, some students may raise interesting questions but do not know what to do with the responses they receive.) The lack of good uptake--uptake that helps to deepen the conversation--is a problem in IEDP forums. It is prevalent enough to warrant a look at habits that exacerbate this problem and then consider a few solutions.

The central activity of the IEDP forums is for students to raise and discuss social and political issues of concern to a public. The forums are at their most vibrant when students raise issues in the public realm in which they are personally engaged in some manner. In some instances, however, personal engagement may prompt discourse that drifts out of the public realm, or the conversation on a particular topic may drift toward trivial matters. While students sometimes may feel fully engaged in such non-public or trivial discourse, they have drifted away from the central activity of IEDP participation. Helping students keep topics within the public realm and helping them identify public issues within topics (especially among those topics that start as personal complaints) are two important teaching and learning opportunities in the IEDP.

Instructors can ask students to check that their topics have public qualities, such as:

5. An instructor cannot find a partner for a face-to-face conference.

To locate faculty of other classes or at near-by institutions to participate, IEDP faculty have found that if they can get out the word about the IEDP locally and regionally, interested instructors sometimes step forward. IEDP faculty have success by posting such a "call for participation" on professional and institutional listservs.

If a face-to-face regional meeting is not possible, IEDP faculty may be able to work with their technology centers to arrange for a telecommunications conference with a participating class at another location. One IEDP faculty participant and her students created a short video-taped class interview which was then viewed by other participating classes. All such creative uses of electronic technologies are welcome in the IEDP.

6. As the face-to-face conference date approaches, students present reasons for their not being able to attend.

The face-to-face conference is a significant part of the total IEDP experience. It extends IEDP activities, it improves students’ posts, and it helps bring the project to closure. Also, students are usually interested and excited to meet the students with whom they have been communicating. Last minute cancellations are disappointing for students who have made an effort to attend. At the same time, instructors should remember that last minute emergencies do arise and such a face-to-face meeting with "strangers" can also be anxiety -provoking.

For these reasons, instructors must anticipate ways to actively help students commit to and plan for the face-to-face conference.

7. Students do not mix with students at other institutions during at the face-to-face conference.

Formal and informal interaction among students from different institutions is a crucial activity of the face-to-face conference. In keeping with the complex experiences of the project, students should have the opportunity to deliberate together, to make presentations to each other, and to interact in a more personal way, too. Instructors should be aware that each of these interactions is anxiety provoking for most people, and even more so among relative strangers. Therefore, instructors should plan to help facilitate these interactions.

These activities have helped to promote conference interactions: