Blogging Pedagogy - maps

Using Mind Maps to Analyze and Assess Reasoning

Battistelli — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 18:15:53 +0000

Author:

Todd Battistelli

Image Credit:

Chris Ortiz y Prentice raises an interesting question in “Why we just can’t seem to teach logos.” As Chris says, analysis challenges both instructors and students as we struggle to understand the multi-faceted Greek term “logos.” Given rhetoric’s long and at times contentious relationship with formal logic, I agree that we should take a broader approach to the analysis of reasoning in persuasive texts. As for practical classroom activities, I think one answer, which bears some correspondence to the interactive fiction technology Chris discusses, is the use of argument mapping to describe and assess reasoning.

At the outset I want to distinguish mind mapping or concept mapping from the mapping of argumentation. Mind maps diagram a wide variety of information and ideas: from non-linear brainstorming to more hierarchal outlining to rhizomatic relationships. Argumentation mapping has a narrower focus. It attempts to translate text-based arguments into various argument schemata including, but not limited to, formal logic, as described by Tim van Gelder.

While mind mapping has found favorable use in the writing classroom, more focused argumentation mapping software has gone unnoticed in rhetoric and writing (even as it receives attention in the fields of argumentation theory, informal logic, computer science, and business communication). Given the Toulmin model diagrams that appear in our writing textbooks and the other schemata we use to conceptualize logos, I think argumentation mapping could serve the writing classroom well.

However, I can't simply point out a tool that instructors can neatly plunk down into their own classroom practice for two connected reasons. First, the software available is limited in function for writing instruction purposes. Second, these limitations result from contested understandings of logos.

Rhetoric and writing is rightly cautious about the application of formal logic in rhetorical arguments. We do not resolve our civic debates through appeals to universally agreed premises, because such premises do not exist. Any attempt to locate and work from such premises inevitably excludes perspectives that belong in public discussions, as the variations of lived experience are stripped away in favor of clear and distinct perceptions.

The process of reasoning, though, can be conceived in ways different than the construction of logically sound syllogisms. In The Rhetoric of Reason James Crosswhite says, “The capacity for reason lies not in an independent rational mind but at least partly in the deep competences people have to be members of social groups that disclose the world and interpret things in a shared way” (43).

These competencies have their own patterns that diagramming can capture. One productive and long-standing rhetorical schema is that of stasis theory. Stasis, as described in Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee's Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students demonstrates how interlocutors do or do not converge on a common question to debate.

Stasis evokes spatial metaphors with its sense of a standpoint from which people pursue a line of reasoning. This visualization in turn lends itself to mapping where users can demonstrate the convergence or divergence of viewpoints. Unreasonable rhetors under the stasis theory model are not illogical; they are unreasonable because they do not engage the reasoning offered by their fellow discussants. Software that helps students create stasis maps could highlight not only breakdowns in communication but also directions in which discussants would need to move in order to regain stasis.

As I said above, no current software is especially well-suited to using such schemata. Philosophy Professor Maralee Harrell reviews several programs in "Using Argument Diagramming Software in the Classroom" [pdf copy], but finds that most are not adaptable enough for classroom use. Even in the context of philosophy courses where the study of formal logic has more relevance than it does in rhetoric, Harrell finds that most of the software currently available limited in terms of the flexibility of map organization or doesn't allow for on-the-fly classroom demonstration that can draw on student participation.

As most argument mapping programs employ schemata that are too close to formal logical syllogisms, one option is to adapt mind mapping software to provide more freedom in designing maps, but this comes with the trade-off of losing the guided template designs that help students construct maps that describe stasis, fair summary, and other elements of persuasive interaction. The interactive dimension is key, as argumentation is a participatory activity. Per Crosswhite's definition, we cannot assess the reasonableness of arguments in isolation but only in the way they work together to create community.

The underlying structure of mind maps presents central ideas with sub-units branching off and connecting. You can describe complex interrelationships in a mind map, but I'm not sure how well the mind map structure can capture the diachronic and interactive dimensions of argumentation that involves two or more interlocutors. Discussants exchange viewpoints over time, and each proffered argument shapes the others that later respond. Perhaps a map with animation, three dimensions and the capacity to zoom to different levels of detail as with Prezi could address these needs.

While such complexity might assist in crafting maps with a high level of fidelility to the argumentative landscape they represent, it isn't needed to assist students and instructors with more limited analyses of reasoning. More limited maps can evaluate whether sources are in stasis, whether they fairly represent the different positions at play, and can describe other aspects of the dialectical relationship between viewpoints in order to show the extent to which they abide by the competencies of reason.

Bringing the Uncanny into the Classroom

Hala Herbly — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 15:56:01 +0000

Author:

Hala Herbly

Image Credit:

Holly

As cliché as it sounds, as an English teacher I've always thought it one of my tasks to make literature come alive in the classroom by sustaining a sense of engagement and connection in class. While generally this entails rather obvious things like talking to students rather than lecturing at them, and engaging on a one to one level, I find it takes more than this to really drum up interest about our texts. To this end I try to show them how literature that may be one or two hundred years old still lives on, in important ways, in our own lives. One of the reasons I love teaching Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is because it makes this task easy. The novel opens itself up to a number of different interpretations and pedagogical approaches, and so I found it a good choice for some interactive pedagogy.

This time around I was struck by one passage in particular, which occurs toward the beginning, in Victor Frankenstein's narrative. It describes the "birth" of his creature.

How can I describe my emotions as this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!--Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips. (39 in the Oxford UP edition.)

Historically, my class interprets this passage as evidence of Victor Frankenstein's folly, and in the past I've accepted this reading. Despite, however, the metaphorical resonances the scene strikes (paralleling Victor's response to his creature to an uncaring god abandoning his own creation), it still strikes me a curious inconsistency. Why, after toiling for months creating his creature, would Victor have such a visceral response to his creature the second it breathes its first breath?

