Pedagogy of Play

Learning goals: critical thinking, synthesis, rhetorical analysis

1. Provide students with three different excerpts of a persuasive essay that perform synthesis: one that demonstrates strong synthesis of sources, one that merely summarizes sources, and one that misuses or distorts sources.
2. In pairs, or small groups, students analyze the passages and debate which one is most effective and why.
3. They then apply these insights to their peer's work, identifying areas where synthesis can be strengthened.
4. *Optional - Create a quiz on Canvas that asks students to list and explain three features of a strong synthesis.

Learning goals: audience awareness, critical thinking, close reading

Assign students different perspectives and areas of focus for their review of their classmates' work. Here are some potential roles:

1. Skeptic - Questions every assumption
2. Cheerleader - Highlights strengths, what works well, and what they'd like to see more of.
3. Copyeditor - Focuses on clarity, sentence structure, and organization
4. Professor - Evaluates argument strength and source integration

Students rotate roles during different rounds of peer review in order to receive varied feedback and in order to practice reading and evaluating writing from different critical perspectives.

Learning goals: audience awareness, critical thinking, rhetorical analysis

Rather than giving their peer(s) direct feedback, students must first ask three open-ended questions about their peer's draft before making suggestions. This activity encourages students to guide their peers toward self-discovery rather than dictating fixes.

Example prompts:

1. "What do you want the reader to take away from this paragraph?"
2. "How does this evidence support your argument?"
3. What are some potential counterarguments to this point, and how could you revise your argument to respond to them?

1. Ideally in small groups, students must post a bold claim related to the week's reading, research, or topic.
2. The other students must respond with either:
   • A thoughtful rebuttal (disagreeing with evidence)
   • A nuanced expansion (agreeing but complicating the idea, with evidence)

1. Present a hypothetical scenario, research problem, or real-world example related to the course.
2. Create small groups and assign students different roles (e.g., journalist, historian, policymaker, scientist) and task them with formulating a response from their assigned perspective, including researched support for any claims they make.
   • Consider assigning more than one student to a particular role if a more nuanced portrait of that role's would benefit student understanding.
3. To encourage students to engage with their peers' posts and reinforce learning objectives, ask students reflect (in writing) on what their peers' responses taught them about the variety of perspectives involved in the assigned issue. 

1. Create a discussion assignment in Canvas relevant to the course content. The assignment should ask students to respond to a question or problem or to offer their own argument or perspective. Discussion assignments that ask students to post a persuasive argument work best for this activity.
2. Here's where the fun begins. Students are to respond to their peers' posts with a GIF that captures their reaction, along with an explanation of why they chose it and how it connects to their classmate's argument or response.
3. Incorporate notable student arguments, GIFs, and explanations into your next lecture.

This activity can accompany a single reading, a collection of readings, a lecture, and a wide range of course content.

1. Instead of asking students to draft a long discussion posts, instead ask them to summarize a main takeaway in a single sentence.
2. The class will vote on the most compelling or thought-provoking sentence, each student explaining their choice.
3. Review their posts and voting results with them, either during an in-person discussion or via a short recorded video linking the activity to relevant learning goals.