Further Instruction

One concept I think that could have been addressed more is using the Group Communication book and having more blog questions based off of that book and not only the Epsion book. I think this would be helpful because we do a lot of group work in this class and some people have more experience working in groups and others do not. I think having to know different group members working styles and the appropriate way to communicate with people and divide the work evenly. I think it would not only be a good course skill but a good life skill because working in groups is something you are always going to have to do and I think it should be more important to learn from your group members than to only work wwith individuals that work the same way that you do.

Further Instruction

One concept I think that could have been addressed more is using the Group Communication book and having more blog questions based off of that book and not only the Epsion book. I think this would be helpful because we do a lot of group work in this class and some people have more experience working in groups and others do not. I think having to know different group members working styles and the appropriate way to communicate with people and divide the work evenly. I think it would not only be a good course skill but a good life skill because working in groups is something you are always going to have to do and I think it should be more important to learn from your group members than to only work wwith individuals that work the same way that you do.

favorite thing about the class

My favorite thing about this class was that you can learn at your own pace and you can do the blogs on any topic from the chapter that interest you a least for one question. I liked that the class was very easy to understand and all the directions were clear. My least favorite thing about the class was that the blogs have to be twelve hours apart because students are busy and always don’t have time to do 3 blogs twelve hours apart or they will do the blogs ahead of time and forget to post them. I think a way to fix this is just make one blog due before Wednesday so then people can still be accountable for posting blogs at a reasonable time but have a little more flexibility with time. I also think there should only be two group projects and one solo project because being a online class it is hard to work in groups and get everyone together at the same time.

What I have learned

Over the course of the semester I have learned many ways to analyze and determine what is a good and bad argument. The main concept that has helped me has been the different types of fallacies and how to identify and look for them in arguments. This showed me how writers play up their writing or swing arguments in different ways to make their side more persuasive. Such examples are appeal to fear, where the viewer is threatened and makes a choice based on this, or appeal to emotion which is when you base something off of an emotion you feel and not what is actually being stated. Also fallacies such as the slippery slope where they greatly over exaggerate the argument, concepts like these helped me acknowledge good and bad arguments and help me not use these fallacies in my writing. They may sound creative but in the end it creates a week argument

Chapter 15

Something I found very helpful in chapter 15 was tracing the cause backwards This helped me because the example the book used about the dog and raccoon could apply to many things in everyday life. You have to go back and figure out what the real cause is and not just assume it was because of something you have no evidence of. You have to trace the argument back completely to really get the cause of the argument. But this can get a little overwhelming because you can trace it back so far that in the end you don’t understand the normal conditions. This helped me not get to technical when thinking of an argument because when you do it gets so confusing and you can get mixed up with who did what at a certain time and the argument may come to a conclusion but it might not be just.

Mission Critical

I really liked how the website was put together and very easy to find the answers I was looking for and broke it down into specific parts and types of arguments. The part of the website I thought was most useful was the fallacies and non-rational persuasion because there are so many different types of fallacies and types or reasoning it is impossible to remember them all. The website does a really good job of explaining each type of fallacy and categorizes them into emotional and misdirected which I really liked. I also liked how truth, validity and sound were explained because I always had trouble differentiating the three. Validity is when the form of the argument has the premise and the conclusion in the proper relationship. Truth is the next step to when if the argument is valid we have to make sure there is truth in it. Lastly, the argument is sound if it can not be in any way false. Having it stated in such a simple way and in this order really helped me understand it.

Cause and Effect Website

The aspect of this website I found most useful is the way they explained the use of inductive reasoning in a real life example. Situations like these happen everyday and it is good to know that inductive reason can be used to solve them and make both sides of the argument more clear. I liked how both sides of the story were presented and you could see how the bicyclist moved out of the way because the truck was illegally parked and how the car slammed on his breaks because the bicyclist was in front of him. I also liked how they explained how the fallacies worked into inductive reasoning. An example is the post hoc fallacy where A must occur right before B. Therefore the car could not have slammed on its brakes on Tuesday and get hit on Thursday. The check points at the bottom of the website also helped me because it Is and easy checklist to see if the argument is strong or not by if the event is reasonable, the source is reliable and can be demonsrated.