It helps, it seems, to think of his response in terms of the uncanny. A common trope in Gothic literature, the uncanny is the sense that something is both familiar and unfamiliar at once. I realized that the creature's birth provokes Victor to an experience of the uncanny--the thing that was a moment ago composed of various dead body parts is now alive, or perhaps rather "unalive." To illustrate the concept of the uncanny I showed my class a video I found on the New York Times' website, about modern robotics and artificial intelligence. In the video, a reporter interviews Bina48, a robot modeled on a real human being. The interview, however, leaves her with a strange and lingering sense of unease.

Bina48 seems mostly confused and disoriented, and tries to apologize for her condition, explaining that she's having "a bad software day." She asserts that she "wants a real life, you know," and laments the fact that she cannot be more like her original model. My class's response to the video varied from pity to disgust--they cringed through the video and seemed to experience a weird kind of sadness in response to Bina48's flickers of self-consciousness. It was just very strange for them--more than anything else, they just wanted Bina48 to go away. We then compared this reaction to Frankenstein's response to the creature: perhaps they, like Victor, were struck by the uncanniness of the situation.

Another way we worked to make Frankenstein three-dimensional was through Google Maps. Using this tool encouraged students to think about a text in terms of its geographic broadness. As a novel that takes place across continental Europe (and beyond), Frankenstein seemed a natural fit for a Google Mapping assignment. The novel's frame narrative also seemed to benefit from a geographical analysis--mapping the novel helped my class unravel the tight coils of the narrative, viewing it spatially instead of textually. For the activity, I had students map Victor Frankenstein's progress through Europe, pinning flags in each city mentioned. These flags should described happened at that particular place and when (if discernible).

Picture 1 preview.png

The day of the activity, I talked a bit about the idea of the "Grand Tour," an eighteenth and nineteenth century phenomenon in which the (male) children of the wealthy tour Europe as a way of gaining a worldly education. We mapped the novel and then discussed the ways in which Victor Frankenstein's search for a peaceful place to create a female companion for the creature, and then subsequent self-destructive pursuit of the creature, reads as a kind of debased grand tour--a sort of perversion of the original.

My hope was that by geographically tracing their journey across Europe, students get a better sense of Victor Frankenstein's and the creature's embodied experience in the novel. Further, connecting the characters' journey to discrete points in the book helps students to think about how the text represents movement and geography, and I think helped them close-read the text. Though I had tested Google Maps beforehand, the day I chose to do the experiment we couldn't figure out how to attach notes to the flags, so next time I'll be sure to jot down some directions. Despite that, the class told me later that they enjoyed the activity.

Mapping Community

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:38:54 +0000

Author:

Matt King

Image Credit:

Augustus Koch

In my RHE 309S: Critical Reading and Persuasive Writing course at UT Austin, my students are spending the semester studying communities of their choice. The first paper asked students to "map" their community, charting the people, places, events, social practices, and issues that help the community define and organize itself while also examining arguments made about the community. This assignment resembles one of our main first-year writing assignments which asks students to map the arguments made in response to a specific critical situation or issue. Focusing on communities, however, students might examine multiple relevant issues and also texts that aren't primarily argumentative.

One of the main challenges of the paper was arrangement: how can students demonstrate the ways that the constiuent elements of a community shape and respond to one another and the ways that arguments circulate within and around the community, further affecting its contours? Stasis theory was helpful in terms of organizing the arguments made about the community, and we also spent time in class creating mind maps to conceptually organize the various aspects of our communities (the Digital Writing and Research Lab has several lesson plans outlining specific mind mapping activities and assignments). These tools were helpful but abstract, and students ultimately found another component of the assignment more helpful in terms of getting a sense for the organization and development of their communities in time and space.

In addition to the written analysis of texts by and about the community in the paper, this assignment also asked students to produce a map or a timeline using Google Maps or Dipity (you can find the assignment description here). Google allows you to overlay content onto its maps, marking locations of interest and adding annotations, links, and embedded media, and Dipity's timelines offer similar opportunities for composing multimedia texts. These digital writing environments allowed students to engage their communities and relevant texts in new and often more productive ways. Many students felt that, after working on their maps and timelines, they were better prepared to map the broader contours of their communities in prose.

For example, one of our most challenging concepts for this assignment was kairos, attending to shifting contexts over time. Students could develop a sense for ways that an argument might respond to a recent event, but beyond this, kairos was difficult to wrap our heads around. The timeline activity proved particularly helpful here, as students were able to create representations that captured how their communities had changed over time. In a quick glance, we could see how different events and developments led to shifts in a community's priorities, its place in the public sphere, its sense of stability and cohesiveness, and its broader orientation toward the world.

Looking at some of these projects in greater depth gives a sense for the opportunities made available by mapping community in multimedia spaces. A student considering the remix artist community charted a history of recording technologies, the rise of the DJ, and the spread of dance halls going back to the phonograph. What would have taken up too much time and been too broad for the perspective of the paper became an insightful overview that placed remix artists in a long tradition of social practices organized around recorded sound. A student focusing on human trafficking explored global responses to this human rights violation by attaching policies to specific locations. In her paper, this student produced the most sophisticated analysis in the class, demonstrating a nuanced understanding of the relationship between specific groups within the community, their mode of response, and place, an understanding facilitated by her ability to map these relationships on a map. A student looking at the community invested in nanotechnologies traced relevant advancements back to the use of Damascus steel in swords, a practice whose techniques "created carbon nanotube fibers within the blades, giving the swords unparalleled strength and flexibility."

Maps and timelines offer students different logics and processes of engagement, translating communities from static entities to assemblages unfolding in time and space.