Ashleigh, this point you make is one of the first thoughts I’ve come across that has had me truly understanding how the concept of “teaching to the industry” could be limiting or disadvantageous. We want our technical and professional communication students to be as well prepared for any workplace situation they might encounter, which requires some teaching to the industry, to be sure. But we don’t want them to settle or become passive or to rest on their laurels—as professional communicators, we should always be looking for ways that our workplaces can be questioned, changed, improved, etc.

I like that you brought up Dombrowski’s position that “Ethics…is problematic” (337). It certainly brings up interesting conversations and perspectives when a group of people starts talking about about “what is ethics?” and “how do we teach ethics?” Legal ethics would possibly be easier to teach than personal or other ethics. The law doesn’t really budge as far as what’s written in the law. There’s always a past case to which the current ethical issue or situation can be compared. On a personal level though, what if ethics are an intuitive characteristic some people are born with, and others aren’t?

Great points! I didn’t even think about non-human factors in making ethical decisions. Because we are so dependent on a healthy environment for our survival, and our species has such a huge impact on the environment, it seems difficult to separate pure environmental concerns from human ones. I’m sure some environmentalists do argue from a less human-centered perspective. I’ve been looking for examples – I’ll let you know when I find one. (Also, I have to get back to grading soon, so I probably won’t post one today).

For example, in his article entitled “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within” (one of the readings from last week), Tufte explains that it would have been absolutely ridiculous to present data about survival rates of various cancers in graph after graph after graph. He says, “Everything is wrong with these smarmy, incoherent graphs: uncomparative, thin data-density, chartjunk, encoded legends, meaningless color, logotype branding, indifference to content and evidence. . . The best way to show the cancer data is the original table with its good comparative structure and reporting of standard errors” (20-22). Although Tufte uses this example to demonstrate the shortcomings of PowerPoint, he indirectly touches upon the attention to the rhetorical situation that is necessary to effectively arrange this data on cancer: datum must easily be compared to other datum, color shouldn’t detract the viewer’s attention from the numbers, etc. Maybe if we think of data as being just as influenced by the rhetorical situation as written communication, we’ll be less intimidated to arrange and present graphs, tables, charts, etc.

I really like that you’ve pointed out the idea of knowledge as social construction; I found this to be one of the most thought-provoking ideas within this past week’s readings. Like you mentioned in your post, Winsor explains that “knowledge may be defined as that which most people in a discourse community are convinced of, and what a discourse community is convinced of is indicated by the texts it has accepted” (343). I wonder if this definition could also be used for Truth (with a capital “T,” of course). It seems to me like we could look back at the esteemed writings of a given discourse community of a given time period and be able to identify what that group considered the be “True.” That’s just a random thought I had while reading the Winsor article, and your post made me think of it!

In terms of collaboration and conflict in the classroom, I like to give my students the opportunity to evaluate their group members on productivity, participation, engagement, etc after the task is complete. A lot of times students will positively assess the members of their small group because they don’t want to throw any of their peers under the bus, but at least you’re giving students (like the girl who expressed concerned to you about the conflict within her small group) a chance to identify any problem areas within the group dynamic (not all conflict is problematic, like you said — they need to know the difference between problematic and constructive conflict ahead of time) and to explain whether or not group members contributed to the successful completion of the task. This peer evaluation only slightly factors into my students’ overall participation grades, but the students might be more willing to cooperate and constructively contribute to the task from the very beginning (artificially or not) knowing that they’ll be assessed by their peers at the end.

Ashleigh, your classroom practice of introducing the terms as “up for discussion” is very encouraging!

John, and all, I suppose, for me, authorship means positioning my own ideas against others and constructing a piece of writing that is not necessarily “original” but that provides a new voice for the topic. For instance, in my paper research, I’m constantly thinking “Oh, Diana George already argued this” or “Wait, Greg Wilson disagrees with me!” But, I need to remind myself that just because my ideas aren’t the romantic ideal of being original and individual, it doesn’t mean that the process isn’t useful to me and my final audience (whether that be “important PWE people” or a small collection of fellow grad students). Discussing ideas is, and always will be, important, and, even if the audience isn’t large or “important,” the role of the author still is, because author’s write and writers form ideas, and ideas form the future of the field whether in the workplace or academia. Maybe the question of “author” depends largely on who that author thinks their audience is and what that audience would find useful. But, perhaps I’m steeped in the “academic culture”! I am interested in this idea of authorship as a cultural issue…thinking of MySpace and the Hispanic population…