The objective of the exercise described here is for students to be able to recognize Habermas's public sphere theory and analyze public deliberation occurring within the online public sphere. After completing this unit activity, students will also be able to distinguish between civil and uncivil comments that people use in online forums.…

Rancorous dialogue among political opponents is nothing new in the American political system. However, in the past two decades or so, pundits and scholars have noted an increase in the overall intensity and frequency of incivility among elected officials and citizens. At the collegiate level, many universities have undertaken some form of civility…

Currently, university composition programs are experimenting with the delivery of online writing courses, without the component of face-to-face interaction. To assess the efficacy of this delivery medium, a study compared two groups of undergraduate students in a course on argumentative writing taught by the same instructor: one group taking the…

The proliferation and subsequent devaluation of electronic symbols necessitate a rethinking of classroom discourse. In recent years, "visual literacy" has become an issue among those who feel that the increasingly symbolic orientation of communications compels the writing instructor to address the dynamics of both visual and written…