Author: Kaitlin Clinnin

Here at the DRC, we are introducing a new series of posts featuring Digital Lesson Plans. The aim of our Digital Lesson Plan series is to solicit and share classroom activities and assignments that teach some aspect of digital rhetoric, broadly interpreted. These “digital lessons” have been designed and tested by instructors, and the hope is that they will serve as practical models and jumping-off points for readers to adapt to their own teaching contexts. The following lesson was developed by Kaitlin Clinnin of Ohio State University. Brief Description of Activity: Students practice Neo-Aristotelian criticism by analyzing the Twitter hashtag #ThanksObama. Through practice, students consider the affordances and…

Viral videos, Twitter hashtags, and wikis. These were just a few of the many technological productions students analyzed, designed, and produced using rhetorical approaches in my Spring 2015 course, “The Arts of Persuasion.” This class is an introduction to rhetorical theories, methods, and applications. I designed the class around the course theme “Rhetoric(s) in Digital Culture.” Over the course of the semester, I introduced classical rhetoric, cultural rhetorical theory, and rhetorical research methods to the thirty enrolled students, who represented a range of majors and years in college. I encouraged students to apply classical and cultural rhetorical concepts to digital…