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last.updated 5.31.05

Article Review & Discussion Prompt

Purpose

In addition to the readings that you will be assigned, this assignment gives you the opportunity to expand your own and your peers' scope of digital rhetoric. Furthermore, the use of the discussion board allows you to examine the rhetorical parameters of this writing technology.

Epistemological Process

Begin this project by choosing a scholarly peer-reviewed article about a digital rhetoric (or computers and writing) issue. Consult the digital rhetoric or technical writing sections of the resource page for suggested journal. Articles may also come from other topic specific journals, edited collections, and scholarly book chapters. You are strongly encouraged to...

• choose a topic (e.g., ideology, population, software) that interests you
• choose a topic most related to your professional goals
• find articles that a fairly recent or seminal in the field

If you are having problems finding an article, consult the instructor.

Once you have found an article, read it carefully paying close attention to the author's argument and evidence.

Writing Instructions

After you have read the article, you will write a 500 word review of the article. For the review genre, the writer...

• provides a citation (APA) of the text
• briefly summarizes the text focusing on the argument and how it is supported
• briefly discusses how the text may or may not be useful
• briefly give her or his overall opinion of the text

Since your peers are the primary audience for this review, you will want to consider their interests and knowledge. Remember that this review is meant to generate discussion; therefore you need to provide sufficient information about the article that your peers can respond to and try to stimulate interest in the topic.

You will ultimately submit the review to the class discussion board on the designated Monday by 7pm. However, you can post your review to a personal webpage or blog and submit the URL (http//...) to the class discussion board. Please do not post your review until the Saturday before it is due; this will give previous discussions time to take their course. The order of submission will be as follows:

As the audience of these reviews, you will be responsible for reading and responding to them on class discussion board. The class's overall responses will be noted

Portfolio
The writer of review will want to pay attention to the responses that her or his post generates. For the portfolio, the writer will describe how s/he composed their post and how the peer audience responded to it. The writer will want to speculate how the technology affected her or his composition strategies and the outcome of the response.

Criteria

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

• an understanding of the text reviewed, as well the field of digital rhetoric
• an understanding of the review genre
• a sense of audience–do you provide enough information to assist your audience's understanding of the reviewed article? Likewise do you only highlight what is relevant?
• an ability to stimulate interest
• appropriate use of conventions, including APA citation formatting

last.updated 08.21.05