For this unit, each student will receive training as a deliberation moderator, study the idea of deliberation in the United States, participate in an organized Civic Issues Forum as a class on the question of sustainability, and participate in an online deliberation activity. At the end of the unit, students will turn in a “deliberation packet,” which will contain the following items. Each item in this list will be discussed with more detail below.

1. a 3-4 page Deliberation Evaluation and Moderator Philosophy in response to the Civic Issues Forum on sustainability
2. the saved results (screenshots or copy/paste) from and 3-4 page reflection on an online deliberation activity (discussed below)

1. Deliberation Evaluation and Moderating Philosophy (3-4 pages total)

The two pieces should be molded into one, but make sure you address the major points below:

A.) Evaluate the deliberation forum as a whole: Refer to all 9 of the criteria for deliberative discussion (in Political Communication and Deliberation, p. 20) to assess the overall deliberativeness of the Civic Issue Forum on sustainability in which your class participated.

Be sure to include a clear statement at the beginning of the essay about the overall quality of the deliberation that occurred during the Civic Issues Forum, and be sure to also use examples and/or quotes from the Civic Issue Forum to support your claims regarding each of the nine criteria. Try to sum this all up at the end of the paper.

B.) Elaborate your role in the deliberation forum (with a focus on moderation): To focus further on your role within the Civic Issue Forum on sustainability (and in class activities leading up to the forum), you’ll include a portion of this paper that focuses on your moderating philosophy. This philosophy statement will characterize your individual approach to the moderation style of the National Issues Forum. While you may not moderate in the forum (we’ll try to get everyone to moderate for at least a little while), you can observe how others moderate—the strategies they use that seem effective … or maybe not so effective, and then comment on that. The philosophy should be offered in your own words and supported by specific examples from your experience moderating in the forum or in class activities. The moderator’s philosophy should be organized around one or two chief principles that guide your approach to moderating and should answer the following questions. Be honest in your reflection: 1) how would you characterize your moderating style? 2) what are your strengths as a moderator? 3) what parts of the moderating task would (or did) prove challenging to you, and how did you handle them or do you imagine yourself handling them in the future?

This assignment has four related goals:

1. to demonstrate and synthesize scholarly and experiential knowledge about deliberation processes
2. to present evidence of deliberative participation.
3. to build on last semester’s analytical skills by analyzing and responding in the context of an exchange—that is, almost simultaneously.
4. to show evidence of becoming a reflective deliberator

2. Online Deliberation Activity

The goal for this online deliberation activity is to generate some observational, experiential, and comparative knowledge about online deliberation. Class discussion around this activity is likely to focus on developing a theory and set of protocols for online deliberation. The activity proper has two parts: participating in a deliberative internet discussion and a reflection upon that experience.

Participation in an Internet Site (screenshots or copy/paste of your online postings)

Please choose a site that seems as if it can support deliberative exchange about an issue you choose and care about. Remember, though, that the issue you choose ought to be a civic issue, that is, it should be an issue of common concern to some identifiable group. Your participation in this site should also be able to be sustained—i.e. include at least 3-4 substantial interactions (e.g. posts to a forum, comments on a blog, etc.). Thus, be sure to choose a site that not only seems to meet these principles but also one where the activity level is high enough to ensure the possibility of interaction.

Your participation should try to follow the principles and criteria of deliberation we will be discussing in class. Even if other participants do not respond in kind, it is your task to keep trying and to make your posts enact this form of discourse as much as you can.  (Warning:  Being well informed on the issue and understanding the opposition are key aspects to this form of deliberation, so you may need to do a little research before beginning your participation.)

Finally, save all your posts and the context they are in for your package at the end of this project.  This can mean simply cutting and pasting the discussion into a Word document, doing a screen shot, whatever works best for your site.  Be sure to do this often, though, as some sites (like forums) only keep the current day’s activity on the site.

Reflection on Participation (3-4 pages)

This second section asks you to reflect both upon your performance in the site and the efficacy of rational-critical debate for web spaces like the one you chose. Thus, I will ask you to consider all questions raised by your participation, but minimally to include some discussion of the following:

• A justification for the site you chose
• An analysis of your own writing and how it enacted or encouraged (or failed to enact or encourage deliberative exchange)
• An analysis of what kind of discussion took place and whether it became a debate, a deliberation, or a series of disconnected monologues.  This will involve analyzing the responses you receive as well as how well they furthered the purpose of the discussion.
• A reflection on whether the discussion was productive (and how you define productive).
• A discussion of the challenges posed by online deliberation. For this part, you may wish to compare the discussion to the Civic Issue Forum in which your class participates.
• Finally, a consideration of how this kind of exchange might have been fostered more effectively given changes you would advocate, if any.

The objective of this assignment set is threefold:

1. To practice principles of deliberation
2. To think reflectively on the circumstances of deliberation (e.g., online versus face-to-face)
3. To present evidence of deliberative participation.

The deliberation packet will be evaluated according to these objectives, with the following breakdown:

Moderating Philosophy Statement and Deliberation Evaluation: 50%
Online Deliberation Activity: 50%