For this unit, worth 20% of the final course grade, 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 issue of higher education, and participate in an online deliberation activity on Penn State’s General Education reform. At the end of the unit, students will turn in a deliberation package including the following three items:

1. A one-page moderating philosophy statement, worth 5% of the course grade.
2. A four-page Deliberation Evaluation in response to the Class Civic Issues Forum on higher education, worth 10% of the course grade.
3. Evidence of participation in an online deliberation on Penn State General Education Reform—screen shots of three to six entries and/or questions or at least 300 words, total—followed by a two-page discussion, worth 5% of course grade.

 

1. Moderating Philosophy Statement

Part of the payoff of this unit is the training you will receive as a moderator in the National Issues Forum style of deliberation. This one-page philosophy statement will characterize your individual approach to that moderation style. While the philosophy will probably include material you learned during your moderator training, it should be offered in your own words and supported by specific examples from your experience moderating deliberation (either in class practice activities or during the Civic Issues Forum). 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:  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? You should offer examples of your moderation style in action from your own or others’ moderating experience.

 

2. Deliberation Evaluation

In a 4-page essay, draw upon the nine criteria for deliberative discussion (Figure 6.1 in Rhetoric & Civic Life, p. 89) to assess the overall deliberativeness of the Civic Issue Forum on sustainability in which your class participated.

Be sure to include a clear statement near the beginning of the essay characterizing the quality and nature of the deliberation that occurred during the Civic Issues Forum, and be sure to use examples and/or quotes from the Class Civic Issue Forum to support your claims regarding the nine criteria. You may also want to discuss the nature of the topic itself and what thematics emerged in the deliberations. While you don’t want this evaluation to function as a mere report on the deliberation, it may be fruitful to recount what themes, sticking points, and key moments seemed to define your group’s deliberative experience.

At the end of each deliberation session, we’ll stop to take notes on the effectiveness of the day’s deliberation, according to the criteria on page 89 of Rhetoric & Civic Life.

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

 

3. Online Deliberation and Reflection

The goal for this online deliberation assignment 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 online discussion and a reflection upon that experience.

Participation in online deliberation about Penn State General Education

Students in RCL will participate in an online forum regarding the ongoing Faculty Senate conversations about Penn State General Education Reform.

Reflection on Participation

This second section asks you to reflect both upon your performance in the online deliberation 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:

• 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 participated. You might also consider how this online discussion tailored to RCL and secondary audiences (instructors and deans) might differ from the quality and nature of online commenting found across the internet.

The objective of this online deliberation 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.