Preparing Students for the Final

On my final exam, I will have students view and then dissect the reasoning in a persuasive speech (likely a TED Talk with a persuasive message to it). Today, I prepared students for this section of the exam by having them view another speech and break it down. I provided students with the following example speech, which offers a variety of complex reasoning styles. I then had students generate questions with their groups analyzing the argumentative logic of the speech. I will share a few of their questions here, because I think they provided a few insightful ways of thinking about the speech.

(Note: On the TED site for this video, you can find a full transcript of the speech. I printed these out and had students review the actual text, since that led to a richer discussion. We spent about 45 minutes on this in class: 15 watching the video, 10 in groups writing questions about the concepts, and about 20 as a full class breaking down the reasoning used in the video.)

Questions students raised included:

In your opinion, would this speech primarily be a matter of fact, value, or policy?

I liked this as a short answer question because it forces students to make an argument. And in this speech, any of these answers work. It is, of course, focused on a policy: SOPA and PIPA and their ramifications for file sharing online. But, as two students pointed out, it also concerns other issues. It is a question of fact because Shirky is trying to claim that the law does something different from what it claims it does. That is, the law is in fact different from what people think. It is a question of value because it relies on the inherent value of content sharing and internet freedom, juxtaposed against the evil of corporate greed. Any of these answers would work, and the grading then would depend on students developing arguments to support their response.

Does Shirky primarily rely on inductive or deductive reasoning? Support your answer.

Again, there's ambiguity here, and the grading depends on whether students address, grasp, and respond to these concepts. A student could, for example, answer that the speech is primarily inductive. For example, Shirky moves through a series of points at the end that move from specific examples to a general conclusion: because the content industry has tried this legislation, and this legislation, and this legislation, we can conclude that they will keep trying to pass new legislation, and we will need to keep fighting. They would need to then provide some counter-argument that the speech does not follow the other type of reasoning.

Do you believe Shirky's conditional argument in the speech is convincing? Why or why not?

The entire speech is premised on an if/then argument: If this passes, this will happen. Ultimately, students will have to defend a judgment here as to whether they agree with his scenario: that if this law passes, it will cause this effect. And that means discussing whether the premise ("This is what happens...") actually works. Students can then either support his reasoning--"He establishes credibility by distilling the history surrounding this legislation!"--or can undermine it: "His entire speech relies on false analogies to cakes and other different circumstances that cannot be compared to the complexities of the modern media environment; he's exaggerating."

The valuable thing about this exercise was that it forced students to think critically about how they might interrogate the speech and what I might ask them. They were very active in their groups, bouncing ideas back and forth about the speech text, the concepts in the chapter, and how all of it relates. I wrote the particularly tricky concepts up on the board so that students would make sure to zero in on those ideas, rather than other concepts.

The discussion set a clear expectation for the types of responses I'll be looking for on the exam; I recommend, if you still have time, doing a small exercise like this in class. You don't necessarily need to dedicate 45 minutes to it--perhaps find a simpler, shorter video--but if you're going to ask them open-ended short answer/essay questions, you need to give them some sense of what you are after.

Happy end of the semester! The end is near!

Michael