Goals and Objectives
Goal: Students will understand the role of language and visual media in creating and defining reality and identity.
Objectives:
- Students will identify and describe different theoretical approaches to discourse including rhetorical, film/screen, and interdisciplinary perspectives.
- Students will learn how to use theoretical frames as a means of understanding texts differently, and in multiple ways.
Goal: Students will hone their critical thinking skills through the study, and analysis, of argument.
Objectives:
- Students will evaluate written, spoken, and visual arguments for validity and effectiveness.
- Students will learn appropriate use of evidence, how to test evidence and source material, and how to identify fallacies within arguments.
- Students will understand public texts as expressions and arguments about identity, experience, and power.
- Students will explore multiple ways of reading texts, and recognize the complex forces of text, context, author, and audience in making meaning.
- Students will learn how the social/political/cultural context both creates and confines the possibilities of authors and the reception of texts.
Goal: Students will gain communication competence.
Objectives:
- Students will learn how to assess and utilize appropriate presentational strategies and technology based on situation, topic, and audience.
- Students will utilize these skills in informal as well as formal presentations.
Goal: Students will learn the art of criticism.
Objectives:
- Students will learn to combine creative thinking with research and analysis to produce insightful, and useful, criticism.